KotakuInAction is the main hub for GamerGate on Reddit and welcomes discussion of community, industry and media issues in gaming and broader nerd culture including science fiction and comics.
So over on the blog for Gygax Games, Gail Gygax mentioned the following:
The more discussions I have with friends in the industry, the more I realize there aren't enough opportunities for young girls looking to get their start in the games industry. Social media has transformed the way we see the world and I'm proud of the many women who are making their voices heard.
I'm curious to know if there are any female game developers interested in my late husband's works? I'd love to hear from you so please email me
She does list the email address, but I'm not going to repost it here.
For those who don't know, Gail has a history of being...how can I put this delicately? Fucking unhinged. That link is to a "crazy cat lady"-style rant she went on after it came out that she was being sued for breach of contract regarding turning Gary's unpublished material into a video game, something which seems to be the brainchild of her son Alex (the only child Gary had with her; his other children are from his first marriage):
“I grew up playing this and I’m also a huge video gamer, so I’ve always wanted to see my dad’s work because I thought that they were some of the greatest stories and tough adventures,” Alex said. “I’ve always wanted to see them put out in the next level. Pen and paper is a dying art. Computer games, video games, they’re the next generation, the next wave of games and I’ve always wanted to see them on that new medium and I’ve always wanted to be working with someone who’s excited as I am about it.”
I disagree that pen and paper is "a dying art," and I think this kid isn't much of a tabletop gamer despite his lineage (I seem to recall a quote from Gary saying Alex wasn't interested in tabletop games, but I can't find it now). But I digress.
This isn't the first activity of Gail's that's rather suspect, either. Leaving aside her other paranoid rants, there's the whole issue of the "Gygax Memorial Fund," which was ostensibly to create a memorial to Gary in his hometown, has been suspiciously silent for years now. She also filed suit against Gygax Magazine, which was run by two of her husband's first wife's children, alleging that she had a trademark on the name "Gygax." She might very well have been legally in the right, there, but it was still a shitty thing to do, especially since she's produced nothing.
That's particularly tragic since there really does seem to be a great deal of unpublished material that Gary left behind. (The guy running that AMA, Paul Stormberg, is a legit presence in the D&D community, being the force behind the very reputable Collector's Trove website.)
All of which is to say, Gail and socjus bullshit seem like legit fusion of crazy.
EDIT: Further research has turned up that Gail Gygax initially filed a trademark application on the term "Gygax," which TSR Inc. (a separate business entity from the company acquired by Wizards of the Coast; this new company has the same name, having been started by Gary Gygax's sons Luke and Ernie) filed a dispute over. To be absolutely clear, they were the ones who filed litigation against her, and not the other way around. The suit was settled, with Luke and Ernie leaving TSR Inc. as a result (with EN World suggesting that it was because they wouldn't sign the settlement agreement.), and Gygax Magazine ceasing publication as well.
My thanks to Gina Ramirez for bringing this error to my attention.
This bullshit is just incredibly delusional.
There are countless opportunities specifically for women only, there are none for just men. Women objectively have more opportunities since they have every single opportunity men have and then all the special women-only opportunities on top of that.
Yeah I'm curious what opportunities boys have to start in the videogame industry that girls are barred from. Just what is she talking about?
She's repeating fictions that she heard other people say. Just like the vast majority of people who push this myth. They're just mimicking other people whose social approval they desire. That's the insidiousness of the whole thing.
Her husband played in a cellar she did not.
How many cellar playing opportunities does she seek?
She’s his second wife. She married him at the height of his wealth and fame. By the time she met him, he wasn’t playing a cellar anymore. He was a multimillionaire minor celebrity.
When he died, she immediately cashed out his estate into a bunch of shady ventures and ran his companies into the ground in a matter of years.
She had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the game, and appears to have never actually done anything in her life other than coast off of marrying him.
Comment deleted by user
And this is why you should never trust anyone who you marry AFTER you're rich. In fact, don't get married at all if you're rich, mistresses are cheaper.
