{"id":816,"date":"2022-01-15T18:25:14","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T18:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/?p=816"},"modified":"2022-10-21T16:07:45","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T16:07:45","slug":"episode-36-why-video-games-need-feminism-and-feminism-needs-video-games-with-shira-chess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/?p=816","title":{"rendered":"Episode 36: Why video games need feminism and feminism needs video games (with Shira Chess)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>[Release Date: February 15, 2022]<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;Do men and women see the role of fun or leisure in their life differently? &nbsp;How does this translate to their gaming habits?&nbsp; Can playing like a feminist help bring about gender equality of leisure time?&nbsp; What are gaming circles and how can they help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/5Xm1l2I60C0iwWayQs2KC7?utm_source=generator&amp;theme=0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"232\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>SHOW TRANSCRIPT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18<br>00:02:02.640 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:10.860<br>Shlomo Sher: chess is an associate professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, she is the author of play, like a feminist which is really what we&#8217;re going to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19<br>00:02:11.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:23.190<br>Shlomo Sher: focus on today and ready player to women gamers and designed identity her work explores how video games are designed for and marketed to women audience and larger themes of leisure disparities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20<br>00:02:24.210 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:26.850<br>Shlomo Sher: Can first of all, she wrote, welcome to the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21<br>00:02:27.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:28.710<br>yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22<br>00:02:29.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:40.680<br>Shlomo Sher: laser laser disc what are larger themes of leisure disparity, so this essentially how let&#8217;s say different genders tend to enjoy their leisure time is that the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23<br>00:02:41.130 &#8211;&gt; 00:02:53.730<br>Shira Chess: Sure, I mean like Sir that&#8217;s more or less where it started and, like my perspectives on this before and during I guess I shouldn&#8217;t say after but during the pandemic have have also continue to shift and but um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24<br>00:02:54.690 &#8211;&gt; 00:03:09.000<br>Shira Chess: early on in my research, when I was sort of still working in the PhD part of when I was long before ready player to one of the things that really began to strike me was the way casual games are designed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25<br>00:03:10.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:03:23.940<br>Shira Chess: versus the way that the research that has been done on women&#8217;s leisure in general right like how that that research on women and leisure, you know kind of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26<br>00:03:24.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:03:38.130<br>Shira Chess: field that you know feminist leisure cities, was a field that that began around the 1980s, or so um where it was sort of there was a lot of discussion about how women&#8217;s leisure tended to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27<br>00:03:39.240 &#8211;&gt; 00:03:46.440<br>Shira Chess: Things that could be done in shorter snippets of time or like things that things that were meant to fill all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28<br>00:03:47.340 &#8211;&gt; 00:03:53.010<br>Shira Chess: allowable time right so things that can be done short time or longer periods of time, depending on where you are at right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29<br>00:03:53.820 &#8211;&gt; 00:04:11.220<br>Shira Chess: things that were cheap or free things that were easy to learn and sort of easy to entangle or disentangle yourself from and and often had like themes of productivity and I was really struck with the fact that casual gaming really emulated those patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30<br>00:04:11.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:04:21.420<br>Shira Chess: So specifically right, I mean most casual games really almost exactly fall into that definition of a women&#8217;s leisure and well casual Games were not necessarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31<br>00:04:22.530 &#8211;&gt; 00:04:36.060<br>Shira Chess: automatically meant for women audiences there was definitely the sense that women were one of the primary target markets, and so a lot of my early work was really interrogating this disparities and thinking about how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32<br>00:04:37.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:04:42.360<br>Shira Chess: How our leisure practices are acculturated how we&#8217;re we&#8217;re taught to leisure in certain ways how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33<br>00:04:42.780 &#8211;&gt; 00:04:56.220<br>Shira Chess: We teach ourselves to leisure in certain ways and then increasingly I mean when I think about leisure and equality and plan a quality, I mean it&#8217;s really you know it&#8217;s so much more intersections in that, because the reality is that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34<br>00:04:58.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:09.750<br>Shira Chess: If you&#8217;re working two jobs and are full time parent and are you know and and also or woman you don&#8217;t have leisure time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35<br>00:05:10.950 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:15.090<br>Shira Chess: Like at all right, and so there was a right, like, I mean it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>36<br>00:05:17.160 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:27.510<br>Shira Chess: It is condescending of us to say, well, you should play more games to somebody who doesn&#8217;t have that space in their lives, so I mean largely I think about leisure as an issue of equality, I think about it as.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>37<br>00:05:27.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:29.040<br>Shira Chess: a space where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>38<br>00:05:29.430 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:36.300<br>Shira Chess: You know, as feminists We talk a lot about equality and all different kinds of spaces in terms of bodies in terms of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>39<br>00:05:37.560 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:48.120<br>Shira Chess: autonomy in terms of workplaces and all kinds of issues of gravity, but often we don&#8217;t take that step back and ask yourself the question well, what about issues of leisure, what about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>40<br>00:05:49.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:51.000<br>Shira Chess: Our are we all getting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>41<br>00:05:52.260 &#8211;&gt; 00:05:58.020<br>Shira Chess: Quality leisure in our lives, and that is, I think, an issue of you know a great importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>42<br>00:05:58.560 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:05.790<br>Shlomo Sher: It is really interesting that you know until I read at least you know part of the book, I never really thought of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>43<br>00:06:06.270 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:16.500<br>Shlomo Sher: The fact that men and women, how I always know men and women have fun in different ways, but I didn&#8217;t think they were qualitatively different you know, I was thought, maybe it&#8217;s just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>44<br>00:06:16.890 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:31.920<br>Shlomo Sher: You know they&#8217;re interested in different things, but I never thought about the let&#8217;s see so in your book, you say that the playful is political right I don&#8217;t is this is this going to count as a wrestler we used to think of playing simply as just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>45<br>00:06:31.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:37.080<br>Shira Chess: fun, I just want to ever Before I respond to that he want to respond to one other thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>46<br>00:06:37.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:37.920<br>Shira Chess: So I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>47<br>00:06:38.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:41.970<br>Shira Chess: know that men and women do have qualitatively different leisure experiences so much as.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>48<br>00:06:42.150 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:45.780<br>Shira Chess: Our culture rated to see leisure differently right like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>49<br>00:06:45.960 &#8211;&gt; 00:06:58.080<br>Shira Chess: In in our culture&#8217;s we talk about leisure in different ways, you know what early on in my when it was originally when I very early on, when I was i&#8217;m a PhD student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>50<br>00:06:58.800 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:05.190<br>Shira Chess: I used to drive my mother crazy used to call her and i&#8217;m like well what would it take to make you play a video game What would it take what would it take one day she she was like I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>51<br>00:07:05.880 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:11.580<br>Shira Chess: have it in a shopping game and i&#8217;m like that, but that really struck me right, like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>52<br>00:07:11.970 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:20.160<br>Shira Chess: That this idea of you know consumerism as leisure is is both bizarre and also really acculturated into our lives, you know when you when you watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>53<br>00:07:20.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:29.190<br>Shira Chess: TV commercials you see commercials of women on hunt for Bergen right and that&#8217;s that&#8217;s considered this leisure activity, you know weird sense of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>54<br>00:07:29.400 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:47.820<br>Shira Chess: So I think that a lot of like sort of my early work was was grappling with that it&#8217;s not necessarily that you know men are from Mars, women are from Venus so much as we&#8217;re taught certain things were taught to were infiltrated in certain ways and we emulate those practices often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>55<br>00:07:49.650 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:52.140<br>Shira Chess: But we&#8217;re not like different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>56<br>00:07:52.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:07:59.310<br>Shira Chess: A fairly and there are men that that that like casual games and that that like productive leisure in their women that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>57<br>00:07:59.340 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:00.840<br>Shira Chess: And like nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>58<br>00:08:01.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:15.810<br>Shira Chess: So right exactly I mean, I think that it&#8217;s it&#8217;s Messier than I think the enculturation i&#8217;m alive allows for sometimes but that doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that it&#8217;s still not there and it&#8217;s still not an expectation that&#8217;s built into how we do things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>59<br>00:08:16.110 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:27.210<br>A Ashcraft: Do you think that, like say telling women that that that women like to shop as much like Thomas iron like getting all this friends to paint the fence for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>60<br>00:08:28.800 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:32.160<br>Shira Chess: I mean you know I from a capitalist perspective sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>61<br>00:08:33.450 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:37.410<br>Shira Chess: I mean there&#8217;s there&#8217;s a long history of sort of like of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>62<br>00:08:38.550 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:48.000<br>Shira Chess: of consumer spaces telling women that they like to shop right like that that is a pretty robust history, women have long been the primary shoppers in most sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>63<br>00:08:49.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:08:54.390<br>Shira Chess: Standard households right like that that is a construction that has been going on for a long time now really since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>64<br>00:08:54.990 &#8211;&gt; 00:09:06.810<br>Shira Chess: You think around the 40s or so that was that was or maybe before, but the ones that i&#8217;m thinking of the some of the early ones really came from that period, so I mean like that that&#8217;s long standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>65<br>00:09:07.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:09:21.120<br>A Ashcraft: yeah it interestingly, I only just recently read something about the history of department stores and there and they&#8217;re also tied directly to this they&#8217;re directly tied to when women became the primary shoppers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>66<br>00:09:21.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:09:25.140<br>Shira Chess: Of the fam right right exactly and so and there&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>67<br>00:09:26.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:09:34.200<br>Shira Chess: also studied some advertising for video games and I I always am amused when it gets reflected in advertising and there&#8217;s one ad that I really liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>68<br>00:09:35.160 &#8211;&gt; 00:09:51.060<br>Shira Chess: from several I think was from about 2014 or 2015 something like that that was a game stop ad and it was it was Christmas ad and it starts off where it shows, and I talked about it in ready player, too, but it shows a woman like middle aged white woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>69<br>00:09:52.200 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:00.000<br>Shira Chess: You know in business casual clothing driving in her minivan and as she&#8217;s driving home the there&#8217;s like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>70<br>00:10:01.230 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:14.760<br>Shira Chess: The van is like something low rider style and like she&#8217;s passing by various people and, like she gives somebody gang sign and like she gives a dirty look to a cop, that he passes by and then in the end, she like pulls into your driveway in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>71<br>00:10:15.