Monday, March 23, 2009
Records I Bought Today: Podcast In-Class Exercise
Hello my name is Kyle Nelson and welcome to my podcast for Monday March 23rd, 2009. Today I went to the record store and bought a few new LP's. Yes those are actual vinyl records that your parents used to listen to in the 1970's. They still manufacture records for a lot of music that comes out. People like me still collect them. Maybe not MTV or radio bands but smaller independent bands. Even a handful of larger bands like Coldplay and Radiohead put out new vinyl. Today I bought an old record used and one new. The used record I bought was Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen. The Minutemen were a punk rock group from the early 1980's. They are characterized by fast, short songs with distinctive basslines. In fact Double Nickels has almost 40 songs on it. If you are even slightly into punk rock I would highly recommend picking up this or any Minutemen record. Even if your not that into punk rock, you may still like this record. It isn't as aggressive as most punk rock but still has a catchy edge to it.The other record I bought today is the new self-titled album by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. These guys are a new indie band that just put out their first album. It has a very different feel than the Minutemen record. It is a very fuzzy feel to it. It has tinges of pop and feels like an early Jesus and Mary Chain record. Needless to say it's fantastic. I would highly recommend either of these albums to anyone. I mean you don't have to go straight out and buy them, just give them a listen. My name is Kyle Nelson and this has been my daily record report for Monday March 23, 2009. Talk to you later guys.
Monday, March 16, 2009
End the Sweeps: An Open Letter to Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Dear Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
I am writing this letter to you as a concerned voter and taxpayer asking you to end your broad based immigration sweeps across Maricopa County and the greater Phoenix area. In today’s troubled times these sweeps are an unneeded economic burden on our already troubled state government. The state budget deficit, currently at $1.2 billion, could rise by as much as $4.3 billion over the next fiscal year. Facing this extreme budget shortfall, all Arizonans need to do everything they can to help shrink this deficit, especially state funded agencies.
Enforcing these laws is the job of Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE), not the local sheriff’s office. ICE was created with federal funds for federal officers to enforce these laws. By volunteering our sheriffs rather than having the Department of Justice agents pay for and enforce these laws you are creating an unnecessary burden on our already overcrowded jails and putting the cost of detaining these immigrants squarely on the backs of Maricopa County taxpayers. In other parts of the country these raids are conducted and paid for by federal agents. Why should we as taxpayers shoulder these costs when our state is being faced with severe budget cuts to necessary services? Why not share the burden as a county through the federal funding? Why use our scarce state tax money when we are already using our federal tax dollars at the risk of state budget cuts?
The purpose of ICE, in their own words, is to address “serious crime…committed by removable aliens.” It is not meant to arrest illegal immigrants for minor traffic offenses, open alcohol containers or simply their residing in our country illegally. In ICE’s own word’s this is “contrary to the objectives of the program.” Basically you have your ICE deputized Sheriff’s office employees conducting immigration sweeps contrary to ICE’s stated objectives. If you are going to enforce these laws, shouldn't they be enforced the way ICE wants them to be? The Sheriffs Office interpreting ICE directives as they choose should not waste our state taxpayer dollars.
According to an investigative report by the East Valley Tribune, the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office has created a deficit of $1.3 million in the first three months of enforcing immigration laws on overtime spending alone. Emergency response times for the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office, already above national police averages of 5 minutes have skyrocketed as well. Many areas in the valley now have average response times of 12 minutes or more, more than twice as long as the national average. As crime is growing and our budgets are shrinking, our response times for emergencies are shooting through the roof. In this dire economic climate we are severely cutting spending and under funding our schools and Child Protective Services while the Sheriff’s Office is over budget. If we are going to invest that money in crime prevention and patrols shouldn’t the people of Maricopa County receive better services than some of the slowest emergency response times in the nation? You are enforcing these immigration laws at the expense of the safety of your constituents and we deserve better than that.
