Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity

(Paperback)

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Description

Shira Chess uses the concept of "Player Two" to examine the assumptions implicit in video games designed for women and how they have impacted gaming culture and the larger society.Ready Player Twopresents important arguments about how gamers and game developers must change their thinking about both women and games to produce better games, better audiences, and better industry practices.

Reviews

"Ready Player Two takes an important critical look at games designed for women, a market and area of games that have too long been overlooked in games scholarship. In this book, Shira Chess unpacks the assumptions made about women in how these games are designed and identifies the broader cultural and commercial impacts of these games."Adrienne Shaw, author of Gaming at the Edge

"Ready Player Two presents a groundbreaking look at designed identities in gaming. Shira Chess explores how constructions of genderfrom emotional labor to embodimentare embedded in playful systems. This is an important book for anyone interested in understanding not only in this emerging leisure domain, but the role of design and technology in these spaces."T.L. Taylor, MIT

"Discussing why women play what we play, and how we are understood as players, pushes the industry to treat women not as a genre, but a diverse audience. Ready Player Two moves us closer to the mark."New Republic

"A vital step forward in the field of games studies, and will resonate strongly in wider critical arguments about gendered play and leisure activities."Times Higher Education

"Chesss analysis is thought provoking, informed by her understanding of the genre both as a member of its target audience and as a critical feminist theorist."Choice

Author Bio

Shira Chess is assistant professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.