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:26.220<br>Shira Chess: Like you know white has white picket fence kind of drive way and the end then opens up the back of her car and there&#8217;s like a ton of games stop games all through the back, and if they.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>72<br>00:10:26.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:35.730<br>Shira Chess: The tagline is roll home fat this Christmas i&#8217;m you know, making to make your family happy right like, and that was so it&#8217;s like you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>73<br>00:10:36.090 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:40.500<br>Shira Chess: One of the allowable spaces in the game industry for women is this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>74<br>00:10:40.830 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:51.270<br>Shira Chess: This specter of consumption and this idea that like well, you can spend money if you&#8217;d like to spend money on this stuff that&#8217;s great and then you see that reflected in a lot of the modules you know I spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>75<br>00:10:52.020 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:58.200<br>Shira Chess: or non negligible amount of time writing about and talking about Kim kardashian Hollywood over the years and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>76<br>00:10:58.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:10:58.890<br>A Ashcraft: That is a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>77<br>00:10:58.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:00.930<br>Shira Chess: game that really centralize is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>78<br>00:11:01.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:16.800<br>Shira Chess: Like sort of consumption in every possible way that it can and i&#8217;m not even this, this is not me, you know just in Kim kardashian Hollywood I spent a lot of time playing that game, but I think that it is in many ways, very artful in its construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>79<br>00:11:17.040 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:18.090<br>Shira Chess: But um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>80<br>00:11:18.450 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:28.500<br>Shira Chess: But it definitely sort of centralized is consumptive practices and there are a lot of other games that sort of do that as well that sort of centralized that consumptive moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>81<br>00:11:28.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:31.950<br>A Ashcraft: Oh yeah absolutely animal crossing is a good another good example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>82<br>00:11:32.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:32.700<br>Shira Chess: Here I mean yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>83<br>00:11:32.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:33.360<br>Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>84<br>00:11:34.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:46.350<br>Shlomo Sher: um okay I don&#8217;t want to I was going to go in a different direction, but I don&#8217;t want to let this go, I want to kind of go back a little because he just in the beginning, you just kind of jumped to the idea that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>85<br>00:11:47.640 &#8211;&gt; 00:11:56.220<br>Shlomo Sher: Women do tend to drift to more casual games in general right and that there were reasons for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>86<br>00:11:57.240 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:18.180<br>Shlomo Sher: Related to simply the way that women have had to pursue less leisure right but we haven&#8217;t got to the let&#8217;s say a sociological political explanation of that and maybe maybe would help to have a little bit of that in there, why is it that we we see trends go in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>87<br>00:12:19.500 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:25.140<br>Shira Chess: I mean, are you asking for, like the historical of where women are in the video game industry is that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>88<br>00:12:25.950 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:27.600<br>Shlomo Sher: yeah yeah it&#8217;s interesting it&#8217;s it&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>89<br>00:12:28.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:29.190<br>Shlomo Sher: I mean yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>90<br>00:12:29.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:34.740<br>Shira Chess: I think for many days you know for several decades, the first or the earliest decade now, the earliest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>91<br>00:12:34.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:49.320<br>Shira Chess: But then the the most formative decades of the video game industry was marketing to this idealized masculine audience this idea of masculinity is not necessarily women specific or men, specifically, but this idealized male.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>92<br>00:12:49.770 &#8211;&gt; 00:12:50.550<br>A Ashcraft: And then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>93<br>00:12:50.820 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:07.170<br>Shira Chess: What happened was in the early aughts there was a shift right like there were suddenly there were more people with computers that PCs playing casuals and PCs and so that became available I think diner dash was this really pivotal moment I like talking about diner dash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>94<br>00:13:07.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:16.380<br>Shira Chess: Because it was just this moment where people were like Oh, I guess we&#8217;ve been will play, and you know because I came was really meant for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>95<br>00:13:17.040 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:18.090<br>Shira Chess: Again, but but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>96<br>00:13:18.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:21.000<br>Shira Chess: This idealize woman audience and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>97<br>00:13:21.180 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:32.730<br>Shira Chess: Like that&#8217;s, not to say that men don&#8217;t play in love diner dash it&#8217;s this idealization that&#8217;s done by the industry, there are, of course, a lot of women over the years that have played a lot of games that were meant for idealize masculine audiences I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>98<br>00:13:32.970 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:45.330<br>Shira Chess: it&#8217;s not I try not to be prescriptive and how I talk about it because I don&#8217;t want to imply that there aren&#8217;t a lot of women that have been embedded in the video game industry playing those Games, for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>99<br>00:13:45.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:46.830<br>A Ashcraft: Right so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>100<br>00:13:46.860 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:48.000<br>Shlomo Sher: So that&#8217;s not the direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>101<br>00:13:48.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:13:48.390<br>Actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>102<br>00:13:49.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:02.910<br>Shlomo Sher: What well I didn&#8217;t I didn&#8217;t I really didn&#8217;t i&#8217;m trying to find the words to say these these things in a sensible way, but I really wanted kind of a more of an explanation of why it was that women essentially approach, leisure, as they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>103<br>00:14:04.320 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:14.910<br>Shira Chess: I mean I, so I mean I don&#8217;t have like hard data to back this up, but one of the things that I thought it&#8217;s been a lot of time thinking about is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>104<br>00:14:16.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:20.940<br>Shira Chess: second wave feminism and that moment, and second wave feminism where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>105<br>00:14:23.340 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:33.060<br>Shira Chess: Women re entering the the workforce, and I say that word re entering very gingerly here, because, of course, there were women that were always in the workforce right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>106<br>00:14:33.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:37.710<br>Shira Chess: Like there were like I mean like i&#8217;m not being dismissive of that, but certainly middle class women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>107<br>00:14:37.950 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:55.560<br>Shira Chess: Entering the workforce in the 80s and then sort of what early Russell hochschild talks about is the second shift right so women working a full time shift in an office, and then a full time shift at home right and i&#8217;m going to pause for a moment, because i&#8217;m getting a little bit of feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>108<br>00:14:56.640 &#8211;&gt; 00:14:57.870<br>Shira Chess: Okay, I think i&#8217;ve stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>109<br>00:14:59.130 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:00.750<br>Shlomo Sher: I can, I can edit that out bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>110<br>00:15:00.780 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:03.510<br>Shira Chess: Okay, I just wasn&#8217;t sure, and I didn&#8217;t want to talk over it, and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>111<br>00:15:04.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:05.970<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;ve got it edited second shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>112<br>00:15:06.480 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:11.130<br>Shira Chess: Okay, so early Russell hostile talks about the second shift, which was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>113<br>00:15:12.300 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:20.760<br>Shira Chess: The like you know that that women in the 1980s, who had not previously been in the workforce we&#8217;re going back to the workforce are going to the workforce, for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>114<br>00:15:21.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:29.250<br>Shira Chess: And then, but then still working a full time job at managing the hustled and so, in some ways that has shifted right like I mean there&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>115<br>00:15:29.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:39.420<br>Shira Chess: You know we&#8217;re in a better place than we were in the 1980s, in terms of that certainly and that&#8217;s, not to say that there aren&#8217;t households that don&#8217;t look like that, and that there aren&#8217;t hospitals that don&#8217;t look like other things, but that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>116<br>00:15:40.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:51.960<br>Shira Chess: But that certainly sort of set up a space where there just wasn&#8217;t time for it right, and even if you look back at sort of like earlier feminist works, if you look at something like um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>117<br>00:15:53.400 &#8211;&gt; 00:15:53.880<br>Shira Chess: You know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>118<br>00:15:56.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:06.810<br>Shira Chess: Someone to before or or Mary Wilson craft or it things like that there&#8217;s a lot of discussion about like well men see us as frivolous things right so there&#8217;s this like sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>119<br>00:16:07.590 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:17.190<br>Shira Chess: Always this commentary on that that question of frivolity and and I feel like that created some some tension with this idea of play right like like you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>120<br>00:16:17.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:17.760<br>i&#8217;m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>121<br>00:16:19.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:32.430<br>Shira Chess: Playing it does imply a certain degree of frivolity, and so I think that all of those tensions together sort of constructed a space where, in order to be taken seriously, I think a lot of women sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>122<br>00:16:33.420 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:47.430<br>Shira Chess: grew up in a culture where they were not necessarily playing right, you know and again, you know your mileage may vary that&#8217;s not i&#8217;m not making assumptions about all women everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>123<br>00:16:48.030 &#8211;&gt; 00:16:52.200<br>Shira Chess: But, but I think that that was one of the things that sort of so and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>124<br>00:16:52.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:05.010<br>Shira Chess: As you know, talking about that idea of the second shift, then you look at a game like diner dash where you know you&#8217;re working as a waitress in a restaurant and I described it as a third shift where you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>125<br>00:17:05.340 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:10.470<br>Shira Chess: full time job in the office you work a full time job at home and then you know you have a couple of hours at night and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>126<br>00:17:10.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:19.440<br>Shira Chess: You immediately jump into a Labor based activity of you know, and specifically emotional Labor based activity, because you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>127<br>00:17:19.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:31.620<br>Shira Chess: The reality is, is that while if you&#8217;re playing grand theft auto or heart signifies your health, but if you&#8217;re playing diner dash a heart signifies the love of others and you&#8217;re just trying to win over that love constantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>128<br>00:17:33.270 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:35.160<br>Shlomo Sher: that&#8217;s interesting thing yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>129<br>00:17:35.580 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:43.530<br>A Ashcraft: What about games like there&#8217;s some other games that when sort of follow fall into this category, but maybe not quite so emotional things like farmville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>130<br>00:17:44.400 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:53.010<br>Shira Chess: yeah no I mean I i&#8217;m so i&#8217;ve talked a bit about in some of my work about investigate so those would be invest express games right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>131<br>00:17:53.