So not even sudden shift because it's what the in kids are doing because collectivist minded but always a cunt? Okay. good to know.
That is going the extra mile we don't need that to make the point
In her mind, sucking Gygax's dick is the same as inventing the game. This is what we have allowed women to become in the West by constantly babying them and gaslighting them with unearned praise and reward.
The very best and the very worst of society falls on men inevitably so.
The ammounts of draconian and autoritarian steps they have taken already to alleviate one side of that is already near the maximum possible.
It's empowering to leech off more talented men to claim you're empowered, just look at Kamala Harris. And Willie Brown isn't necessarily talented, just a good party man in a friendly city
“Patriarchy hurts men too” through spineless white knight manginas sucking up to the worst womenkind have to offer.
Anything political in a nutshell.
Read an academic paper in the soft sciences (full disclosure, I graduated with a soft science degree) and a lot of their views are based on "people say this" or "everyone believes...." Without any empirical data.
Their worldview is 100% incompatible with the idea that men and women are simply different in terms physiology, psychology, temperament, interests, etc. In reality, almost every "imbalance" between the genders is an organic manifestation of the innate differences between men and women. This is the only theory with the explanatory power to reconcile the continued existence of these imbalances in the face of systems and institutions that are now frankly advantaging women immensely.
Like when Norway tried to enforce gender equality in how they raised boys and girls and yet the babies just did their own thing anyway. Nobody ever really brings that up nowadays because it was such a huge victory of nature versus delusional academia
Do you happen to have a source for this I can read? A quick search didn't get me anything useful.
I believe he's referring to the documentary series "Hjernevask", which should be on Youtube with subs.
Ah the amount of "deer in the headlights" looks you got from the right side of history brigade in that mini series was quite funny...
Something about being left wing seems to melt people's critical thinking. I'm guessing it's the collectivism and the need to agree with whatever is the "in" paradigm.
Exactly this.
And let's be blunt here: access to this shit is fucking incredibly easy and accessible. There have been multiple single developer games that have been resounding successes. Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn were both made by the same single dev. Stardew Valley was also made by a single dev. And Undertale. Dust: An Elysian Tale. Gunpoint. Cave Story. The list goes on, and on, and on.
To say that there are no opportunities is only ever limiting yourself. Does it require luck? No doubt. Is it going to be hard? Very, and nobody said otherwise. Does that mean you should give up? Hell. No.
Anyone denying how accessible game development is at this stage is a fucking moron, and probably can't be helped to understand just how stupid what they've said was.
Such as a couple of years ago Green Ronin publically having a woman only hiring criteria for a project.
Yeah but there are forces that can't be quantified that oppress women and prevent them from games, the same invisible forces that somehow prevent Swedish and Norwegian women from going into STEM fields.
Saudi and Pakistani women are in STEM, clearly those are truly equal nations. If only we could emulate them our women would be truly liberated
Yeah, I really do scoff at that the notion that (chicks, in this case) have it so damn bad getting into industries. Over the past few years, it's clear orgs are so damn desperate to hire female this or that just to say they have women, regardless of skill, and then they act dumbfounded when the quality of output isn't that high because they didn't hire for skill specifically.
Apparently all the opportunities isn't enough opportunity. They need to have the ONLY opportunities. That's Progress
I think you've correctly identified the problem: men still have opportunities. Every male game dev represents a wasted opportunity for a female game dev, and that's simply unacceptable in $CURRENT_YEAR.
Wait what
What a spiteful woman.
You know besides the bullshit of women divorcing for childish selfish reasons the colossal cuntery of a lot of second and on wards wives to the ex wife or children of the ex wife of her now husband is starting to make me REALLY understand and agree with "Til death do us part."
There's a reason why "evil step-parent" is a trope.
and it is universal
evil step-WIFE
Easy, Crusader. There is a chance that she is just a Royal Cunt.
Yeeeep, and if kids are involved, those that dont subscribe to that at best leave a trail of broken homes in their wake; at worst, broken kids.
