#yesiplay

This is what I love doing every week! God I thank you for my gift! #MtZion #AJJordanMusik #Ministry #YesIPlay #GodIsAmazing (at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6aD363gUDG/?igshid=czr543qxu9o5

Last night's BULLSHIT HAND #Theladysteph #yesiplay #yesimgoodtoo #gottaMEANpokerface #youcangetittoo

So Arcanine is pretty huge... #arcanine #buddypokemon #pokemon #pokemongo #yesiplay #sueme

@boneafide_softball uniforms thru the years. #fashionarchives #centralpark #sundayfunday #yesiplay #softball join us on #field6 (at Central Park)

Great breakdown of roleplaying within and without typical game spaces. 

Interviews with Kiva Bay and Katie O’Neal about the high cost of a gamer identity, and how we navigate that. 

My dad gifted me his Xbox 360, along with all of his games, after I told him how much I wanted Netflix. So, I wasn’t identifying with gamers, I just wanted some streaming TV. But, Dead Rising was in that pile of games, and I fell in love with that game, which sparked my dormant love for gaming. Soon after, I had a PSP and a Wii, and I was playing quite a lot. It was during this period that I started to experience weird interactions with people. I specifically remember an incident at Gamestop when I went to purchase a Silent Hill game for the PSP, and the cashier kept telling me over and over about the rating. I remember having a really hard time trying to figure out why this person kept talking to me about ratings. Eventually, I realized he thought I was buying it for my child, and I got a weird look when I told him it was for me. That’s just a minor incident compared to what a lot of other female gamers experiences, but I think it speaks to the assumptions people often make. I have been largely able to avoid more common problems that affect female gamers because I’m in a pretty insulated grad-school environment, surrounded by people who do not think it’s weird that I play games. And, I don’t play games online. But, I have experienced a lot of weird interactions with non-gaming friends who mostly seem to think it’s weird that someone my age is still playing games. ...read the rest at NYMGamer. 

We started #yesIplay because we are so often treated like we don’t—we are challenged, we are othered, we are marginalized and often told we’re not “real” gamers. #yesIplay is about celebrating all games, and all the diverse, wonderful people who play them, and we want to hear your stories. Tweet us and we’ll engage and retweet you, but contact us, too, about sharing stories. We are interested in hearing from people who would like to write about their experiences, their hopes, their futures. If there’s need, we will build the infrastructure to support such a project. We would love to build a repository of essays and experiences, a foundation for a new conversation about games, because it’s time to rebuild and reframe the conversation around video games. Let’s get it started.