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:17:59.910<br>Shira Chess: Where you&#8217;re investing time in order to to cultivate you know, a space and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>132<br>00:18:01.710 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:08.850<br>Shira Chess: In invest express schemes in many ways to sort of like take all of the aspects of sort of like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>133<br>00:18:09.870 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:23.100<br>Shira Chess: Labor in play and emotional Labor and all of these kind of messy things and also consumptive practices and so we&#8217;re gonna have like tie him up in a neat bow and serve them to an audience and so again that&#8217;s it, you know we wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>134<br>00:18:25.620 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:34.620<br>Shira Chess: The question shouldn&#8217;t be Why do women play farmville the question should be, why do companies, try and make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>135<br>00:18:35.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:40.140<br>Shira Chess: A farmville for women right like why, why does that happen what How is it that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>136<br>00:18:40.410 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:49.140<br>Shira Chess: We culture it, you know we culturally design games in that way, when we are assuming women are the targeted audience and what does that mean in terms of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>137<br>00:18:49.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:18:57.630<br>Shira Chess: Our cultural perceptions of leisure and leisure, equality and what we expect out of women for leisure and some of that also is that you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>138<br>00:18:58.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:08.340<br>Shira Chess: While women are about 50% of all game, you know video game players, you know and the numbers very obviously you know, depending on who counts as a woman, and what counts is video game and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>139<br>00:19:08.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:08.850<br>A Ashcraft: blah blah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>140<br>00:19:08.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:09.570<br>right but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>141<br>00:19:10.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:18.180<br>Shira Chess: The but you know it ranges from anywhere from 46% to 52% so I like to just like you know split down the middle and say about 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>142<br>00:19:18.450 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:27.840<br>Shira Chess: yeah and but you know i&#8217;m only 22% of the industry is people who identify as women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>143<br>00:19:28.260 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:30.360<br>Shira Chess: And so, and that includes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>144<br>00:19:30.870 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:39.090<br>Shira Chess: You know it, or at least the last time it was surveyed and obviously this numbers may have changed it&#8217;s been a while, since I think a good survey of those numbers have come out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>145<br>00:19:39.870 &#8211;&gt; 00:19:46.410<br>Shira Chess: And they&#8217;ve grown a lot, but when I certainly when farmville came out, it was closer to you know that 22% number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>146<br>00:19:46.710 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:05.280<br>Shira Chess: So that means that there&#8217;s a lot of people out there that are making games for audiences that are not themselves and building cultural assumptions into this games right or technology isn&#8217;t neutral and it reflects back what it is that we assume about this kinds of leisure practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>147<br>00:20:06.420 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:20.460<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay, so, so let me go back now right to to the idea right to do your idea that the playful was political yeah right right, I mean we&#8217;re used to think of playing is just your pain is about fun, so, in what sentence can play be political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>148<br>00:20:20.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:32.520<br>Shira Chess: So um that phrase the playfulness political is one that like I have gone through a lot of phases with because it so first used in 2014 for official that I co organized with Adrian shot that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>149<br>00:20:33.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:40.530<br>Shira Chess: Had the digital games research association degree and originally was like just this light punt on the personal is political right like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>150<br>00:20:40.530 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:45.540<br>Shira Chess: We were just sort of like riffing off of that we didn&#8217;t really have a whole lot in mind when we were putting that together and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>151<br>00:20:46.140 &#8211;&gt; 00:20:58.170<br>Shira Chess: And the fishbowl, of course, became weirdly politicized and a central pivot and how in gamer gate and how we were like you know how academia was was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>152<br>00:20:58.590 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:03.240<br>Shira Chess: complicit in all of the evils that were being asserted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>153<br>00:21:03.960 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:14.040<br>Shira Chess: by the people who were talking about gamer gate so I spent like a non negligible time thinking about that phrase, and then it became a title of my conclusion and ready player two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>154<br>00:21:14.700 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:28.920<br>Shira Chess: And then I so, then I kind of like ended ready player to with that sentiment, the playful is political thinking about like these things matter because because play matters because because play in a quiet and quality matters and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>155<br>00:21:30.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:42.360<br>Shira Chess: When I I revisited the phrase again when I real play like a feminist because i&#8217;ve increasingly become interested in how play and leisure, more broadly, can be like thought of as a mode of protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>156<br>00:21:42.810 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:50.220<br>Shira Chess: So in play, like feminist you know, like, I wrote this chapter play to protest and that was sort of like the premise, but the.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>157<br>00:21:51.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:21:58.230<br>Shira Chess: There was like a two part premise to it the first was that play itself can be a form of protest, like our choice to embrace leisure activities of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>158<br>00:21:58.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:07.800<br>Shira Chess: both ourselves and if the folks around us, gives us this opportunity to push back at like the encroaching work Center culture that many of us are attuned to which.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>159<br>00:22:08.610 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:14.790<br>Shira Chess: I probably don&#8217;t see it nearly as well as Jenny adele&#8217;s had to do nothing I like which I strongly recommend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>160<br>00:22:15.660 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:29.760<br>Shira Chess: But and then second that we can use play and political ways to make her protest, better and more effective so um and play like feminists they advocate for using playful tactics like alternate reality games or alerts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>161<br>00:22:30.240 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:36.000<br>Shira Chess: to educate and to perform protest into add levity to our like most dire issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>162<br>00:22:37.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:37.830<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>163<br>00:22:39.810 &#8211;&gt; 00:22:49.980<br>Shlomo Sher: Man I like both of what we&#8217;re going to we&#8217;re going to talk about the second one, the second one of these more or at least I want to ask more but let&#8217;s let&#8217;s get into a play like a feminist right so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>164<br>00:22:50.730 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:02.520<br>Shlomo Sher: The title itself, or at least the project seems to be motivated by the supposes insulted playing like a girl, can you tell us a little bit about what that is so supposed to be and how it&#8217;s translated into the world of video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>165<br>00:23:03.030 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:08.070<br>Shira Chess: yeah so I mean like I started that book my start point for play like a feminist was the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>166<br>00:23:08.610 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:13.380<br>Shira Chess: I like the phrase popped into my head, it was her, and I think learning 2017 and it really like struck me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>167<br>00:23:13.680 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:24.900<br>Shira Chess: It seemed like sort of a good counter response to like all the feelings of impending doom that I had at that moment in 2017 which, like whoa That was a cute feeling of impending doom I look back fondly on those bathroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>168<br>00:23:26.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:26.490<br>Shira Chess: and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>169<br>00:23:27.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:37.620<br>Shira Chess: The but so my star point in the book was sort of this question of like what does that mean what what does it mean to play like a feminist what might that mean and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>170<br>00:23:38.550 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:42.720<br>Shira Chess: And until like to the point of that insult I was like really struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>171<br>00:23:43.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:23:53.520<br>Shira Chess: With the contrast of first off how the phrase like play like a girl was deployed when I was a kid so sort of being made fun of and I talked about like my experiences on the playground, of being made fun of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>172<br>00:23:54.300 &#8211;&gt; 00:24:06.450<br>Shira Chess: for being a girl and versus like decades later when suddenly it&#8217;s meant as a like phrase of empowerment so like by a menstrual pads advertisements and Nike right like so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>173<br>00:24:07.590 &#8211;&gt; 00:24:15.960<br>Shira Chess: The so, but even that is this flawed idea of playing like a girl right it&#8217;s still concrete is is what it means to be a girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>174<br>00:24:16.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:24:26.970<br>Shira Chess: And it implies sort of this compulsory system tenderness to that empowerment and sort of renders disability and age invisible right like it sort of it, just like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>175<br>00:24:27.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:24:35.100<br>Shira Chess: It just sort of like realigns different things, and it doesn&#8217;t really say anything this idea of like playing like a girl whether it&#8217;s an insult or a compliment is just like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>176<br>00:24:35.610 &#8211;&gt; 00:24:53.340<br>Shira Chess: it&#8217;s messily poor and so, then the idea to me a playing like a feminist is that we need to play in ways that transcend those physical and cultural boundaries and consider like what kinds of like a kind of leisure quality so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>177<br>00:24:54.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:08.010<br>Shira Chess: Some of that, as I see it, is it like can happen in video games it&#8217;s a space that was formerly dominated by masculinity and that&#8217;s like changing contents like is deeply in flux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>178<br>00:25:10.200 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:13.920<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;m tempted to ask about what play quality would exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>179<br>00:25:15.270 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:22.560<br>Shlomo Sher: Exactly be here what what that idea would be, can we can we give it a shot, I mean there&#8217;s so many ways to kind of define that but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>180<br>00:25:22.650 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:24.990<br>Shira Chess: Did you did you have any night, you know um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>181<br>00:25:25.830 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:32.340<br>Shira Chess: I think that it just like any kind of equality it&#8217;s The thing that you&#8217;re constantly working towards right but to me it&#8217;s not just about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>182<br>00:25:34.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:52.530<br>Shira Chess: Playing more which I think is part of it, but also, it is about looking at the people in your life and seeing if they get enough play and how to enable play of those around us, because it&#8217;s not zero sum, and you know if if our say is on the backs of others Labor than.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>183<br>00:25:54.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:54.330<br>Shira Chess: and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>184<br>00:25:54.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:25:56.340<br>Shira Chess: You know that, then that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>185<br>00:25:57.360 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:04.290<br>Shira Chess: Then it is imperfect I ended play like a feminist with not not to spoil everything but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>186<br>00:26:04.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:05.310<br>Shira Chess: I ended it with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>187<br>00:26:07.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:16.770<br>Shira Chess: Around 2017 I was making new year&#8217;s resolutions with my son, who was then I guess seven and he.