My mom's been married (and divorced) three times and it's sad how much of an outlier I and my other sibling are. We both have careers, degrees, no teenage pregnancies,, sis became a crippled alcoholic but she's been sober for about two decades now, so she got off the brokenhome train relatively easy, all things considered,
People really dont't take sex or marriage seriously enough.
How could she possibly have any legal claim to the name...
I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that you can make a trademark out of damn near anything. It's like how, if your last name is "McDonald," and you decide to open up a restaurant called "McDonald's," you'll still be hit with a lawsuit very quickly and probably lose on the merits if you fought it, even though it's your name.
Even then she would need to have a magazine named Gygax or something similar trademarked for there to even be an issue of infringement. And it would have to be published I think, not just an empty trademark.
Like I can't make a fast food chain called Mcdonald but if I may be able to run a magazine called Macdonald
Right. But if it's a magazine about burgers they're going to come for you. It's totally believable that she inherited the mark for Gygax in "board games and books" or something upon Gary's death and because the magazine (established 4 years after his death) was about gaming it was close enough for litigation.
Ahh, the Teresa Earnhardt approach
"Woman exploiting legacy of a man demands more handouts for women."
Peak feminism. /s
if men like Gary waited around until someone gave him an opportunity in the games industry, D&D would never have been invented.
instead he followed his passion, did his thing and spawn an entire subindustry
This. Instead of following paths people have already made at best, or at worst parasitizing off them, blaze your own trail like Gygax did.
Gygax could've played it safe, and just taken a job at a wargaming company. Instead he had a clever idea, and pursued it on his own.
through passion i gain strength!
Well that's rather conveniently nebulous, isn't it? What is an opportunity to "get their start in the games industry?" Is it something that boys are actually afforded, or is it something above and beyond?
I would think that the typical (but not only) path into the games industry is going to a college, getting a relevant degree while likely doing extra on the side to build a portfolio, and then applying to studios. What part of this gives girls less opportunity when women are more than 50% of college students, colleges are working to try to get women to join STEM programs, and plenty of game companies seem to be trying to hire more women?
This is pretty funny because I just got flamed on r/DnDGreentext for being a longtime KIA poster. At first I didn't know where the animosity came from because I've never had a bad interaction with any of the IRL friends or randos that I've tabletopped with regarding politics or philosophy. Considering the 4chan roots of the sub, I was actually caught unaware.
This now makes a lot more sense.
Oh shit, I saw that. Was it the thread where people were justifying violence against the DM in the OP for "triggering imagery"
Hate to say it, but if that's an issue, you don't belong in tabletop gaming of any sort.
100% agreed. Hell, if that's an issue, you don't belong outside of the kindergarten. Even worse when a person uses that as justification to call for violence.
The people in that thread sperging out are acting like toddlers throwing a tantrum.
The funny part is you’d have to claim you’re being triggered to call something triggering imagery
The one with the dog, it’ll be funnier if I got a ban too.
Yup, that was the one.
I posted on that thread, still seeing it today. If I get banned from there, nothing of value was lost except stupid stories of shitbird's doing assine things.
That sub has long since been a shell of its former self. I also find it odd/hilarious that they use 4chan as an insult considering the point of the sub
It must have taken her some great bravery to come out with a statement like that in the current climate /s
Women have a paved road into an industry men trailblazed for them, and they complain they still have to drive.
That's quite an eloquent metaphor. Kudos
I think there aren't enough opportunities for girls to be anti-SJW shitlords on the internet. That's the real problem we're facing...
To be fair, they're the best girls though because overcoming adversity builds character!
The only thing that Gail Gygax has to do with D&D or any sort of geekery is the millions of unborn children of someone who actually is involved with it shot into her mouth once in a blue moon. There are so many opportunities for females in gaming that total incompetents and men pretending to be women get swept up to leadership positions that they can then use to destroy what makes the whole thing good. And they do that. Often.
I assume she means the tabletop industry? Because here's the thing; you're never going to get rich and famous in the industry anyway, but the barrier to entry is very easy to cross. Write up a game, adventure, whatever and self-publish it.
