Wow, Pwned

In its roundabout way . . .

Via acid for blood (who's on my regular reading but wasn't on my blogroll . . . fixed) a story over on One Hundred Little Dolls regarding a post at Kotaku bemoaning the dearth of female videogame bloggers. OHLD completely demolishes the entire conceit of the Kotaku post.

Excellent.

There's a saying about making assumptions that might apply in this instance: "Don't make assumptions, please."

"While I think that strong woman writers who cover gaming are not proportional to the number of women playing games, the bigger issue it seems is that there aren't a whole lot of immediately recognizable female writers on the net. I think the ones out there now need to be more vocal perhaps, or maybe I'm just not reading the right sites."

I'm not sure this passage needs to be fisked, but a few points:

1. I get what that first sentence is trying to say, I think. But it's still a stupid point. Strong writers who cover gaming aren't proportional* to the number of people playing games, period. There's no reason to be gender-specific there unless you're also trying to say that there are simply scads of strong male writers who cover gaming - in which case you're wrong.

If there is any group of game writers proportional to the number of gamers it's the number of people who write obscenity-filled screeds about games, consoles, and companies on message boards.

*I'm also a little bothered by the use of proportional, because there's no specific information about what number of women gaming writers might be proportional to the number of women playing games. 1:1? 1:100? 1:1000?

2. "[I]mmediately recognizable female writers[.]" Does this mean he thinks it matters whether you can immediately tell that a writer is female? Why? I read a lot of blogs and am unaware of the author's gender on maybe 50% of them.

3. How does one be more vocal? Does he mean comment more? Does he mean beg bigger sites to link to you? What kind of self-promotion? A little hint would be nice (for all of us). Also, it's not anyone else's fault that you haven't noticed them.

4. You're not reading the right sites.

Some people are of the mind that the post's substance doesn't matter much since it yielded a rich treasure trove of links. I am not of that mind.

Anyway, I'll be going over the One Hundred Little Dolls list to find some new reading.

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Not that anyone is wondering, but here's my basic method for adding links to the blogroll:

-If someone comments and I can click on their name and be taken to a page with a link to their blog, then I add them. If I've missed anyone using this method, just send me an e-mail. Hell, you don't even have to prove you commented. Sending an e-mail is enough.

-I go over to Corvus' page, throw some furniture around, scream at full volume and generally act like I own the place. Then I use his blogroll as my own personal portal. If I see a new link on there then I click it, read some posts and, if I like it, add it to my own blogroll. That's right - I scavenge. I prefer to call it "utilizing the power of the network."

-On rare occasions I will find a new blog by running google searches on topics related to whatever I happen to be posting. But I'm generally not very happy with the results.

-I used to go to gameblogs, but stopped when I didn't see anything new being added. Now they appear to be restructuring everything. I wish them the best.