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>188<br>00:26:18.030 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:19.350<br>Shira Chess: He or six maybe I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>189<br>00:26:20.610 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:22.020<br>Shira Chess: He I can&#8217;t do math it&#8217;s fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>190<br>00:26:22.320 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:25.110<br>Shira Chess: And so, he came over to me and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>191<br>00:26:26.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:36.810<br>Shira Chess: And like he wasn&#8217;t going to write his own resolutions, but then he wrote down my resolution, for me, which was play more and I was like okay so first of all, why didn&#8217;t I think of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>192<br>00:26:37.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:52.470<br>Shira Chess: Second, of all that&#8217;s a really good resolution that you know and in sort of, but it also hit me that it sort of made me sad right that that my kid was telling me to play more as a person who studies play and like what what does that mean right and so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>193<br>00:26:52.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:55.620<br>A Ashcraft: it&#8217;s been a lot of times sort of grappling with the meaning of that and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>194<br>00:26:56.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:26:59.880<br>Shira Chess: And my place has always been complicated and embedded in work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>195<br>00:27:00.270 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:05.910<br>Shira Chess: Because, you know as somebody who studies video games as i&#8217;m sure you know, as both of you have experienced right like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>196<br>00:27:06.180 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:13.500<br>Shira Chess: You have this moment where you&#8217;re playing a game, and you ask yourself is this work, or is this play what what am I doing right now is this actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>197<br>00:27:13.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:24.660<br>Shira Chess: Is this actually leisure, you know if i&#8217;m if i&#8217;m making notes in my head, am I am I working I don&#8217;t know I don&#8217;t know what that looks like anymore, so I think that that&#8217;s sort of the mess of it that I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>198<br>00:27:25.500 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:34.440<br>Shira Chess: I enjoyed thinking about and play like a feminist gave me kind of that opportunity to really tease out some of those ideas I don&#8217;t know that I came to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>199<br>00:27:34.800 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:41.190<br>Shira Chess: You know the conclusion of how to cure leisure equality for everyone, but I think that my goal wasn&#8217;t about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>200<br>00:27:41.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:27:54.120<br>Shira Chess: Coming to big answer so much as like teasing that out and and also getting more people into the conversation, because I do feel, like so many of our academic conversations become insular and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>201<br>00:27:54.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:06.150<br>Shira Chess: There are so many moments, where I mean all of the scholars I know in in my field have many, many times had these these you know discussions about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>202<br>00:28:06.900 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:19.200<br>Shira Chess: The value of games, but I think that a lot of times that doesn&#8217;t happen outside, and so I wanted to expand that conversation, and I wanted to get on feminists to think about play more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>203<br>00:28:20.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:33.240<br>Shlomo Sher: I love the idea of thinking of equality in games in terms of the quality of time played all right it&#8217;s interesting because it&#8217;s it&#8217;s a data itself is a very.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>204<br>00:28:34.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:44.550<br>Shlomo Sher: there&#8217;s so much that comes with the way we organize our lives and the relative time that we give to play before we actually move on to play like a feminist I want to ask a little bit more of that I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>205<br>00:28:45.840 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:56.820<br>Shlomo Sher: wouldn&#8217;t matter also the kind of games that we&#8217;re playing, is there a quality, do you think that the you know you know, of course, when we say play like a feminists and, of course, I want to ask what kind of feminism well you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>206<br>00:28:57.210 &#8211;&gt; 00:28:58.980<br>Shlomo Sher: which you know what but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>207<br>00:28:59.100 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:00.930<br>Shlomo Sher: You know the idea itself of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>208<br>00:29:02.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:05.970<br>Shlomo Sher: The quality is so complicated right, and when we think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>209<br>00:29:07.020 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:14.970<br>Shlomo Sher: You know, not just the time but yeah if we go back to the time doesn&#8217;t matter what time do you think as a feminist and matters, what kind of play, we have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>210<br>00:29:15.720 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:17.070<br>Shira Chess: I mean you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>211<br>00:29:18.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:30.300<br>Shira Chess: i&#8217;m of two minds on the one hand, I want to say yes right like play excellent things but, but on the other hand, I also feel like who am I to tell somebody else how to enjoy their leisure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>212<br>00:29:30.420 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:41.940<br>Shira Chess: Right I I don&#8217;t think that I get to do that, and I think that that that kind of gate keeping doesn&#8217;t serve anyone so like do I have opinions about what good play looks like absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>213<br>00:29:42.480 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:43.320<br>Shira Chess: But um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>214<br>00:29:43.530 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:48.720<br>Shira Chess: But I don&#8217;t think that that pushing that on others, is a good way to be an advocate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>215<br>00:29:49.560 &#8211;&gt; 00:29:57.060<br>A Ashcraft: Right and and that that follows into sort of the way that we think about fun right because there&#8217;s different kinds of fun and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>216<br>00:29:57.870 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:14.220<br>A Ashcraft: and different people want different kinds of fun at different times of the day of their lives or whatever, so it makes sense that sometimes you might want to have that you know glass of wine before dinner fun and sometimes you want to have the you know killing Nazi fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>217<br>00:30:16.110 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:16.710<br>Shlomo Sher: that&#8217;s a fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>218<br>00:30:17.190 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:17.820<br>A Ashcraft: You know, like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>219<br>00:30:19.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:19.980<br>A Ashcraft: Like a worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>220<br>00:30:20.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:27.000<br>A Ashcraft: Like that kind of like intense kind of fun right as opposed to the relaxing kind of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>221<br>00:30:27.990 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:38.340<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay um you know the philosopher at me, you know, is always thinking about you know Bentham and utilitarianism and the criticism of just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>222<br>00:30:39.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:30:53.670<br>Shlomo Sher: of just thinking of fun and pleasure as completely relativistic without hierarchies of these things, and how they relate to the good life but we&#8217;re going to leave that aside let&#8217;s instead okay so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>223<br>00:30:55.410 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:06.120<br>Shlomo Sher: Before we get to the connections more between video games and feminism, can you tell us a little bit about the sort of feminism you have in mind and what values or perspectives you bring to the table yeah yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>224<br>00:31:06.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:14.250<br>Shira Chess: I, and I appreciate that question because I don&#8217;t think that feminism is one thing I very deliberately paralyzed feminism when I when I use the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>225<br>00:31:14.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:28.140<br>Shira Chess: But the definition of feminism that I use in the book is for bell hooks rest in peace, my that feminism is a movement to end sexism as sex sex sex is exploitation and oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>226<br>00:31:29.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:35.370<br>Shira Chess: I don&#8217;t see feminism is a movement about exclusion, but one about inclusion so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>227<br>00:31:36.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:44.970<br>Shira Chess: that&#8217;s that&#8217;s what I would like to be advocating for and I spend a lot of time thinking about sorry Sarah ahmed&#8217;s notion that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>228<br>00:31:45.480 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:50.520<br>Shira Chess: to live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable and so that was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>229<br>00:31:51.030 &#8211;&gt; 00:31:58.110<br>Shira Chess: sort of where I come from, with is that I, I think that we need to call play and its value in our everyday lives into question and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>230<br>00:31:58.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:08.970<br>Shira Chess: Because feminism&#8217;s of the past have been so inextricably connected to this issues of gravity and importance it like the core of my argument was that there needs to be more playtime in feminism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>231<br>00:32:10.800 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:17.460<br>Shlomo Sher: More playtime in feminism not just feminism focused on more or feminism focused more on playtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>232<br>00:32:17.730 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:24.210<br>Shira Chess: Yes, yes, and right, like, I think that all of these things can be in conversation right, like, I think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>233<br>00:32:24.720 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:39.450<br>Shira Chess: A more playful feminism can serve us well and I think that feminism focusing on play can serve us well and I, like, I think that all of these things can be together and in harmony in in sort of my idyllic version of it at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>234<br>00:32:39.840 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:40.680<br>Shira Chess: Again, I wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>235<br>00:32:40.890 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:55.380<br>Shira Chess: So I do feel like I always need the caveat, I wrote this book before the pandemic um so and I, you know it&#8217;s been it&#8217;s been tough on me, she sort of like revisit some of that um post pandemic or.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>236<br>00:32:56.550 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:57.360<br>Shira Chess: I should say I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>237<br>00:32:57.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:32:58.980<br>A Ashcraft: Post I don&#8217;t know what i&#8217;m saying right right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>238<br>00:33:00.060 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:00.930<br>Shlomo Sher: Wherever we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>239<br>00:33:02.040 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:03.480<br>Shira Chess: In the shadow of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>240<br>00:33:03.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:05.280<br>Shlomo Sher: um so what.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>241<br>00:33:05.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:05.940<br>changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>242<br>00:33:07.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:19.320<br>Shira Chess: I mean I you know, so our our leisure habits have continued to change, as I see it right like we&#8217;re all you know in my book, I sort of like cheekily route, at one point that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>243<br>00:33:20.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:30.540<br>Shira Chess: There, that I that, as I saw it during you know, during that time period that there are two types of people in the world, people who love video games and people who don&#8217;t know which video games they love, yet which I think is an.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>244<br>00:33:30.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:31.080<br>A Ashcraft: Excellent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>245<br>00:33:31.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:38.160<br>Shira Chess: thing to say in 2017 but the reality is that once the pandemic really hit us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>246<br>00:33:39.090 &#8211;&gt; 00:33:54.570<br>Shira Chess: The truth of the matter is, is that there were two types of people in the world, people who had a surplus of free time because they were because of the pandemic and people who had absolutely no free time because of the pandemic and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>247<br>00:33:55.680 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:07.740<br>Shira Chess: I found myself increasingly in that second category and that that really has changed my perspective on things and I i&#8217;ve found myself moving away from digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>248<br>00:34:08.