#yesiplay

[ajjordanmusic]

This is what I love doing every week! God I thank you for my gift! #MtZion #AJJordanMusik #Ministry #YesIPlay #GodIsAmazing (at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6aD363gUDG/?igshid=czr543qxu9o5

[ladystephfetish]

Last night's BULLSHIT HAND #Theladysteph #yesiplay #yesimgoodtoo #gottaMEANpokerface #youcangetittoo

[razor-sun]

So Arcanine is pretty huge... #arcanine #buddypokemon #pokemon #pokemongo #yesiplay #sueme

[baskingintheglow]

@boneafide_softball uniforms thru the years. #fashionarchives #centralpark #sundayfunday #yesiplay #softball join us on #field6 (at Central Park)

[nymgamer]

Great breakdown of roleplaying within and without typical game spaces. 

[nymgamer]

Interviews with Kiva Bay and Katie O’Neal about the high cost of a gamer identity, and how we navigate that. 

[nymgamer]

#YesIPlay: Thoughts from an Adult Fan of LEGO

My dad gifted me his Xbox 360, along with all of his games, after I told him how much I wanted Netflix. So, I wasn’t identifying with gamers, I just wanted some streaming TV. But, Dead Rising was in that pile of games, and I fell in love with that game, which sparked my dormant love for gaming. Soon after, I had a PSP and a Wii, and I was playing quite a lot. It was during this period that I started to experience weird interactions with people. I specifically remember an incident at Gamestop when I went to purchase a Silent Hill game for the PSP, and the cashier kept telling me over and over about the rating. I remember having a really hard time trying to figure out why this person kept talking to me about ratings. Eventually, I realized he thought I was buying it for my child, and I got a weird look when I told him it was for me. That’s just a minor incident compared to what a lot of other female gamers experiences, but I think it speaks to the assumptions people often make. I have been largely able to avoid more common problems that affect female gamers because I’m in a pretty insulated grad-school environment, surrounded by people who do not think it’s weird that I play games. And, I don’t play games online. But, I have experienced a lot of weird interactions with non-gaming friends who mostly seem to think it’s weird that someone my age is still playing games. ...read the rest at NYMGamer. 

[nymgamer]

#yesIplay: Toward a New Narrative of Games Last night, some of the women of the NYMGamer team started tweeting under #yesIplay. #yesIplay is about telling the stories of  of “gamers”—a term we’re using loosely here—that are often silenced or questioned. video games, board games, whatever and however you want to define it. #yesIplay is intersectional; we want to hear from all people, especially women, about all games. This is about ending stigmas associated to not only women who play, but everyone; we are simply using women as a focal point because women are the most frequently targeted in discussions about so-called “real” gamers. If you play games, whether it’s on consoles or computers, a tablet or Facebook or on your dining table at home, you’re playing—and your voice should be valued, not questioned.

We started #yesIplay because we all know people who play games for hours who would never consider themselves “gamers.” Because many of those people would say that they don’t play games, because the games they love—mobile games, Facebook games, “casual” games—aren’t considered real games by a vocal swath of the community.

We started #yesIplay for all the women who’ve been told mothers don’t have time to play, that professional women can’t play games, that pretty girls don’t look like gamers.

We started #yesIplay for the people who never felt quite right until they discovered an identity in games.

We started #yesIplay for every one of us who’s ever wondered why there are no characters that look like we do, or few options in character creation engines that allow us to reflect ourselves.

We started #yesIplay because we are so often treated like we don’t—we are challenged, we are othered, we are marginalized and often told we’re not “real” gamers. #yesIplay is about celebrating all games, and all the diverse, wonderful people who play them, and we want to hear your stories. Tweet us and we’ll engage and retweet you, but contact us, too, about sharing stories. We are interested in hearing from people who would like to write about their experiences, their hopes, their futures. If there’s need, we will build the infrastructure to support such a project. We would love to build a repository of essays and experiences, a foundation for a new conversation about games, because it’s time to rebuild and reframe the conversation around video games. Let’s get it started.