Kickstart if you have to, there are so many small press RPG companies that do moderately well in the hobby; you don't even really have to deal with logistics that much considering I'd say the majority of the market at this point is pdf or print on demand through places like Drivethru. Again, not an industry likely to make you prominent and wealthy, but the upside to that is it's really easy to get decently successful in even just starting alone if you want to.
Biggest issue you'd probably have as a writer is getting art, so that's why you do a kickstarter, toss up the raw document as a backer file as soon as they pledge and just say "here it's all done I'm just going to use the funds to get some artists and some editing/layout done and we're good."
Only reason Gary got rich is he damn near invented it, or at least invented the streamlined(somewhat) version of this and popularized it. The only way to get fame and money for P&P is to be the first. He was the first there will never be a first again so you may as well fuck off if you want fame and fortune. Actually people obsessed with such things should fuck off anyway as they are swallow unlikable fuckers.
No. That is the time you look for stockart.
Good covers can be bought for ~15$. ex1 ex2
Filler stock art is even cheaper, often less than 5$ ex1 ex2
And of course everything in between is available as well half page; character
And if you look into black & white instead of full color (which is completely fine for your first product) it's even cheaper.
Of course you will have to invest time to find free / cheap stockart that is fitting for your product. And you have to deal with the fact that someone else in the world may use the same images in their product. But you can easily find enough art for less than 100$ to fill your first product.
yep just piss all over your husbands grave.
There are no opportunities for anyone in PnP RPG publishing: It's a labour of love.
I think it was Steve Kenson who used to be fond of saying "How do you end up with a small fortune making roleplaying games? Start with a large fortune."
It’s statements like these that make me beleive there is a severe lack of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit among women. They want someone else to take all the risks to establish and grow a company, them have it be established enough to provide all of the cushy jobs for women.
You just described the social evolution of the female of our species. Like it or not, the entirety of human history is men getting resources and bringing them to women. Recently, those women have decided to convince themselves and others that they actually earned those resources that men bring to them.
Almost like that's a natural evolved instinct :thinking:
Pen and paper a dying art? D&D and games like it are growing faster now than ever before. We are in a pen and paper renaissance. People are realizing you can explore better stories and have more freedom in pen and paper games than toy ever will be able to in video games. Alex doesn't know what he's talking about.
They would have plenty of opportunities just for being female, if they could stay off social media and shut the fuck up.
Wait. Gary Gygax is dead? I talked to him like...by God...12 years ago. Am I old now?
Hello darkness my old friend...
Literally anyone can make a game these days. Whether or not the game is any good is up to the creators.
So the first thing that always springs to mind when someone makes a statement like this is "what opportunities that other people got explicitly blocked this.person out?" There aren't men only conferences, women can attend them all. There isn't a bar to women fojnding their own game companies the way men do. There isn't a no girls allowed sign the applications pages of the magazines and companies the men write for. What exactly.ks the opportunity that men are getting that women aren't? If there's something that is excluding them then we can fix that. If it's simply men are more likely to take the opportunities that exist thus we must make new opportunities that women will want to take then I'm just not interested.
They don't want "oppertunities" they want special treatment.
What makes me sad about this post is that you don't know Gail. And rather than doing some more research, trying to get a hold of us, etc. you’ve decided to express your frustration on the internet. Anyway, you’re wrong about a few things, including your statement about Gail suing the Magazine since it’s the other way around. I hope that next time you'll do some more research instead of simply jumping to conclusions. It's more work on your part but I believe it'll pay off.
Gina,
Thank you for taking the time to reach out in response to this thread. For those who don't know, Gina Ramirez is Gail Gygax's agent, as confirmed by Paul Stormberg over here.
With regards to research, I linked to the Tenkar's Tavern article which stated that the suit was filed by Gail Gygax against TSR Inc. over their use of the name "Gygax" in their publication, Gygax Magazine. Which is to say, I was acting on the information that was presented there.