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:23.280<br>Shira Chess: games a lot and moving more towards board games in the pandemic and at various points I i&#8217;ve kind of fought it, I will you know i&#8217;ve tried to push myself to play more digital games and then I realized, you know, like you know I can&#8217;t get keep myself either you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>249<br>00:34:25.500 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:36.720<br>A Ashcraft: it&#8217;s interesting that that in a pandemic when you&#8217;re when you&#8217;re presumably you know sheltered away from most of the contact you have with other people that you graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>250<br>00:34:38.100 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:45.120<br>A Ashcraft: You you you gravitated towards games, where you actually sit down with other people, those two games, where you don&#8217;t have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>251<br>00:34:45.870 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:55.050<br>Shira Chess: Sure yeah I mean, like some of it was just sort of you know, being around my family, you know my my kid was finally at an age where he could play cool games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>252<br>00:34:55.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:34:57.480<br>Shira Chess: Man where you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>253<br>00:34:58.500 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:07.770<br>Shira Chess: That were that you know my kid my husband and I can like sit around and play board games and that felt more satisfying to me um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>254<br>00:35:07.830 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:08.970<br>A Ashcraft: And so, so it&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>255<br>00:35:09.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:10.740<br>A Ashcraft: it&#8217;s within the pod you&#8217;re talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>256<br>00:35:10.770 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:12.000<br>A Ashcraft: yeah not going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>257<br>00:35:12.060 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:13.890<br>Shira Chess: i&#8217;m not like going out a you know yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>258<br>00:35:15.900 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:17.130<br>A Ashcraft: you&#8217;re not having friends over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>259<br>00:35:17.550 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:19.890<br>A Ashcraft: Right right, so I get it now okay that makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>260<br>00:35:20.070 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:23.910<br>A Ashcraft: that&#8217;s actually a way to spend family time it&#8217;s a way to do some quality sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>261<br>00:35:23.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:24.690<br>A Ashcraft: Family time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>262<br>00:35:25.140 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:39.150<br>Shlomo Sher: yeah but it speaks to us so maybe how leisure itself is for by the constraints or freedoms in our lives right, I mean you know our family started playing a lot of you know a lot of board games too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>263<br>00:35:39.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:35:56.550<br>Shlomo Sher: Right right that&#8217;s what you can do with it&#8217;s much easier, especially I can&#8217;t get my wife to play video games with me my son, but it&#8217;s a very easy for us to all sit around a table and play a game and we only have two controllers for the xbox to right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>264<br>00:35:56.910 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:03.630<br>Shira Chess: Well, and also, I can I mean like I can enough stress that the screen a version that has happened to me over the last couple of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>265<br>00:36:03.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:04.470<br>Shlomo Sher: Years yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>266<br>00:36:04.800 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:14.700<br>Shira Chess: It is part of that right, like, I mean I just I don&#8217;t feel like sitting in front of screens in the evenings I, in that way right like I mean I might sometimes but not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>267<br>00:36:15.150 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:28.920<br>Shira Chess: Not in the way that I did before, and so I just found myself not really making space for that kind of play, but making space for other kinds of play, and so you know we just started nurturing all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>268<br>00:36:29.430 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:42.240<br>Shira Chess: In interesting board games and sort of figuring out, you know I mean like you know spending Saturdays playing mentions of madness which is intense with a elementary school age child i&#8217;m admittedly i&#8217;m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>269<br>00:36:42.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:42.750<br>Shira Chess: So.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>270<br>00:36:43.230 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:44.670<br>Shira Chess: I mean I just I think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>271<br>00:36:45.480 &#8211;&gt; 00:36:54.870<br>Shira Chess: i&#8217;m still growing with it and I I imagine that there are a lot of people out there that are still figuring it out, and there are a lot of people out there that are barely making ends meet right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>272<br>00:36:55.140 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:05.820<br>Shira Chess: And they sure don&#8217;t have a whole lot of time to play so I mean, I think that issues of leisure equality have become even more exacerbated in the shadow of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>273<br>00:37:06.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:08.880<br>A Ashcraft: Do you think that so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>274<br>00:37:10.770 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:26.460<br>A Ashcraft: This is, let this conversation has led me to sort of realize that even amongst myself and what you&#8217;re talking about and and and what Shlomo is talking about the way with his family, his leisure time gets sort of superimposed over other things that we also feel like we need to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>275<br>00:37:27.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:34.410<br>A Ashcraft: Like you know quality time with our family, we need to do that we need to set aside time for that, but can Can it also be playful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>276<br>00:37:35.640 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:41.940<br>A Ashcraft: shopping is something we need to do we, you know, we need to go out and gather food and add whatever we need Can it also be playful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>277<br>00:37:43.110 &#8211;&gt; 00:37:59.100<br>A Ashcraft: Do you think that that is that something that&#8217;s part of this Is this something that were the kind of leisure time that we ask that we present for for women has more of that sort of overlap of things that you would do anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>278<br>00:37:59.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:02.640<br>A Ashcraft: I think I mean, I think that that is certainly the pattern of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>279<br>00:38:03.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:11.190<br>Shira Chess: And there&#8217;s again like video games, who really emulated that it&#8217;s certainly video game advertising, one of my first journal articles that ever wrote, many years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>280<br>00:38:13.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:29.910<br>Shira Chess: I analyzed advertisements for the DS and the we when when they first came out and like magazine advertisements in like old school women&#8217;s special interest man so like Martha Stewart oprah and real simple we&#8217;re like running these ads and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>281<br>00:38:31.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:38.400<br>Shira Chess: Some of the like so Nintendo had a campaign at the time that was do something with your nothing, which was a phrase that I just like then endlessly fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>282<br>00:38:39.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:41.850<br>Shira Chess: And because it sort of implies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>283<br>00:38:42.960 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:48.630<br>Shira Chess: You can play, but only when you got nothing else going on right, you have 10 minutes in a doctor&#8217;s office do something with your nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>284<br>00:38:49.170 &#8211;&gt; 00:38:58.260<br>Shira Chess: And then, but then we did this was I thought really interesting they did a campaign called my we story and people were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>285<br>00:38:58.710 &#8211;&gt; 00:39:06.480<br>Shira Chess: They had a website set up and people would enter in there, we stories of that heather we revolutionized their life, and then they would turn the good ones into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>286<br>00:39:07.410 &#8211;&gt; 00:39:16.800<br>Shira Chess: into magazine ads and the we stories were like often they were just so centered around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>287<br>00:39:17.580 &#8211;&gt; 00:39:30.360<br>Shira Chess: sort of this sort of play is love mentality right like if you play with your family, the like you more if you play video games with your family, the like you more there&#8217;s one that I remember we&#8217;re women I don&#8217;t know that this ever made it to an ad but there was one where a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>288<br>00:39:31.830 &#8211;&gt; 00:39:41.160<br>Shira Chess: But it might have I can&#8217;t quite I don&#8217;t have a copy of the ad, so I think it was just on the website that they were presenting it, but a woman who was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>289<br>00:39:41.880 &#8211;&gt; 00:39:55.800<br>Shira Chess: pregnant and was on bed rest for being pregnant right like it was unable to go out and so like sort of the implication, and that, like the we saved her and sort of the implication was that she was playing for two right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>290<br>00:39:57.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:06.990<br>Shira Chess: So um so there&#8217;s definitely sort of this history of of that play can function is this kind of emotional Labor that it&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>291<br>00:40:07.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:20.370<br>Shira Chess: It both inside of the game role but also outside the game world right like that, if you&#8217;re playing, then that means that your kids will like you, better I think i&#8217;m one of the ads there was something like a one of the one of the, this is what magazine ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>292<br>00:40:21.030 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:26.160<br>Shira Chess: A kid the mom wrote something in her testimonial something along the lines of well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>293<br>00:40:26.880 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:35.340<br>Shira Chess: I made my me and my my kid said that i&#8217;m that I should change it and make it look prettier because i&#8217;m prettier than that i&#8217;m like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>294<br>00:40:35.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:42.240<br>Shira Chess: Okay, so what, what are we saying here right like what is the The upshot of all of this, and I think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>295<br>00:40:42.810 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:53.940<br>Shira Chess: that a lot of that wizard of marketing certainly the we system in that way, that if you played with your family on the We then it&#8217;s not really your don&#8217;t worry about it you&#8217;re not you&#8217;re not being frivolous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>296<br>00:40:54.090 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:56.670<br>Shira Chess: you&#8217;re actually just getting your family together it&#8217;s just if.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>297<br>00:40:56.730 &#8211;&gt; 00:40:59.280<br>Shira Chess: that&#8217;s all you&#8217;re doing, do you can calm down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>298<br>00:41:00.330 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:04.710<br>A Ashcraft: Is that some sort of puritanical sort of you live to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>299<br>00:41:05.130 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:06.480<br>Shira Chess: It feels like it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>300<br>00:41:06.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:06.840<br>A Ashcraft: mm hmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>301<br>00:41:07.260 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:18.030<br>Shira Chess: It certainly does feel that way um there was also another add that I that I loved it that I still I still reference in the classroom sometimes brings you guys remember brain age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>302<br>00:41:19.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:19.500<br>Shira Chess: So at the.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>303<br>00:41:20.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:30.330<br>Shira Chess: Brain each put out advertisements in magazines, at the same time, one in like wired in time and one in like real simple and Martha Stewart and it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>304<br>00:41:31.410 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:45.540<br>Shira Chess: The masculine ad was like this dude this bald dude with circuitry all over his head and it was like how to be compelling all caps had to be something like um did you know that a video game could help you compete with your coworker right like it, it was, like all futurism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>305<br>00:41:46.470 &#8211;&gt; 00:41:59.910<br>Shira Chess: GS floating in the air and everything and then the woman&#8217;s ad was like a woman holding it was it was like this purple sweet looking at it was woman holding a DS almost like it was a book and sort of like looking down on it and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>306<br>00:42:00.750 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:10.950<br>Shira Chess: It never used the phrase video game in the entire ad and it said, the Japanese secret of beauty, or something like that, and then it offered the woman a 3624 36 cerebrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>307<br>00:42:12.180 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:12.570<br>Shlomo Sher: Oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>308<br>00:42:15.330 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:15.540<br>Shira Chess: yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>309<br>00:42:15.690 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:16.800<br>Shlomo Sher: prevention campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>310<br>00:42:20.310 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:21.840<br>Shlomo Sher: What what you what year is this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>311<br>00:42:22.