Additionally, the way this program is being enforced is leading us down a slippery slope. We cannot have hard working legal citizens of Hispanic descent afraid to live their lives for fear of racial profiling. It is not acceptable to pull a anyone over and temporarily detain them to check the legality of their citizenship. This is racial profiling and has no place in a free democratic society. There are many hard working, tax-paying Hispanics who deserve to be treated the same as everyone else regardless of their skin color. Our state has worked hard to shed the racist label brought upon us by the Martin Luther King Jr. Day fiasco led by former Govenor Evan Meachem. We do not need more national attention focused on our wonderful state for the racial profiling practices currently employed by the Sheriff’s Office. It took Arizona a long time to recover from all of the bad publicity associated with the MLK Jr. fiasco, we do not need to add another incident to cloud the view of this great state.
Now I do not want you to get the opinion I am like all of the other anti-Sheriff Joe Arpaio people here in the valley, quite to the contrary. The first election I ever voted in my life was in 1993 when I turned 18. I researched all of the Propositions and the candidates with great fervor and one of the first decisions I came to was to vote for you. I looked at your law enforcement experience, your many years overseas working for the DEA, and thought this is the guy I want catching criminals in Maricopa County. I loved that you were so tough on crime and vigilant in your enforcement of the law. However, I really think you are missing the boat with these immigration sweeps. I think rather than target businesses and other venues you should be going after violent offenders, drug smugglers and other illegal immigrants who have made this the kidnapping capitol of the nation. Better yet, let ICE conduct these raids at the federal governments expense.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle W. Nelson
Works Cited
Aizenman, N.C. “Report Cites Problem in ICE Training Program.” The Washington Post. 4 Mar. 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030304231.html?sub=new
Fausset, Richard. “More Than 300 Arrested in Immigration Sweep.” Los Angeles Times. 8 Oct. 2008 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/08/nation/na-raid8
Gabrielson, Ryan. “Reasonable Doubt Part I.” East Valley Tribune. 10 July 2008. 13 March 2009. Path: Part I; Multimedia; Emergency Response Times Interactive Map. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt
Gabrielson, Ryan. “Reasonable Doubt Part II: Overtime Led to MCSO Budget Crisis.” East Valley Tribune. 10 July 2008. 13 March 2009. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/120468
Sunnucks, Mike. “State Budget Deficit Approaches $4.5 Billion.” Phoenix Business Journal. 8 Jan. 2009 http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/01/05/daily56.html
I am writing this letter to you as a concerned voter and taxpayer asking you to end your broad based immigration sweeps across Maricopa County and the greater Phoenix area. In today’s troubled times these sweeps are an unneeded economic burden on our already troubled state government. The state budget deficit, currently at $1.2 billion, could rise by as much as $4.3 billion over the next fiscal year. Facing this extreme budget shortfall, all Arizonans need to do everything they can to help shrink this deficit, especially state funded agencies.
Enforcing these laws is the job of Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE), not the local sheriff’s office. ICE was created with federal funds for federal officers to enforce these laws. By volunteering our sheriffs rather than having the Department of Justice agents pay for and enforce these laws you are creating an unnecessary burden on our already overcrowded jails and putting the cost of detaining these immigrants squarely on the backs of Maricopa County taxpayers. In other parts of the country these raids are conducted and paid for by federal agents. Why should we as taxpayers shoulder these costs when our state is being faced with severe budget cuts to necessary services? Why not share the burden as a county through the federal funding? Why use our scarce state tax money when we are already using our federal tax dollars at the risk of state budget cuts?
The purpose of ICE, in their own words, is to address “serious crime…committed by removable aliens.” It is not meant to arrest illegal immigrants for minor traffic offenses, open alcohol containers or simply their residing in our country illegally. In ICE’s own word’s this is “contrary to the objectives of the program.” Basically you have your ICE deputized Sheriff’s office employees conducting immigration sweeps contrary to ICE’s stated objectives. If you are going to enforce these laws, shouldn't they be enforced the way ICE wants them to be? The Sheriffs Office interpreting ICE directives as they choose should not waste our state taxpayer dollars.
According to an investigative report by the East Valley Tribune, the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office has created a deficit of $1.3 million in the first three months of enforcing immigration laws on overtime spending alone. Emergency response times for the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office, already above national police averages of 5 minutes have skyrocketed as well. Many areas in the valley now have average response times of 12 minutes or more, more than twice as long as the national average. As crime is growing and our budgets are shrinking, our response times for emergencies are shooting through the roof. In this dire economic climate we are severely cutting spending and under funding our schools and Child Protective Services while the Sheriff’s Office is over budget. If we are going to invest that money in crime prevention and patrols shouldn’t the people of Maricopa County receive better services than some of the slowest emergency response times in the nation? You are enforcing these immigration laws at the expense of the safety of your constituents and we deserve better than that.
