Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms Flex and Fromes.
Speaker 2: This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
Speaker 1: It's Flex and Frooms on Kada. I have a confession
Speaker 1: to make, one that I'm not sure that people want
Speaker 1: to hear, but I think it's important that I present
Speaker 1: a very clear image of who I am as a person.
Speaker 1: I flex mummy, government name, am a gamer, and you
Speaker 1: know what, I feel like, I really didn't want to
Speaker 1: claim the title because I just don't like the connotation
Speaker 1: of being a gamer.
Speaker 2: It's giving mountain doo, sloth, mummies, basement luton, doritos.
Speaker 1: Dorito dust, cheesy fingers, directionless, Yes, all of the above,
Speaker 1: which is not the case at all. Like with most
Speaker 1: things that require skill and you haven't done them, you
Speaker 1: think that it's easy, like going to the gym. I
Speaker 1: was like, the gym is very simple. No, it's all
Speaker 1: maths and brain work and lifting. It's very difficult. However,
Speaker 1: last year you might recall that I spent I don't know,
Speaker 1: six weeks sourcing a PS five. It was when I
Speaker 1: say sourcing, it was that it was kind of like
Speaker 1: arc curation. I was like, Okay, we gotta go here,
Speaker 1: we have timers on I was intended with my best friend.
Speaker 1: We both needed one, like, oh, this one's a physical concept,
Speaker 1: we need a digital one. The whole thing finally got
Speaker 1: the PS five, and much to my surprise, I could
Speaker 1: not play it because there was nothing for me to play.
Speaker 1: And by nothing I meant that of all the games
Speaker 1: in the catalog, maybe there's like a thousand every single No,
Speaker 1: not every single game. I'm sorry, I'm a liar. Too.
Speaker 1: Many of the games extreme violence, extreme violence, and gore shooting, shooting, shooting, murder, murder, killing,
Speaker 1: killing just not chill thing. I don't want to do
Speaker 1: that in my spare time. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: high strung and anxious, and so initially I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me just let me just suppress my bodily needs
Speaker 1: and just play these games. And what happened. I got anxious.
Speaker 1: Mmmmm corso, I got anxious, couldn't sleep well, found myself
Speaker 1: being really jumpy. Didn't take it seriously. So about a
Speaker 1: year has gone by, I have managed to find more
Speaker 1: games to play that do contain violence. It has happened,
Speaker 1: but in protests, I made a little Instagram post, as
Speaker 1: one does, don't go straight to the source, don't go
Speaker 1: to mister peers five or miss them. So I said,
Speaker 1: petition for the gaming overlords to make some non violent
Speaker 1: adventure games that are chill and involve activities, quests, character evolution,
Speaker 1: realistic avatars, and pretty outfits. Oh that feels so simple
Speaker 1: what I was really saying. If I want to be chill, chill,
Speaker 1: she makes some games for adult chicks. It's not every
Speaker 1: day toddlers who want to play Mario car It's not
Speaker 1: everyday cod Killing three. Sometimes adult women want to play
Speaker 1: games that involve.
Speaker 2: Not baking and.
Speaker 1: Not much every day baking and fish.
Speaker 2: You know what I would love? What I would love
Speaker 2: a sex in the city game. This is this is
Speaker 2: why you pick her out, like you go to Manalo blanks,
Speaker 2: Like are you.
Speaker 1: For your game? Come on? This is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And so I post the question why aren't there more
Speaker 1: video games catered to women? I'm saying what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: And we've got an expert on the line. Yes we do.
Speaker 1: We've got doctor Chess in the building. Government name literally,
Speaker 1: not an alias. Doctor Chess is an Associate professor of
Speaker 1: Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia. Her
Speaker 1: emphasis is on gender and gaming. She knows what she's
Speaker 1: talking about. She's also an author. She got a book
Speaker 1: called Play Like a Feminist. Sounds a bit of me.
Speaker 1: It's all about why video games need feminism and why
Speaker 1: all of us should make space and we'll play in
Speaker 1: our lives. Get doctor Chess on the line, please produce
Speaker 1: a Brookie. Hi Ah, it's flex and rooms. Thanks for
Speaker 1: picking up. How are you fantastic? But we want to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of an issue in the gaming industry.
Speaker 1: As an avid gamer myself, I like to get involved,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately there's too much violence and I can't seem
Speaker 1: to find a game that I will enjoy that's not
Speaker 1: just about baking and cooking or isn't extremely violent. So
Speaker 1: ofs the jump it. Why do you think there seems
Speaker 1: to be more video games targeted towards men than women,
Speaker 1: and why are so many of them violent?
Speaker 3: I don't actually think that there are more video games
Speaker 3: targeted to men that are violent. I think those are
Speaker 3: the ones that get more attention. There are absolutely a
Speaker 3: lot of games out there that aren't violent or about cooking,
Speaker 3: and I can list off a bunch for you and
Speaker 3: for your listeners. For sure. First of all, about half
Speaker 3: of all people playing video games identify as women, but
Speaker 3: only a smaller fraction of the video game industry is actually,
Speaker 3: you know, I actually identifies as women. So there's sort
Speaker 3: of this disconnect where a lot of time it's primarily
Speaker 3: men making games for women, which builds a lot of
Speaker 3: the sum in about what women might want. But also
Speaker 3: at the same time, there are there's a lot of
Speaker 3: innovation in games in the last few decades and certainly
Speaker 3: in the last decade. So for example, at Purna Games
Speaker 3: makes a lot of artful, kind of literary type games
Speaker 3: that are not at all shooty and that are not
Speaker 3: at all violent, and that aren't really gender exclusive either.
