I love how, for the most part, this class hasn’t really gotten affected by all the recent events with moving everything online. We spent this week on Shira Chess’s “Ready Player Two” ;the book was outlining the so-called player two that exists in modern gaming culture and the origins of the label, and we connected those ideas to the game “Life is Strange”. 

Player two was described as anything that didn’t fit the “usual” average gamer stereotype (white, nerdy kid who doesn’t know how to socialize that well). That original identity was made back in the 1980’s where the game market started to pander towards a male demographic, this is where the divide and the idea of player two started to form. Player two generally was aimed towards women when the concept was being made, but the traits of player two were not exclusively for women. Like games that were not generally an accepted game within gaming culture being treated as fake games/gamers. We talked about the Nintendo knitting machine being a pioneer where the usual formula for games was changing but this was more for the player two demographic. Even though this was a good move to start the development of other game genres which would eventually lead to a large selection of non hardcore games in the present day. This also further reinforced the identities of people who fall into player one or two. Some of the traits of player two type games included: thematic congruence, social, time positive, low risk, creative expression, lush aesthetics, non sexualized characters, avatar choice, low violence, and low harassment potential. From this criteria you can clearly see how the idea of player two is trying to separate certain groups and create a divide with men and women. The present day version of this is the hardcore gamers vs the casual gamer. We have reached a point too where if you look at all of game culture as a whole we have a caste system dividing people and creating elitism where there shouldn’t be. For example how mobile gamers are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of ranking, then console gamers are in the middle and PC gamers are on top in this hierarchy.  

The game we played was “Life is Strange” and this sorta of fit the formula that Chess showed with the idea of player two. In terms of low risk the game gives the player the ability to fix mistakes with time travel, but only to a certain degree. This game is more focused on the main character Max’s relationship with other people, so that can fit in with the idea where it’s less about violence and more about emotions. The whole idea of the player two identity is really dumb in my opinion why do we have to generalize people based off what they like to do with their free time.