Additionally, the way this program is being enforced is leading us down a slippery slope. We cannot have hard working legal citizens of Hispanic descent afraid to live their lives for fear of racial profiling. It is not acceptable to pull a anyone over and temporarily detain them to check the legality of their citizenship. This is racial profiling and has no place in a free democratic society. There are many hard working, tax-paying Hispanics who deserve to be treated the same as everyone else regardless of their skin color. Our state has worked hard to shed the racist label brought upon us by the Martin Luther King Jr. Day fiasco led by former Govenor Evan Meachem. We do not need more national attention focused on our wonderful state for the racial profiling practices currently employed by the Sheriff’s Office. It took Arizona a long time to recover from all of the bad publicity associated with the MLK Jr. fiasco, we do not need to add another incident to cloud the view of this great state.
Now I do not want you to get the opinion I am like all of the other anti-Sheriff Joe Arpaio people here in the valley, quite to the contrary. The first election I ever voted in my life was in 1993 when I turned 18. I researched all of the Propositions and the candidates with great fervor and one of the first decisions I came to was to vote for you. I looked at your law enforcement experience, your many years overseas working for the DEA, and thought this is the guy I want catching criminals in Maricopa County. I loved that you were so tough on crime and vigilant in your enforcement of the law. However, I really think you are missing the boat with these immigration sweeps. I think rather than target businesses and other venues you should be going after violent offenders, drug smugglers and other illegal immigrants who have made this the kidnapping capitol of the nation. Better yet, let ICE conduct these raids at the federal governments expense.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle W. Nelson
Works Cited
Aizenman, N.C. “Report Cites Problem in ICE Training Program.” The Washington Post. 4 Mar. 2009 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030304231.html?sub=new
Fausset, Richard. “More Than 300 Arrested in Immigration Sweep.” Los Angeles Times. 8 Oct. 2008 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/08/nation/na-raid8
Gabrielson, Ryan. “Reasonable Doubt Part I.” East Valley Tribune. 10 July 2008. 13 March 2009. Path: Part I; Multimedia; Emergency Response Times Interactive Map. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt
Gabrielson, Ryan. “Reasonable Doubt Part II: Overtime Led to MCSO Budget Crisis.” East Valley Tribune. 10 July 2008. 13 March 2009. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/120468
Sunnucks, Mike. “State Budget Deficit Approaches $4.5 Billion.” Phoenix Business Journal. 8 Jan. 2009 http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/01/05/daily56.html
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Open Letter to Sheriff Joe (DRAFT)
Dear Sheriff Joe Arpaio,
I am writing this letter to you as a concerned voter and taxpayer asking you to end your broad based immigration sweeps across Maricopa County and the greater Phoenix area. In today’s troubled times these sweeps are an unneeded economic burden on our already troubled state government. The state budget deficit, currently at $1.2 billion, could rise by as much as $4.3 billion over the next fiscal year. Facing this extreme budget shortfall, all Arizonans need to do everything they can to help shrink this deficit, especially state funded agencies.
Enforcing these laws is the job of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not the local sheriff’s office. By volunteering to enforce these laws you are creating an unnecessary burden on our already overcrowded jails and putting the cost of detaining these immigrants squarely on the backs of Maricopa County taxpayers. In other parts of the country these raids are conducted and paid for by federal agents. Why should we as taxpayers shoulder these costs when our state is being faced with severe budget cuts to necessary services?
These cuts have already begun with social workers losing their jobs of helping to keep families together. By laying these social workers off it will give CPS workers less leeway in regards to keeping a family together through family counseling. The CPS caseworkers will be putting more children in foster care, thus creating another burden on our system and costing us more money in the long term. There are even more devastating consequences than just the monetary cost. According to author Richard Barth in a report prepared by The League of Women Voters in California, “Studies of homeless young people in New York and Los Angeles in the 1980's found that 30- 40% of them had been in foster care.” Can we really afford to contribute to the epidemic of unemployment and homelessness to do a job the federal government is already willing to do?