In hindsight, I should have looked more closely at the article that the Tenkar's Tavern page cited, over on EN World, which correctly stated (except for getting the year wrong, since I believe it was 2014) that "A quick look at USPTO.gov reveals the trademark application by Gail Gygax in 2013, which I'm given to understand was challenged by TSR, Inc. that same year."
With that in mind, I did some further checking, and confirmed that TSR Inc. was in fact the plaintiff in the case(s) regarding the trademark dispute over the name "Gygax." (The EN World article mentions that both Luke and Ernie Gygax refused to sign the settlement, and that's why they left TSR Inc. So far, I can't seem to confirm that.)
To put it another way, you were correct about my not partaking in sufficient research. As such, I'll go back and edit my original post accordingly.
Thanks again for speaking up to correct that error on my part. If there are others, please be sure to let me know and I'll take care of them with all due haste.
EDIT: I've started a thread to call attention to this correction.
I wasn't expecting this, appreciate you reading my comment and then taking action. From what I understand, Luke and Earnie did not need to sign the settlement. Gail gave a license to TSR and asked that Luke and Earnie stay on. I'm not sure what happened afterwards.
Comment deleted by user
Your comment contained a link to a thread in another subreddit, and has been removed, in accordance with Rule 5.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
What are the barriers? What advantages do boys have over girls in starting in the (tabletop) games industry?
Or do you mean in an absolute number sense? Because that I might agree, if only because I feel that the industry is bloody saturated with an ever shrinking market for games that actually need people to meet up and/or go through some trouble setting up a third-party software to support it. There's a market, and there will always be a market for it, but I would be willing to bet that it's not as massive as it once was, relatively speaking, or at least not getting enough people to replace the older fans once they drop off the hobby/die of old age/whatever.
But that do also mean that boys also don't have enough opportunities in the industry, so it's not a matter of sexism or anything of the sort, just a general lack of opportunity because of the nature of the market.
Maybe if more women spread their legs for successful gaming men like Gail did, women can find the empowerment and agency to contribute to games like Gail did!
But just wait until they're successful. It'd be a travesty for a woman to marry a man who hasn't yet found success, gross
seems like she is having issues both mental and financial and resorting to sjw-isms to get attention/funding. wouldn;t put too much credence in her words. she is far from batwu level
Nobody cares what this moron thinks.
Lady, you know shit about what your husband did. Stfu.
Not to disgrace your husband's memory, but kindly fuck right off, Ms. Gygax.
I think pen and paper is a dying art tbh. Not to say that it will go away, but that MMORPGs have changed the dynamic of the way people think about playing pen and paper games so much that you no longer play it the same way it used to be played.
I'm actually not so sure about that. Your point the industry has shrunk is spot on, but that's for various other reasons (and it seems to have, in the past few years, stabilized and arguably even rebounded slightly). The whole MMORPG effect though; that was the fear 10-15 years ago, but that's died off a lot. The hobby is much more interested in either the old school vibe or more of a narrative rules-light approach depending on the groups.
The days of PnP "you're the Healer, you're the Tank, you're the Slayer" rules sets were more the way things were from say 2000-2010. Look at the two biggest dogs in the industry: D&D and Pathfinder. 5th Edition D&D has gone for a much more streamlined somewhat old school approach and even Pathfinder is shaking off the legacy of 3rd edition for something new.
Now, one place I will say has impacted PnP is its "cousin" board games. That industry has seen a real revitalization in the past decade and the whole "campaigns in a box" type games are becoming very popular and the crossover between the hobbies (while always there) has gotten a lot stronger.
This. Too many players come into tabletops and think it's a skinner box loot grind like WoW. Part of the reason why I'm sick of playing in fantasy ttrpg's. Now, I only really play Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. I might be partial to Warhammer Fantasy roleplaying though.
Comment deleted by user
I believe in the earlier edition, gold and xp were linked somehow. I can't remember the exact mechanic however, but I remember this story from a dragon article by Gary Gygax about how the players were constantly trying to capture this golem made out of solid gold and gem-encrusted.
