No Girls Allowed

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“No Girls Allowed” by Tracy Lien is an essay that addresses one of the most fundamental misconceptions of video games in the art world: that they are, have always been, and thus always will constituted as an overwhelmingly juvenile, straight, white, and male cultural space. Indeed, this meticulously researched essay foregrounds how this version of the “core” audience for video games comes about in the early 1990s as a byproduct of misguided, simplistic (and often plain wrong) marketing data and advertising strategies. That isn’t to mitigate the massive and continuing toxic effects of this ever-inward-spiraling homogeneity now tied to the “gamer” identity. But it is vital to grasp the just how artificial this highly limited and limiting vision of video games is so as to reclaim them in their fullness as a viable, diverse artistic and intellectual cultural space. This article is also an excellent tool for using the history of video game advertising to teach about the power of hegemonic, social, and marketing forces to fabricate and enforce stereotyped narratives about how gender, access, and culture.

Writer: Tracy Lien

Link: No Girls Allowed

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Embed With Games - Cara Ellison

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Emissary from the Squat of the Gods - Ian Cheng