#eafail

Oh, thank you, EA.



Uh, so, yeah. So, obviously, EA doesn't care about girl gamers. Such as everyone who buys the Sims. Admittedly, most Sims fans probably aren't going to see this. I know I own at least one EA game (not including my permanently borked copy of Sims 2 that Alex, yes I know, ironic, gave me) but offhand I can't think of what it is.

Tweet #eafail if you're upset. I doubt it will trend, but this sort of thing makes me go rawr.

Here's a second article with the full ad, now taken down elsewhere.

Squishable bugs!

Ethnography of a Newbie

A) I was getting annoyed with my hair, so I put it in a pony tail. It's too short and layered, though, so most of it fell out. Joey saw it, and declared it to be Young Night Elf hair.

B) Standing, waiting for our coffees, Joey decides that Blink would be the best thing to have in real life out of WoW. Remember: he's been playing for less than a week, and he's already talking about it randomly, without any prompting, in public places. (Other than immortality, sickness only lasting a few minutes at a time, etc, I of course chose my rhino.)

C) Told him I was writing Ethnography of a Newbie, and that I was the Jane Goodall of the new WoW players.
"It's almost as if they're intelligent, and trying to tell us something."
"Yes, but it's hard to tell, they do speak a different language."
"True."
"But I found out what aggro means today!"

Ethnography of a Newbie

Joey has recruited another person into WoW. Already.

Ethnography of a Newbie

My pal, coworker, and future neighbor Joey has just started playing WoW. I don't really expect points for it or anything, but I'm going to just update about it once and a while.

Getting an angry text at 3:00 am because WoW won't work? How fun.

Not really being fair, there...

Alex St. John really bothered me today. Sure, he's an aggressive executive type, I understand that. The dismissive sexism? Not really my favorite thing.

I was sitting in the front row; I generally sit wherever there's the most room. He called the people in the front row something, either suck-ups or overachievers. Probably suck-ups. He went down the line from his left to his right asking everyone's favorite video games. He stopped a person or two short of me, which didn't bother me, but was unfortunate in retrospect.

Later, he was trying to make a point about Bejeweled, and looked at me and saw [Girl in Front Row - SHE MUST PLAY BEJEWELED!]. He asked if I played it, and I said yes. This was just after I added the WoW Addon for it, which I like. I had actually never played Bejeweled until that point. He asked why, and I said it was de-stressing, because it gets rid of all the other distractions I have. So does WoW, for that matter, and Brawl, and every video game ever, but I didn't say that. He looked at the class like "Hey guys, point made!"

Then, sometime later, he asked who hadn't played Halo. I raised my hand. I've just never particularly wanted to buy an XBox. For that matter, I've never bought a console game. I'm a console moocher, especially with my sister. As it happened, none of my friends own XBoxes either, so, no, I haven't played Halo. He asked why I hadn't, I said something stupid, but he got to the point of whether or not I would actually enjoy Halo, it's a huge investment to play console games without even trying them out first. That's a good point. I definitely give him that. I just wish he maybe would have picked someone else out, but he looked at me and saw Girl + Prior Admission of Bejeweled + Doesn't Play Halo = Perfect Stereotype.

So, after class, when both Wanda and I tried to talk to him, he just dismissively said, "Play more games first." I could see Wanda half-heartedly go "But she plays WoW," but for Alex. St. Jerk, it was case closed, move on.

It is a legitimate criticism that if I want to make this my career, I need to play more. I agree. I actually do. There have been a lot of game names mentioned in this class without me having a clue what they are. I just don't appreciate the assumption that Bejeweled is my game, at all.

Announcement.

Everyone knows that you can play Bejeweled and Peggle inside WoW, right?