The purpose of ICE in their own words is to address “serious crime…committed by removable aliens.” It is not meant to arrest illegal immigrants for minor traffic offenses, open alcohol containers or other petty crimes. In ICE’s own word’s this is “contrary to the objective of the program.” So basically you have ICE deputized Sheriff’s office employees conducting immigration sweeps contrary to ICE’s objectives. If you are going to enforce these laws, shouldn’t they be enforced the way ICE wants them to be? We shouldn’t be spending our tax money to interpret directives from ICE however we want to with mixed results at best.
The way we are enforcing this program is also leading us down a slippery slope. We can’t have hard working legal citizens of Hispanic descent afraid to live their lives for fear of racial profiling. It is not ok to pull somebody over and temporarily detain them to check the legality of their citizenship. This is racial profiling and has no place in a free democratic society. There are many hard working tax-paying Hispanics who deserve to be treated the same as everyone else regardless of skin color. Our state has worked hard to shed the racist label brought upon us by the Martin Luther King Jr. Day fiasco led by former Governor Evan Meacham. We do not need more national attention focused on us for racial profiling practices currently employed by the Sheriff’s Office. It took Arizona a long time to recover from all of the bad publicity associated with the MLK day fiasco, we don’t need to add another incident to cloud the view of this great state.
Now I don’t want you to get the opinion I am like all of the other anti Sheriff Joe Arpaio people here in the valley, quite to the contrary. The first election I ever voted in was in 1993. I researched all of the Propositions and the candidates and one of the first decisions I came to was to vote for you. I looked at your law enforcement experience, your years overseas working for the DEA and thought, this is the guy I want catching criminals in Maricopa County. I love that you are tough on crime and vigilant in your enforcement of the law. However I really think you are missing the boat with these immigration sweeps. I think that rather than target businesses and other venues you should be going after violent offenders, drug smugglers and other illegal immigrants who have made this the kidnapping capitol of the nation. Better yet let ICE conduct these raids at the federal government’s expense.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle Nelson
I am writing this letter to you as a concerned voter and taxpayer asking you to end your broad based immigration sweeps across Maricopa County and the greater Phoenix area. In today’s troubled times these sweeps are an unneeded economic burden on our already troubled state government. The state budget deficit, currently at $1.2 billion, could rise by as much as $4.3 billion over the next fiscal year. Facing this extreme budget shortfall, all Arizonans need to do everything they can to help shrink this deficit, especially state funded agencies.
Enforcing these laws is the job of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not the local sheriff’s office. By volunteering to enforce these laws you are creating an unnecessary burden on our already overcrowded jails and putting the cost of detaining these immigrants squarely on the backs of Maricopa County taxpayers. In other parts of the country these raids are conducted and paid for by federal agents. Why should we as taxpayers shoulder these costs when our state is being faced with severe budget cuts to necessary services?
These cuts have already begun with social workers losing their jobs of helping to keep families together. By laying these social workers off it will give CPS workers less leeway in regards to keeping a family together through family counseling. The CPS caseworkers will be putting more children in foster care, thus creating another burden on our system and costing us more money in the long term. There are even more devastating consequences than just the monetary cost. According to author Richard Barth in a report prepared by The League of Women Voters in California, “Studies of homeless young people in New York and Los Angeles in the 1980's found that 30- 40% of them had been in foster care.” Can we really afford to contribute to the epidemic of unemployment and homelessness to do a job the federal government is already willing to do?
The purpose of ICE in their own words is to address “serious crime…committed by removable aliens.” It is not meant to arrest illegal immigrants for minor traffic offenses, open alcohol containers or other petty crimes. In ICE’s own word’s this is “contrary to the objective of the program.” So basically you have ICE deputized Sheriff’s office employees conducting immigration sweeps contrary to ICE’s objectives. If you are going to enforce these laws, shouldn’t they be enforced the way ICE wants them to be? We shouldn’t be spending our tax money to interpret directives from ICE however we want to with mixed results at best.