As I recall, original D&D and AD&D 1st Edition (I can't remember about the various forms of Basic D&D, those being Holmes, B/A, and BECMI) had a rule that, when it came to earning treasure, 1 gp = 1 XP. You could also gain XP for fighting monsters, but they were initially worth very little XP overall (I believe they grew to be worth more in AD&D 1E, because by that point it was already becoming clear that players were focusing on killing monsters). It's why the old games have XP values for magic items, if you look at them.
The thing was, you had to earn the treasure that you gained in order for it to be worth XP. You couldn't gain experience by being a merchant or anything like that. Even so, there were all sorts of quirks situated around this, to the point where many of the little odds and ends about the game that don't make sense today come from that.
Here's one example: why is "fireball" a 3rd-level spell while "cone of cold" is 5th-level, despite them basically doing the same thing (i.e. "your spellcaster's level worth of d6 damage to everything in a particular area")? Because originally, fireball melting gold, setting scrolls on fire, boiling potions away etc. was written into the spell's description, unlike how today they've reversed it to say that the spell doesn't do that. Plus, the spell explicitly said the flames created took up a certain volume, and that if it went off somewhere too small for it all they would expand until they'd filled a corresponding area. Thus, setting off a fireball spell in close quarters meant that it would spill over and likely destroy a lot of the treasure (and XP) that you'd otherwise have gained.
Eventually, Ernie Gygax (Gary's son, who played the now-legendary Tenser, among other characters) got fed up with this, and told his dad that Tenser was going to research a cold-based version of fireball so that it wouldn't destroy treasure and wouldn't overflow its volume. Gary thought it over, and decided that such a spell could be made, but would have to be a 5th-level spell to compensate for its lack of drawbacks. The spell levels for those two spells remained the same even many editions later, while the reasons for why they were different levels was eventually lost.
Its pretty rare I run across DnD origin stories I havent heard a bunch of times, this one is new to me and was interesting. Thank you.
Hmm I always assumed it was down to the AOE shape (and no expanding AOE for cone of cold if you were in a enclosed space) for the level differences between fireball and cone of cold and I do also remember all AOE magic attacks generating a saving throw for items inside its AOE in AD&D 1st ed.
Just curious if Warhammer fans have ever heard of Rifts and if there's a general sentiment towards it? I mean both the pen &paper rpg itself and the general lore, but mostly I'm interested in their thoughts on the lore. It seems like Warhammer should appeal to me but it all seems so cartoonish compared to Rifts I just can't get into it.
Archive links for this discussion:
Archive: https://archive.fo/7oM3C
I am Mnemosyne reborn. 404 witty remark not found. r/botsrights
So she's getting bored just being known as the widow of someone so now she's taken up a cause ...
Some people have jobs to maintain and others have time to bang a drum (No pun intended)
Over the years there’s become opportunities specifically for women. There are plenty of opportunities, it’s just the fact that there aren’t enough women interested or they don’t present the skill to do the job. That’s not just a female problem obviously, it’s how life works. You have to be educated and qualified to get a job in a specific field.
What a yoko.
Maybe don't force girls to things they aren't interested in.
Perhaps young girls shouldn't have spent decades treating gaming enthusiasts and D&D players as leper pariahs.
Honestly, compared to suing her stepsons for using their last name, asking women to reach out to develop some of Gary's work into a game seems relatively harmless. While I think her premise is wrong and she shouldn't limit her offer to one gender, I guess I just don't have the energy to reach for my pitchfork on this one
More like their aren't enough interested young girls to fill codding opportunities.
She should call any notable women she knows that might be interested and start something. The Fine Young Capitalists did a thing once, she should talk to them.
Hey, game creators, remember all those times you had to submit your DNA sample to confirm you were male before you can be granted a government license to make a game??
There are literally the same number of opportunities for girls as there are for guys. There are no gender segregated jobs. If more men are getting hired than women it just means that either the men ARE more qualified, do a better job at convincing employers that they are qualified, or more likely, the talent pool of men is much bigger and deeper than the talent pool for women so they are statistically more likely to have the most qualified applicant.