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:25.200<br>Shlomo Sher: 2006 2007 wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>312<br>00:42:25.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:27.720<br>A Ashcraft: Okay holy smokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>313<br>00:42:27.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:29.280<br>Shlomo Sher: wow okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>314<br>00:42:31.020 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:34.200<br>Shlomo Sher: All right, let me, let me get back here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>315<br>00:42:34.380 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:35.580<br>Shira Chess: i&#8217;m digressing a lot, I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>316<br>00:42:35.940 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:36.450<br>Shlomo Sher: I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>317<br>00:42:37.770 &#8211;&gt; 00:42:49.620<br>Shlomo Sher: bringing this back, and that was priceless okay so let&#8217;s go back to the feminism aspect of this right, what sort of guidance, do you think feminism can give us here and is a guidance for women, girls or all players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>318<br>00:42:50.850 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:09.450<br>Shira Chess: I mean, I think i&#8217;m the vice here is that feminists don&#8217;t they need to think more broadly about playing leisure, as this issue of equality it&#8217;s not just like it&#8217;s not just about digital games includes them but it&#8217;s not just about that and that so like for a long time, I would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>319<br>00:43:10.590 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:20.190<br>Shira Chess: I felt like I had this robust history of talking to women who would consider themselves feminists and they would be really dismissive when I tell them what I studied where they&#8217;d be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>320<br>00:43:20.490 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:30.840<br>Shira Chess: I don&#8217;t have time for for play or video games or some do that right, but like we all have time for play, we need to make time for play, we need to make room in our lives for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>321<br>00:43:31.440 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:40.560<br>Shira Chess: us the people that we love to help them find that play, and it is an issue of equality right like it and it&#8217;s one that we just don&#8217;t talk about that much so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>322<br>00:43:41.520 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:43.680<br>Shira Chess: And games are part of that and I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>323<br>00:43:44.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:43:56.550<br>Shira Chess: I want to see more feminist playing video games, but I also want to see more feminists embracing board games and more feminists thinking about how to build leisure into their own lives and the lives of those around them and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>324<br>00:43:57.060 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:07.470<br>Shira Chess: And I don&#8217;t see that as being a gender exclusive issue, although historically in the West, women have this like again I you know, everybody said it this complicated relationship with leisure and playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>325<br>00:44:07.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:14.520<br>Shlomo Sher: I think the second shift is just a really, really great example there that that I always kind of come back to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>326<br>00:44:15.660 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:22.080<br>Shlomo Sher: And you know that I remember you know, particularly seeing and my parents generation, especially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>327<br>00:44:23.610 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:32.820<br>Shlomo Sher: You know where you know both come home from work, you know at that point, the man can sit and enjoy whatever leisure activity is has while the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>328<br>00:44:33.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:45.450<br>Shlomo Sher: Will you know prepare dinner, etc, etc right and so so that that part really kind of you know you know kind of stuck with me as emblematic of you know, the.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>329<br>00:44:46.710 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:51.240<br>Shlomo Sher: I don&#8217;t know the the leisure gap i&#8217;m assuming you have kind of a you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>330<br>00:44:52.830 &#8211;&gt; 00:44:56.340<br>Shlomo Sher: markers like like that is there anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>331<br>00:44:57.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:11.940<br>Shlomo Sher: You know the industry or game makers can can do is this just a kind of a way that we need to think socially about games or personally about the role of fun in our lives, or is this something that game designers themselves could be thinking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>332<br>00:45:12.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:24.120<br>Shira Chess: I mean, I think we need more women playing games, so that we get more women interested in making games in order to make games better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>333<br>00:45:24.180 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:28.800<br>Shira Chess: Right like it is it&#8217;s it&#8217;s the cycle of it right, because of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>334<br>00:45:29.100 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:36.330<br>Shira Chess: You know I mean it&#8217;s it&#8217;s a passion job it&#8217;s a passion industry nobody&#8217;s going to go into the video game industry if they don&#8217;t actually already love video games and so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>335<br>00:45:36.540 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:46.320<br>Shira Chess: there&#8217;s just that that habit of everybody continually making the same things and not the same things, but you know, like you know the same kinds of things, and that it works innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>336<br>00:45:48.720 &#8211;&gt; 00:45:54.930<br>Shira Chess: And so I mean I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any one thing that the industry can do so much as.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>337<br>00:45:56.670 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:11.460<br>Shira Chess: I, I think that it needs to be on on both sides of it right and that was sort of my thought with the idea of gaming circles, when I I talked about them was that, like if more of us played, then we become a market, and if we become a market, I mean like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>338<br>00:46:12.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:23.790<br>Shira Chess: la and I definitely have gotten some critiques in the book about the fact that I did not, you know go anti capitalist in my sentiment, but like we, you know as a market there is some power, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>339<br>00:46:27.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:46.800<br>A Ashcraft: And that&#8217;s sort of interesting too, because one of the typical sort of aspects that we assigned to to femininity, is to do things for other people, and so, even when women get in the industry, I think it&#8217;s easier for them to make games for somebody that&#8217;s not themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>340<br>00:46:47.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:49.050<br>Shira Chess: Interesting you know I hadn&#8217;t thought about that, but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>341<br>00:46:49.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:50.040<br>Shira Chess: that&#8217;s an interesting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>342<br>00:46:50.310 &#8211;&gt; 00:46:56.310<br>A Ashcraft: Because certainly like we all get in the industry, and we, and we all have ideas for games, but almost none of us actually get to make the games that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>343<br>00:46:56.430 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:04.860<br>A Ashcraft: That we want to do we&#8217;re always making games for somebody else in this and and it&#8217;s good to be able to like do that right we&#8217;re we&#8217;re good to be able to it&#8217;s a good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>344<br>00:47:05.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:17.790<br>A Ashcraft: Design quality, good quality for a designer to be able to to make a game that&#8217;s fun for a demographic that&#8217;s not themselves here but frequently that&#8217;s design that&#8217;s that&#8217;s dictated by market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>345<br>00:47:18.900 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:25.800<br>A Ashcraft: Right, which means that it&#8217;s going to be somebody who looks more like me than it is that it looks more like yo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>346<br>00:47:27.270 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:28.110<br>Shira Chess: I mean yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>347<br>00:47:28.650 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:34.230<br>A Ashcraft: I mean it shouldn&#8217;t be right, because, as you say 50% of the game playing market is female but.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>348<br>00:47:34.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:38.850<br>Shira Chess: there&#8217;s also a lot of sort of demeaning of what you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>349<br>00:47:40.380 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:46.530<br>Shira Chess: free to play games get such a bad rap right, but the reality of free to play games is that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>350<br>00:47:47.250 &#8211;&gt; 00:47:57.210<br>Shira Chess: They are really good space, if you are not yet ready to be committed to spending money and I knew that there are all kinds of predatory practices and i&#8217;m not diminishing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>351<br>00:47:57.510 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:04.170<br>Shira Chess: they&#8217;re not all predatory right or a lot of free to play games out there, that are not predatory and that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>352<br>00:48:05.160 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:07.680<br>Shira Chess: It allows people to try before you buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>353<br>00:48:07.920 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:23.160<br>Shira Chess: It yeah and that&#8217;s that is a practice that helps because the reality is is that if I go to someone if I talked to someone, and I say hey you need to play more games they&#8217;re not going to run out and spend you know $300 on a system and buy a bunch of $60 games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>354<br>00:48:23.460 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:33.390<br>Shira Chess: There you know that that&#8217;s absurd know they they&#8217;re going to start with, you know you start where you live right everybody has a phone not everybody, but, but a lot of people have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>355<br>00:48:33.420 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:35.280<br>Shira Chess: You know smartphone that they can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>356<br>00:48:36.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:49.080<br>Shira Chess: We all have small gaming systems in our lives now and that&#8217;s an amazing thing that we can do to just start slowly integrating games in and and I think that there are some low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>357<br>00:48:50.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:48:59.550<br>Shira Chess: level ways that we can just start getting more people to play games and so what I mean one of the things that I really tried to do when the book was coming out before the book came out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>358<br>00:49:00.300 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:11.760<br>Shira Chess: I guess lessons and some pandemic but i&#8217;m was become a you know sort of an evangelist of it right like I having conversations with people and when they would say I don&#8217;t like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>359<br>00:49:12.360 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:22.620<br>Shira Chess: I don&#8217;t play video games like why what didn&#8217;t you like, and then helping them sort of like it, you know i&#8217;m helping they be becoming there someone with a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>360<br>00:49:23.250 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:24.210<br>A Ashcraft: game like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>361<br>00:49:24.540 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:32.130<br>Shira Chess: You know figuring out what it is that maybe they&#8217;d like and giving them recommendations, because you know I do think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>362<br>00:49:33.360 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:43.950<br>Shira Chess: There are you know I have found that one of the first things to ask when and I have definitely converted some people who thought they hated video games into loving video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>363<br>00:49:44.400 &#8211;&gt; 00:49:48.510<br>Shira Chess: And you know so one of the first questions that you ask is always this question of like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>364<br>00:49:49.260 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:06.900<br>Shira Chess: To do you prefer stories or puzzles right and if somebody says story than I usually send them to Florence because it&#8217;s like such an easy thing to start with, it feels like a short story, and you have just like that light level of interactivity it&#8217;s not it it&#8217;s very.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>365<br>00:50:08.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:23.340<br>Shira Chess: It there&#8217;s no challenge to it, but it still is a meaningful enough story that you feel complicit in it and you feel like there, there are some good moments in it, and if they say puzzle I usually say monument Valley, because you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>366<br>00:50:23.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:24.210<br>Shlomo Sher: Such a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>367<br>00:50:25.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:25.800<br>A Ashcraft: beautiful game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>368<br>00:50:27.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:28.260<br>Shira Chess: So i&#8217;m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>369<br>00:50:28.