The way we are enforcing this program is also leading us down a slippery slope. We can’t have hard working legal citizens of Hispanic descent afraid to live their lives for fear of racial profiling. It is not ok to pull somebody over and temporarily detain them to check the legality of their citizenship. This is racial profiling and has no place in a free democratic society. There are many hard working tax-paying Hispanics who deserve to be treated the same as everyone else regardless of skin color. Our state has worked hard to shed the racist label brought upon us by the Martin Luther King Jr. Day fiasco led by former Governor Evan Meacham. We do not need more national attention focused on us for racial profiling practices currently employed by the Sheriff’s Office. It took Arizona a long time to recover from all of the bad publicity associated with the MLK day fiasco, we don’t need to add another incident to cloud the view of this great state.
Now I don’t want you to get the opinion I am like all of the other anti Sheriff Joe Arpaio people here in the valley, quite to the contrary. The first election I ever voted in was in 1993. I researched all of the Propositions and the candidates and one of the first decisions I came to was to vote for you. I looked at your law enforcement experience, your years overseas working for the DEA and thought, this is the guy I want catching criminals in Maricopa County. I love that you are tough on crime and vigilant in your enforcement of the law. However I really think you are missing the boat with these immigration sweeps. I think that rather than target businesses and other venues you should be going after violent offenders, drug smugglers and other illegal immigrants who have made this the kidnapping capitol of the nation. Better yet let ICE conduct these raids at the federal government’s expense.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle Nelson
Sunday, March 1, 2009
EXTRA CREDIT Open Letter: Female Gamers
Dear Phil Rogers CEO of Eidos Interactive INC.,
I am writing this letter as a concerned video gamer, future father and uncle to two beautiful nieces. As I have watched my nieces grow up they are getting more and more interested in video gaming and video games in general. The problem is as they grow out of Barbie type games and into womanhood there is less and less games designed to interest them. They have grown up with Barbie games, dress-up and make-up games and countless games focused solely on shopping. Now as they grow older and tire of these mindless exercises in self-indulgence, they are looking for something challenging with stimulating female lead characters. Well what is out there on store shelves to satisfy this need? The answer is nothing, virtually no games for them to turn to. Don’t get me wrong there are games out there with female lead characters, they are just designed more to stimulate a man’s hormones, not a young ladies mind.
Your character Lara Croft from Tomb Raider is not teaching these girls anything but to dress provocatively and to carry a big gun. It’s a shame to because you would think the character of a female archaeologist searching for treasure would be more about science and solving puzzles than about looking like a streetwalker and shooting things. I have really yet to encounter a female scientist who has an 8 inch waist and a 46 inch bust. Don’t get me wrong I love playing Tomb Raider, even to this day, but what is it telling young women. You can be a scientist or adventurer but be hot and don’t wear anything large or loose fitting.
I think it’s your duty as a video game publisher to help create games that can have a positive effect on young females. Now I’m not proposing you lose money by creating The Adventures of Gloria Steinem, but there is a huge void in this market that you can capitalize on. There are young women gamers out there that want fun, intelligent games to play featuring strong female characters. They should have more options than Barbie shopping or overtly sexual female avatars. I really think you have the power to be a trailblazing company in this aspect.
People used to think that there was no market for games that the whole family could play. Now with the Nintendo Wii, there is a ton of money to be made with games for the whole family. My grandma hasn’t been able to use a VCR for twenty years but she can play bowling on the Wii. So cast aside those erroneous market research reports that show there is no profit potential in publishing games for young women. Take a chance and show the world that you can produce something fun with substance to help young gaming girls grow into gaming women. Who knows you might even stumble upon something that can make you millions of dollars in the future.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle W. Nelson
I am writing this letter as a concerned video gamer, future father and uncle to two beautiful nieces. As I have watched my nieces grow up they are getting more and more interested in video gaming and video games in general. The problem is as they grow out of Barbie type games and into womanhood there is less and less games designed to interest them. They have grown up with Barbie games, dress-up and make-up games and countless games focused solely on shopping. Now as they grow older and tire of these mindless exercises in self-indulgence, they are looking for something challenging with stimulating female lead characters. Well what is out there on store shelves to satisfy this need? The answer is nothing, virtually no games for them to turn to. Don’t get me wrong there are games out there with female lead characters, they are just designed more to stimulate a man’s hormones, not a young ladies mind.
