June 25th 2007

[Wire]

A new Swedish book about women and video gaming recently came out and it has an interview with Wire along with pics of her and both the Game Over CD covers.
It's mainly a photo book and the title is Game On! It features interviews with 11 gamer girls with pictures of each one of them. 

Here's a link:
http://www.pbordochbild.se/detail.php?id=14

[Shyguy]

That´s cool in a way... I hope Game Over can get more recognizion out of it. Still, articles on girls playing games tend to be kind of cliché, hopefully this books author has a fresh perspective to things. I mean, it´s really no sensation that girls do play games since it´s incredibly fun, so a "look, I found a bunch of girls who play games... just like boys do" collection don´t make a lot of sense. Such book may show these noble (and not so noble) gameplaying women as an exeption instead of a part of the community. (If there is such thing as a community...? A part of the big whole, anyways.)

I haven´t read it, and I don´t want to prejudice it, so here´s hoping it´s a great book! And congrats Wire for entering yet another media! It´s great that new readers can take part in your thoughts on videogames and discover the band!:D

[Belmont]

Ordered 

[Wire]

I would say the focus is on the pictures, after all it's written by a photographer (a very nice one, though he didn't want any coffee).
I haven't read all of it yet but it seems the girls featured are true nerds and not just omg-models-holding-a-PS3-controller or something.  (know what I mean?)

[Shyguy]

Yeah, I´m sure they are hopeless nerds all of them! Strange that "nerd" seems to have the same meaning in gameculture as "true" in metal culture...

One of the silliest examples of idolizing, thus isolating girl-gamers is this: http://www.missvideogame.com/ Vote for a gir that plays videogames AND looks good too! Wow!

[Belmont]

Got the book today. Haven't read it yet but I can come up with a little review later if anyone is interested

[Wire]

Strange that "nerd" seems to have the same meaning in gameculture as "true" in metal culture...

You know ever since you wrote that I have been looking for nerdy behavior in metal heads. All I can say is - you're so right!! I guess the word nerd doesn't go very well together with metal culture so to conceal the fact that we're actually nerds we use the word "true" or even "metal". A great example can be found in the latest issue of Sweden Rock Magazine where a guy who was at Metallica's last concert with Cliff Burton wrote a looong letter about what song Metallica really played as their encore that night. And the editor payed great attention to this letter. So nerdy, don't you think? 

So, Belmont, what did you think of the book?

[Shyguy]

Since I´m much more of a videogame-nerd than a metalhead, my knowlege in metal-nerddom is very limited. But you got something there, bothering about that kind of details is a thing they obviously have in common with other groups of extremely devoted people.

Anyway, seing powermetal act Ninja Magic this summer made any doubts about metal+nerddom vanish. Not only did they dress up with ninjamasks, the band was introduced to the music from the NES version of Punch Out! (What´s the matter with swedish metal and Punch out? I love it!) Despite their nerdy image, they delivered kick-ass music too... top notch entertainment! http://www.ninjamagic.tk/

And yeah, Belmont, how´s the book?

[Belmont]

Well first of all, I agree with Wire that the book is very much about the photos. The little amount of text that's actually there is good and the love for gaming seems very real.
I would prefer much more text though