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:30.210<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;m actually playing it right now with my son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>370<br>00:50:30.450 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:31.470<br>Shlomo Sher: Oh it&#8217;s good yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>371<br>00:50:31.590 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:33.000<br>Shlomo Sher: it&#8217;s great second one yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>372<br>00:50:33.750 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:37.140<br>Shira Chess: yeah it&#8217;s such a gorgeous game and it&#8217;s just so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>373<br>00:50:38.370 &#8211;&gt; 00:50:56.700<br>Shira Chess: It really and that was sort of a moment that happened around um you know around 2017 after Ray player to came out I there was a shift right like so previously a lot of people who previously who would never have like video games or said would say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>374<br>00:50:58.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:00.840<br>Shira Chess: Suddenly, I would tell them what I study and they were like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>375<br>00:51:01.230 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:06.780<br>Shira Chess: Oh cool and they would start asking me questions or they would they you know they&#8217;ve asked me for recommendations or like at one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>376<br>00:51:07.080 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:14.730<br>Shira Chess: I was at a birthday party and I was like chatting with a mom random mom and she started telling me about her three generations of her family play clash of clans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>377<br>00:51:15.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:31.530<br>Shira Chess: And you know, so I started hearing more of these stories and then there was like this moment, where I started recommending games more and more, and I would have women come back to me and say I didn&#8217;t know the games like that existed and I realized that there&#8217;s so much insider baseball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>378<br>00:51:31.560 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:33.030<br>A Ashcraft: Right, like, I mean it&#8217;s just like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>379<br>00:51:33.480 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:39.840<br>Shira Chess: We know that there are like these artful literary cool weird games right that it&#8217;s not just.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>380<br>00:51:40.620 &#8211;&gt; 00:51:49.830<br>Shira Chess: Grand theft auto and super Mario but like there are people out there that have no idea and how do we get the word out how do we get them to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>381<br>00:51:50.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:02.190<br>Shira Chess: Have these experiences and and can these experiences change their lives or make their lives, a little bit better either for short period or a longer period and that&#8217;s that that&#8217;s sort of where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>382<br>00:52:03.570 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:05.040<br>Shira Chess: That That was where a lot of that came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>383<br>00:52:05.940 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:11.940<br>Shlomo Sher: um I want to, I want to ask about the gaming circles right, first of all, can you explain, for our audience, but again, you circle is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>384<br>00:52:12.630 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:21.210<br>Shira Chess: So, and again this was Jamie circles, where this pre pandemic conceit right um and so, while the.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>385<br>00:52:22.230 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:29.700<br>Shira Chess: The gaming circles that I wrote about in the book are still possible, that things are more complicated now, obviously, but basically again like you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>386<br>00:52:30.330 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:39.450<br>Shira Chess: I had all these women that are not always but I had these experiences, where people are saying to me I didn&#8217;t know that, like the games like that existed and um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>387<br>00:52:40.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:52:54.420<br>Shira Chess: And I really that statement really kind of shocked me because I began to realize that there are a lot of like those artful amazing games out there that non gamers don&#8217;t know about and so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>388<br>00:52:55.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:05.820<br>Shira Chess: In that, like those people don&#8217;t know where to start they have some sense of their games out there, but like you look online for a list of games and you end up with a lot of nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>389<br>00:53:06.540 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:23.910<br>Shira Chess: And so I found myself curating lists of games for friends and I started my gaming circle sort of as a way to advocate for them to spread the practice outwards on it was basically like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>390<br>00:53:24.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:25.710<br>Shira Chess: The you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>391<br>00:53:26.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:39.450<br>Shira Chess: It functions, like a book club everyone picks a game, and once a month that you know you need up at you, I guess, now virtually would be you know, to talk about the game and think about it in literary ways and I made a compendium website of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>392<br>00:53:39.810 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:50.040<br>Shira Chess: Some games and some sort of book club style questions for discussion and the idea was that um you know if feminists are going to get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>393<br>00:53:51.930 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:54.930<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;m sorry sorry shira and is that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>394<br>00:53:54.960 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:56.220<br>Shlomo Sher: Is that coming from your House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>395<br>00:53:56.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:53:59.940<br>A Ashcraft: it&#8217;s coming from somewhere near my house, let me see if I can close my windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>396<br>00:53:59.940 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:01.710<br>A Ashcraft: yeah so sorry about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>397<br>00:54:01.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:02.760<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;m sorry sure I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>398<br>00:54:02.760 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:03.150<br>Shira Chess: know why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>399<br>00:54:03.390 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:16.950<br>Shlomo Sher: I don&#8217;t know if I could take that out, I think I gotta ask that question again it&#8217;s like I feel like you&#8217;re talking and this costs it knows is happening around you and I just want to make sure people here which.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>400<br>00:54:16.980 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:17.970<br>Shira Chess: which you guys so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>401<br>00:54:18.690 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:24.630<br>Shira Chess: I didn&#8217;t know where I were to start again now, I I again i&#8217;m like i&#8217;m hitting the wall of my loopy so you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>402<br>00:54:24.660 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:26.280<br>Shlomo Sher: that&#8217;s okay so up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>403<br>00:54:27.660 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:30.600<br>Shlomo Sher: Is it is it done it is it just the the gardener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>404<br>00:54:32.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:32.640<br>Shlomo Sher: Andy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>405<br>00:54:33.960 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:36.000<br>Shlomo Sher: Andy we have we lost you okay yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>406<br>00:54:36.150 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:38.220<br>A Ashcraft: i&#8217;m here now I just muted myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>407<br>00:54:40.380 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:43.710<br>A Ashcraft: that&#8217;s I miss hermetically sealed in this room, as I can be now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>408<br>00:54:43.740 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:44.670<br>Shlomo Sher: As you can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>409<br>00:54:45.180 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:46.410<br>A Ashcraft: A pest that is that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>410<br>00:54:47.310 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:47.730<br>it&#8217;s better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>411<br>00:54:49.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:50.250<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay, maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>412<br>00:54:50.880 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:51.690<br>A Ashcraft: it&#8217;s only somebody&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>413<br>00:54:51.720 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:55.350<br>A Ashcraft: got a leaf blower and I think it may even be across the wash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>414<br>00:54:56.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:54:57.810<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay wow that far okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>415<br>00:54:58.500 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:04.500<br>A Ashcraft: yeah I mean right Los Angeles made them illegal some number of years ago and nobody&#8217;s ever enforced it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>416<br>00:55:05.820 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:07.800<br>Shlomo Sher: I had no idea, there were legal okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>417<br>00:55:07.890 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:10.080<br>Shlomo Sher: yeah we have a mobile tenant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>418<br>00:55:10.260 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:11.430<br>A Ashcraft: yeah the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>419<br>00:55:11.520 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:25.380<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay, so sure, let me, it has been softer, by the way, so thanks Andy so sure, let me go back in so she would tell me about gaming circles right what was a what&#8217;s the idea of gaming circles, how do you think getting these circles can help us here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>420<br>00:55:26.220 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:34.830<br>Shira Chess: um, you know as, as I said, like I previously like there was that moment where where people increasingly were saying to me, you know I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>421<br>00:55:36.420 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:44.280<br>Shira Chess: I didn&#8217;t know that games like that existed, and it really like it shook me when I heard that because I think that we, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>422<br>00:55:44.880 &#8211;&gt; 00:55:54.840<br>Shira Chess: If if feminists are going to get more invested in play, and to play more they need to get some buy in to the market and to be able to articulate what they do and don&#8217;t like and so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>423<br>00:55:55.200 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:01.530<br>Shira Chess: I mean the the gaming circles function like a book club everyone picks a game, and once a month, a group meets up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>424<br>00:56:02.430 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:12.180<br>Shira Chess: Virtually now I suppose that would be the way to do it to talk about games and to think about them in more literary ways and so and I made a compendium website to go with it, so that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>425<br>00:56:12.600 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:19.620<br>Shira Chess: And lists different games and different sort of play styles and games and had some questions for like bookstore club style questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>426<br>00:56:20.250 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:33.150<br>Shlomo Sher: So so Is this something that i&#8217;m very naive here, by the way, because before before you have never heard of the gaming circle i&#8217;m assuming designers do stuff like this and the you know where you know or is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>427<br>00:56:33.660 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:36.330<br>A Ashcraft: It kind of happens for us naturally just by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>428<br>00:56:36.690 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:37.620<br>A Ashcraft: By proximity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>429<br>00:56:38.730 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:41.970<br>A Ashcraft: It sounds what she&#8217;s describing is something a lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>430<br>00:56:42.300 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:43.020<br>Shlomo Sher: Like a book club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>431<br>00:56:43.050 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:43.980<br>Shlomo Sher: design right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>432<br>00:56:44.340 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:46.050<br>A Ashcraft: Right, then what happens with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>433<br>00:56:47.070 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:53.010<br>Shira Chess: Right, a large part of the problem is a question of vocabulary right and also like safe spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>434<br>00:56:53.280 &#8211;&gt; 00:56:54.270<br>Shira Chess: Because if.