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Keynote Speakers


T.L. Taylor

Associate Professor in the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Title: A future for gender and computer game studies?

Biography: T.L. is associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and the Center for Computer Games Research. She has been working in the field of internet and multi-user studies for over a decade and has published on topics such as values in design, avatars and online embodiment, powergaming, gender and gaming, pervasive gaming, and intellectual property in MMOGs. Her current book Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006) uses her multi-year ethnography of EverQuest to explore issues related to play and game culture. For more information: http://www.itu.dk/~tltaylor

About the talk

This talk will explore the current state of research of gender and computer game studies and propose some interventions for how we might proceed in understanding this complicated terrain. By drawing on work that interrogates the structural side of playful engagement, as well as projects that use more activist and action-oriented models for change, this talk will challenge some traditional formulations of "gendered play" with the hopes of broadening out the picture of where we go from here.



Kyle Machulis
Head of the Nonpolynomial Network, founder of Slashdong (the teledildonics/sex tech blog), and co-founder of MMOrgy.

Title: Sex in Games

This talk was authored by Brenda Brathwaite.

Warning: This presentation contains images of nudity and sexual content.

Biography: Kyle Machulis was a Robotics Engineer. He had a good job, a good education, and a good life. Apparently, that wasn't enough for him.

Ooooooooh no. Not Kyle.

He decided to throw all that away and become the world's first accidental teledildonics expert. As the founder and head writer for the sex technology site Slashdong, he's taught tens of tens of people how to assemble their own Internet controlled sex toys. His vast knowledge of video game sex netted him a position on the IGDA Sex In Games Special Interest Group Leadership Council, where he waxes academic about polygonal genetalia. He is the co-founder and technology writer for MMOrgy, the Internet's premier resource on sex in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. He continues to embarrass his friends and loved ones by creating new and interesting sexual perversions using the newest technology and then speaking about them in public, at conferences including the Austin Games Conference, Game Developers Conference, and South by Southwest Interactive.

In whatever time he has left after all that, Kyle works on non-sex based immersive environment and alternative input projects for Nonpolynomial Labs.


Brenda Braithwaite - talk author

About the talk

Before Hot Coffee, before Playboy: The Mansion, even before the 1980's Leisure Suit Larry series, there was sex in video games... and lots of it. From flirting in MUDs to hardcore sexual simulators to the emerging field of teledildonics, sex in games is nearly as old as the medium itself. Sex isn't limited to the games themselves, of course. The infamous E3 booth babes are as much a part of sex in games as the characters that walk through game worlds, and sexual content found in video game advertising has as strong a place in the discussion as emergent sexual content in MMORPGs.

Wherever sexual content has found itself, controversy has always followed - from Custer's Revenge to the Leisure Suit Larry laws to the 1993 Congressional Hearings to today's attempts at legislation and censorship.

Interested in the topic? Wonder where it's going? Wonder how far it's already gone? Come to this adults-only talk.


Deborah Tillet

President - BreakAway Games, Ltd.

Title: Quality of Life

How Breakaway Ltd has taken steps to ensure happy, productive employees with a good home/work life balance.

Deborah is the president of a company with 94 employees and growing, with a new studio recently opened in the state of Texas, in addition to their headquarters in Maryland. BreakAway has always held a dual market strategy, looking to gain profit from both the entertainment industry and the serious games industry. They maintain the practice that happy employees make productive employees, and implement several plans in order to keep their employees happy.

These include "play dates" for spouses with young children. These are monthly events where spouses can bring the children into the studio to see where their parents work, meet other kids, and the spouses also get a day off to relax and hang out with the other mothers/fathers as well.

Additional measures taken by BreakAway are to ensure that certain dates, such as birthdays, are recognized with a cake or appropriate action; they also throw baby showers, hire babysitters for employees, and schedule dinner dates as thanks for an employee's hard work. Deborah is a firm believer in the fact that living a healthy and fulfilling life is greater and more important than work, and that money can only satisfy, not motivate your employees.



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