Brendan Downey

#50190372

DMS 448

Week 11

In week 11 of class, we discussed Queerness in games, Feminism and passion. Above all other weeks, I felt like our discussions this week touched on subjects that carried weight with students in the class. Due to the fact that this class is largely female (or at least our discussions are largely driven by the females), topics such as these clearly hit home with multiple people. On a side note, I want to mention that I have really appreciated the group (Dani, Joan, Sioux) who offer a lot of unique perspective. Because the gaming industry is so male driven, you would assume that the majority of students would be male. However, it is encouraging to see that the field is growing vastly.

One of our assigned readings this week was Sophie Toupin’s “Feminist Hackerspaces: The Synthesis of Feminist and Hacker Cultures.” In the paper, Toupin examines the recent emergence of feminist hackerspaces in the United States. Having come from computer science before media, I can confirm this to be true. Female hackers are rising up all across the United States. For a variety of reasons, females are being encouraged from a young age to care about computer science and computer programming. In schools and homes all across America, young women are being pushed to code, and that’s a good thing! Throughout her paper, Toupin demonstrates that for female hackers, feminist hackers or geeks, coding is their way to change the world. Simply put: If women are creating and designing, they can change the world how they see fit. In the future, coding may be driven by women.

In our class Discord chat this week, I mentioned UB’s program Hackathon. In it’s yearly event, UB Hacking hosts a competitive programming tournament where the best programmers from UB face off for prizes. In the past, I have attended the event and can confirm one thing: female hackers kick ass. Along with the rest of the crowd, I was pleased to learn that the female hackers competing were not to be messed with, as they were easily brushing off their male competition.

In week 11, we were linked to the game Journey. Journey is an interested Indie developed game set in the desert. Although I have no experience with a similar genre of game, I found Journey to be a beautifully designed world.