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>435<br>00:56:54.780 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:08.550<br>Shira Chess: Somebody were going to go to their kid and say I don&#8217;t know anything about video games, you know, I guess, can you show me then the first of all they&#8217;re going to get a curated by their kid which could go any number of directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>436<br>00:57:08.730 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:10.170<br>Shira Chess: And second of all like the you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>437<br>00:57:10.350 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:20.490<br>Shira Chess: there&#8217;s sort of that insecurity of like not and you don&#8217;t want to look dumb you don&#8217;t want to try something new and then feel like stupid about it, and nobody wants that and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>438<br>00:57:22.380 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:25.260<br>Shira Chess: So I i&#8217;m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>439<br>00:57:26.550 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:28.950<br>Shira Chess: The This creates a safe space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>440<br>00:57:29.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:39.390<br>Shira Chess: Right and and helps people build a vocabulary, because, as you build vocabulary you&#8217;re able to articulate what it is that you like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>441<br>00:57:40.560 &#8211;&gt; 00:57:58.140<br>Shlomo Sher: Interesting So what is the goal here right, because if if we&#8217;re starting let&#8217;s hit the point where women are almost half of players is the idea to expand the range of games that are kinds of games that they&#8217;re familiar with is that is that the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>442<br>00:57:58.380 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:02.310<br>Shira Chess: yeah I mean like it, you know, I would like to see a world where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>443<br>00:58:03.120 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:15.810<br>Shira Chess: There were more women out there and more players out there, that that are like sort of non traditional gamers out there, not necessarily just women but non traditional gamers that knew about the alert are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>444<br>00:58:16.290 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:26.310<br>Shira Chess: The artful and literary games that know about the indie games right like I mean and that&#8217;s, not to say that, like candy crush doesn&#8217;t have its value, but that candy crush isn&#8217;t the extent of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>445<br>00:58:26.580 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:38.190<br>Shira Chess: That you can that there is as much depth as you want to find and that you can have satisfying experiences playing games, if you have not previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>446<br>00:58:39.720 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:42.120<br>Shlomo Sher: You know, it is really interesting to me because.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>447<br>00:58:43.200 &#8211;&gt; 00:58:54.090<br>Shlomo Sher: i&#8217;ve i&#8217;ve i&#8217;ve been fascinated by the fact that I that most of my female friends are part of book clubs and never my male friends are ever part of book clubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>448<br>00:58:54.540 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:04.860<br>Shlomo Sher: And it&#8217;s one of those things that a my my sadness, for you know what seems to be you know men and boys reading a lot less these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>449<br>00:59:05.790 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:18.720<br>Shlomo Sher: but also a that I feel like so many men miss out on the book club experience and i&#8217;m wondering if I really liked the idea of doing something like that, with video games right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>450<br>00:59:18.900 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:19.830<br>Shira Chess: I you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>451<br>00:59:21.000 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:32.310<br>Shira Chess: It didn&#8217;t you know it&#8217;s one of those things where you know I started this thing and it just it maybe started at the wrong moment right like I mean the reality is is that having a book come out in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>452<br>00:59:33.330 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:39.720<br>Shira Chess: is a tricky you know space um but um, but I think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>453<br>00:59:41.010 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:53.220<br>Shira Chess: I think that even even without doing it as a circle in a really official way there are ways to sort of like find people who are game curious and pull them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>454<br>00:59:53.940 &#8211;&gt; 00:59:59.100<br>Shira Chess: And and try to you know, help them figure out what might.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>455<br>01:00:00.000 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:06.030<br>Shira Chess: improve their lives right it&#8217;s all just about improving our lives, making making our experience of living better and and.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>456<br>01:00:06.270 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:11.160<br>Shira Chess: I think that people that are already embedded in the industry knew that video games have the power to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>457<br>01:00:11.430 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:21.870<br>Shira Chess: it&#8217;s you know, there are just a lot of people that haven&#8217;t quite gotten there yet or interested, but just don&#8217;t know how to get there, and so that was sort of that was the premise that was where I was coming from on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>458<br>01:00:22.830 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:29.280<br>A Ashcraft: But that&#8217;s sort of interesting to write because that makes playing games another form of sort of self help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>459<br>01:00:30.960 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:32.310<br>A Ashcraft: Which is again not leisure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>460<br>01:00:33.150 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:37.590<br>Shlomo Sher: Right well, is it, I mean you know I mean, in a sense, you&#8217;re.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>461<br>01:00:37.590 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:41.700<br>A Ashcraft: Right repaint my house to route because I want my my my life to be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>462<br>01:00:41.970 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:47.760<br>A Ashcraft: You know I I I spend time learning a new skill, because I want my life to be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>463<br>01:00:49.530 &#8211;&gt; 01:00:57.960<br>Shira Chess: I you know in increasingly i&#8217;m pushing away from having a one size fits all definition of leisure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>464<br>01:00:57.960 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:13.350<br>Shira Chess: Because the reality is is that, like you know our experiences are so unique right like um, but I think that you know the the point of any activity, they you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>465<br>01:01:14.100 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:26.730<br>Shira Chess: player leisure activity to some extent, is to improve to make your life better I don&#8217;t know about you know self improvement in the sense of self help but make your life better right like he most people don&#8217;t do leisure activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>466<br>01:01:28.710 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:30.000<br>Shira Chess: Not planning on doing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>467<br>01:01:30.510 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:43.920<br>Shlomo Sher: yeah it&#8217;s weird and because, on the on the one hand, I definitely see the idea of you want fun to be simply for fun sake, but you know i&#8217;m always going to ask, but what&#8217;s the value of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>468<br>01:01:44.580 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:47.400<br>Shlomo Sher: And if you get to the point where that your life is just better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>469<br>01:01:47.760 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:49.080<br>Shlomo Sher: Right, we have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>470<br>01:01:49.410 &#8211;&gt; 01:01:58.920<br>Shlomo Sher: Right, then I don&#8217;t know if it makes a difference if you know fun is instrumental or you know just you know intrinsically good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>471<br>01:01:59.190 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:05.670<br>A Ashcraft: yeah it&#8217;s just it&#8217;s just such a strange selling point, though right like you go have fun because it&#8217;ll make your life better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>472<br>01:02:06.420 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:09.000<br>Shlomo Sher: sounds like the best selling point ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>473<br>01:02:10.200 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:15.210<br>Shlomo Sher: You know you&#8217;re telling me that my life, be better if I just go have fun it&#8217;s a win, win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>474<br>01:02:17.730 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:18.780<br>Shlomo Sher: Andy quick check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>475<br>01:02:19.500 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:20.250<br>Shlomo Sher: On time we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>476<br>01:02:20.520 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:21.930<br>A Ashcraft: were right about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>477<br>01:02:21.990 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:30.750<br>A Ashcraft: An hour and three minutes from when we started, so I think this is a good time to like get one final question in and and and wrap it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>478<br>01:02:30.870 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:34.770<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay, let me make it a very generic questions so you can take it anywhere you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>479<br>01:02:36.270 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:42.090<br>Shlomo Sher: So so she read in terms of feminine feminism and play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>480<br>01:02:43.560 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:45.960<br>Shlomo Sher: Given giving last words First, what do you think what you go from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>481<br>01:02:49.260 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:49.770<br>A Ashcraft: To Brian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>482<br>01:02:50.010 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:50.400<br>Shira Chess: that&#8217;s a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>483<br>01:02:52.980 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:53.490<br>Shira Chess: broad range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>484<br>01:02:56.640 &#8211;&gt; 01:02:57.180<br>Shira Chess: Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>485<br>01:02:57.450 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:02.220<br>Shlomo Sher: um let&#8217;s see did we talk about what games could do from for feminism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>486<br>01:03:02.940 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:03.750<br>Shira Chess: I don&#8217;t think we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>487<br>01:03:04.020 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:05.820<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay, so so let&#8217;s so let&#8217;s finish with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>488<br>01:03:05.820 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:06.390<br>Shlomo Sher: That right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>489<br>01:03:06.480 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:18.510<br>Shlomo Sher: Okay okay sure so so we talked about, you know how feminism could help us really think about games and the importance of leisure What would it be two games have to offer for feminism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>490<br>01:03:20.490 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:40.740<br>Shira Chess: So in our political fights um, we need to learn how to game things out better, we need to glitch out vulnerabilities and we need to MOD the game and make new games and tease out problems and find ways to do things differently, and no one knows how to glitch at a game better than a gamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>491<br>01:03:42.660 &#8211;&gt; 01:03:53.250<br>Shira Chess: By training feminists to be gamers were essentially training them to be more effective, about thinking about systems of oppression and structures that can be beaten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>492<br>01:03:54.600 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:07.290<br>Shira Chess: I like to think of it that video games are like a gigantic training machines so agency, of course, is a term used by activists and scholars to articulate like that process of taking action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>493<br>01:04:08.310 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:15.480<br>Shira Chess: Specifically against systems of power, and you know, but also agency is a term that we talked about in video game design right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>494<br>01:04:16.170 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:18.360<br>Shira Chess: it&#8217;s our will to act to become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>495<br>01:04:18.360 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:33.750<br>Shira Chess: Part of the system, while pushing against it, without that agency, the player loses the game so in the real world, we need to feel our agency to affect change and thinking about games can help us get there um.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>496<br>01:04:36.000 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:37.440<br>A Ashcraft: yeah I agree with that entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>497<br>01:04:38.190 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:48.840<br>Shlomo Sher: Alright sounds great alright Thank you sure sure Dr Xu or chess from university of Georgia check out her books I play like a feminist and ready player to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>498<br>01:04:49.950 &#8211;&gt; 01:04:54.660<br>Shlomo Sher: shira Thank you very much for coming on our show the podcast play nice everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Release Date: February 15, 2022]&nbsp;&nbsp;Do men and women see the role of fun or leisure in their life differently? &nbsp;How does this translate to their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,134,113,135,106],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-podcast","tag-ethics","tag-feminist","tag-girl-gamer","tag-leisure","tag-video-games"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/36-1-w-logo.png?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethicsandvideogames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}