Speaker 3: They're not like four Women, They're not sort of these
Speaker 3: patronizing games that are meant for women. They're games that
Speaker 3: are just meant for humans that want to play interesting games.
Speaker 2: Can you give me an example of one of those
Speaker 2: games that is gender neutral and what happens in it?
Speaker 3: So, Janet County is a gleadful game, and it's a
Speaker 3: game where you play as a hole in the ground
Speaker 3: and you're the thing that you are doing is sucking
Speaker 3: up everything around you and sort of having it all
Speaker 3: fall into the hole. And there's a storyline that goes
Speaker 3: with it. I'm not going to spoil the storyline, but
Speaker 3: it makes sense within the context of the story. And
Speaker 3: it's a really like fun and engaging game. You can
Speaker 3: play it on mobile devices and you can play it
Speaker 3: on a lot of consoles as well. It has cute,
Speaker 3: funny characters, cute fun dialogue, and it's in no way
Speaker 3: meant for men or women. It's just meant for humans.
Speaker 2: It's meant for holes.
Speaker 3: Shut up playing holes, which is, by the way, throughout
Speaker 3: our whole point. From my understanding of it, you are
Speaker 3: a whole.
Speaker 1: This is incredible. I'm finding that the current games I'm
Speaker 1: playing Cyberpunk and Horizon Forbidden West, which are like GTA
Speaker 1: but with like a few more robots, Grand Theft Order,
Speaker 1: and then I'm playing things like The SIMS, which I've
Speaker 1: played since I was a young a young Gremlin, and
Speaker 1: I really really do enjoy those games. But it feels
Speaker 1: like it's the only one. And for a concept that
Speaker 1: is so popular, why aren't we seeing more similar simulation
Speaker 1: games like Frem's made a good point, She'd love to
Speaker 1: see a simulation Sex and the City game. You wake
Speaker 1: up put on an outfit, buy some Minolo's. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta pick which boy you want to be with
Speaker 1: that'll direct with your friends. Soul's mystery, you know what?
Speaker 1: Where was that? And is the problem always going back
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 3: Future and describes Kim Kardashi in Hollywood. Oh, there are
Speaker 3: definitely games like the SIMS, but I think also the
Speaker 3: SIMS sort of has the market on that. I will
Speaker 3: say that Sturdy Valley has taken a lot of sort
Speaker 3: of that kind of Simms love. So Stardy Valley is
Speaker 3: a game where it is agrarian. You are you're farming
Speaker 3: for a lot of the game, but you're doing a
Speaker 3: lot of other things that it has sort of like
Speaker 3: all of these different storylines of different characters in the game.
Speaker 3: You can marry different characters and different outcomes will happen
Speaker 3: depending on which characters you marry. But there are all
Speaker 3: kinds of games that they're The problem is is that
Speaker 3: in general, when we talk about video games, people automatically
Speaker 3: jump to violent games. And so when people say, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't play video games, they're too violent. My first
Speaker 3: question is always with games, which games are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Can you tell us you've written a book called play
Speaker 2: Like a Feminist that focuses on why video games need feminism.
Speaker 2: I think you touched on that before. How you say
Speaker 2: that a lot of the people that make the games
Speaker 2: are men.
Speaker 1: What is the book about?
Speaker 3: So Play Like a Feminist was It was a follow
Speaker 3: up to my previous book, which was Ready Player Too.
Speaker 3: And part of why I wrote Play Like a Feminist
Speaker 3: was that after I wrote Ready Player Too, a lot
Speaker 3: of I went in that I knew that I encountered
Speaker 3: out in the wild, or that that you know, we're
Speaker 3: friends or friends of friends. I would recommend games to
Speaker 3: them and they would come back to me and they
Speaker 3: would say things like I didn't know the games like
Speaker 3: that existed, And I was like, huh, well, that's interesting
Speaker 3: because a lot of these games that I've listened off
Speaker 3: to you kind of have like this insider baseball to them, right, Like,
Speaker 3: people in the industry know that there are these games
Speaker 3: out there, but there isn't sort of this common understanding
Speaker 3: that games are more than just like the violent games
Speaker 3: that are out there, that there are all of these artful,
Speaker 3: literary games that people can can really get amazing experiences
Speaker 3: out of. And so I wrote the book in largely
Speaker 3: to sort of broach the topic because I thought that
Speaker 3: it was important that if we want to change the
Speaker 3: video game industry, we need to be buying in. We
Speaker 3: need to be playing more games. Nobody's going to make
Speaker 3: games for us if we're not playing already. So the
Speaker 3: only way to buy in is to be playing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one final little question, did you go into your
Speaker 2: career because your last name is Chess? Like?
Speaker 3: Was that that was an odd coincidence?
Speaker 2: Okay, because I'm thinking of changing my last name to
Speaker 2: rich and place is going to be doctor cash. But
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your time. So I guess
Speaker 2: our listeners can find play like a feminist.
Speaker 1: And what was your first book.
Speaker 2: Called Ready Player Too, Amazed, Ready Player Too?
Speaker 3: Or sometimes someone by Ernest Klent.
Speaker 2: Okay, doctor Chess, thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much to take care. You've been listening
Speaker 3: to the Flex and Firms Daily podcast.
Speaker 2: For more, Tune Indicator on DAB or stream it on iHeartRadio.