The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student is a new blog hosted on Iris that I’ve started that revolves around my foray into the study of game planning and design.

From the About page:

This blog is a chronicle of the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of Andrea Rubenstein relating to her studies at HAL, a technical school in Japan. The articles here range from academic critiques to personal entries, including everything from her thoughts on the educational process to analyzing the aspects of the gaming industry that she is exposed to.

It won’t really kick into gear until April, which is when school starts, but in the meantime I’m in the process of getting up articles about my experiences up to now.

The June 2007 issue is out! The theme is “The Making of a Gamer”, and we have some great stories in our new feature “gamer stories” relating to that.

We’re currently looking for submissions for our May issue. Here’s the call for submissions:

Submission deadline: June 20, 2007
Theme: Inclusive Game Design

We often talk about what developers can do to attract women and other groups outside of the target audience to games, or discuss how bad game design can foster an environment hostile to that goal, but the nuances behind inclusive game design (beyond “give me women heroes who aren’t defined primarily by their sexuality”) don’t get as much airtime as perhaps they should.

What are the fundamentals of inclusive game design? How far have we come, or not come, since the old days of gaming? Should we give companies allowances in terms of these fundamentals, based on potential increased costs and other factors that come with inclusive design? Where do lesser talked-about issues, such as accessibility for people with disabilities, fit in? What about the more complex issues associated with inclusive design, such as using an idealized society versus a flawed one, or giving everyone equal choices versus using a certain amount of difference to create a dialogue about equality? If you have something to say about how, when, and why to strive for inclusive game design, then please consider submitting your piece for this issue.

There’s a new academic paper up, as presented at Wiscon 31: Idealizing Fantasy Bodies.

Abstract:

Through fantasy anything, no matter how far-fetched, can become real. And yet, despite the elf ears or red skin, fantasy characters in video games still manage more often than not to fit into the idealized body types for humans. This paper explores the rationale behind making fantasy creatures conform to narrow standards of beauty/strength in games such as World of Warcraft, and examines what this may imply for our conception of fantasy as a genre.

Through fantasy anything, no matter how far-fetched, can become real. And yet, despite the elf ears or red skin, fantasy characters in video games still manage more often than not to fit into the idealized body types for humans. In a game such as World of Warcraft, a player can choose from a variety of fantasy races: everything from elves to anthropomorphic bovines, and yet no matter how divorced from humans a race might be, in the end they all share most of the same characteristics that are found in idealized human bodies.

This paper explores the rationale behind making fantasy creatures conform to narrow standards of beauty/strength in games such as World of Warcraft, and examines what this may imply for our conception of fantasy as a genre by investigating the delicate balance between emulated reality and fantastical escapism found in video games. (more…)

For those of you who are going to WisCon this year, you may be interested to know that Iris’ own Andrea Rubenstein will be giving a presentation on body types in World of Warcraft.

From the WisCon 31 Programming Schedule:

101 Playing for Self-Esteem: How Video Games Represent Females And Affect Female Self-Esteem/Idealizing Fantasy Bodies in Video Games

Academic Papers•Conference Room 3• Saturday, 4:00-5:15 p.m.

1) As females have developed a growing interest in video games, research needs to be done to study the effect these games can have on their self-esteem. The few journals which did mention concerns in the area of self-esteem had varied conclusions. My original hypothesis stated video games have a positive effect on self-esteem, which would give female gamers a higher sense of self over female non-gamers. Results showed a difference in general self-image; non-gamers had a higher self-image than gamers. No difference was found in the three areas of self-esteem: performance, social, or physical; however, gamers felt a relationship would not give them higher self-esteem in those three areas. This shows how, although gamers have a low self-esteem, a relationship may not help make them feel confident, and further research should work to determine what catalyst would give them higher self-esteem.

2) Through fantasy, anything—no matter how far-fetched—can become real. And yet, despite the elf ears or red skin, fantasy characters in video games still manage more often than not to fit into the idealized body types for humans. This paper explores the rationale behind making fantasy creatures conform to narrow standards of beauty/strength in games such as World of Warcraft, and examines what this may imply for our conception of fantasy as a genre.

Jason Nicholas Boggs, Andrea Diane Rubenstein