Your character Lara Croft from Tomb Raider is not teaching these girls anything but to dress provocatively and to carry a big gun. It’s a shame to because you would think the character of a female archaeologist searching for treasure would be more about science and solving puzzles than about looking like a streetwalker and shooting things. I have really yet to encounter a female scientist who has an 8 inch waist and a 46 inch bust. Don’t get me wrong I love playing Tomb Raider, even to this day, but what is it telling young women. You can be a scientist or adventurer but be hot and don’t wear anything large or loose fitting.
I think it’s your duty as a video game publisher to help create games that can have a positive effect on young females. Now I’m not proposing you lose money by creating The Adventures of Gloria Steinem, but there is a huge void in this market that you can capitalize on. There are young women gamers out there that want fun, intelligent games to play featuring strong female characters. They should have more options than Barbie shopping or overtly sexual female avatars. I really think you have the power to be a trailblazing company in this aspect.
People used to think that there was no market for games that the whole family could play. Now with the Nintendo Wii, there is a ton of money to be made with games for the whole family. My grandma hasn’t been able to use a VCR for twenty years but she can play bowling on the Wii. So cast aside those erroneous market research reports that show there is no profit potential in publishing games for young women. Take a chance and show the world that you can produce something fun with substance to help young gaming girls grow into gaming women. Who knows you might even stumble upon something that can make you millions of dollars in the future.
Respectfully Yours,
Kyle W. Nelson
Where Are All the Women Gamers?
I was watching television the other day and saw a preview for the new movie Streetfighter, based on the popular video game franchise. I grew up in the 1980’s and like most kids from the 80’s I played video games. Actually I played a ton of video games with my friends all the time. The one game we couldn’t play enough of was any of the Streetfighter games. In fact my sister and I would hold Streetfighter 2 marathons for hours on end. She would play, not because it was her favorite game, but because it was one of the few games with any female characters. However as time wore on and she grew older, what was once her favorite aspect, female characters, became what eventually made her stop playing games altogether. In Streetfighter 2 only two of the twenty characters were female, and they looked more apt to be in a swimsuit competition rather than a fighting game. In a game that is essentially a series of streetfights, why are the women almost naked while the male characters are all fully clothed?
As my sister grew older and more intelligent these over sexualized female characters became less relevant and more offensive to her. She stopped playing Streetfighter with me and eventually just stopped playing video games altogether. This because there were no definable or realistic characters for her to relate to, and with that video game companies lost a potential lifetime consumer. Was this really worth losing a potential 50 year source of revenue over, I don’t really think so. Now that she’s a parent she also holds the same contempt for video games that she will pass on to her two daughters.
When I saw the preview for the new Streetfighter movie I was amazed to see that it featured only one original character from the game, Chun-Li. Chun-Li happens to be one of the two scantily clad characters from the original Streetfighter 2 game. You may ask yourself why would they make a movie from this classic game and feature only one of the original characters. Well because nearly naked women who beat people up sell, and especially to men. It’s already clear that these gaming companies are not focused on woman as consumers so why should a movie spun off of the video game franchise translate any differently. Every product has a specific demographic in mind when they market it for release. They say we’re going for males aged 18-35 and aim their advertising accordingly. However most products want the widest range of consumers as possible, it just makes fiscal sense. Not video game producers, they’re comfortable with the consumers they have and aren’t willing to change to accommodate anyone.
Maybe to change the types of games available to women we need more women involved in the actual process of making games. It could start at the creative level of designing games and coming up with ideas that will intrigue women to become hardcore gamers. The next step would be in the designing of the outfits of some of the characters to a more realistic and relatable style. Women in real life don’t walk around in bikinis much less fight in them, so maybe it’s time games followed suit. They could also be in the marketing and publishing of video games to help target girls and their gaming needs.
Even with this movie its not too late to change the way woman are perceived in video games. Video game producers can still use the same characters, albeit in a more toned down way. Let the Chun-Li and the rest of the female fighters wear more realistic outfits in the future games. Make it more about the style, substance and intricacies of the fighting and overall game experience and less about the cheapness of sexuality. Granted this won’t bring back gamers like my sister but it could change the gaming future for my nieces. Men are still going to play the games regardless; it’s just what we do. We will always have the internet if we want to look at anything racy and scandalous.
As my sister grew older and more intelligent these over sexualized female characters became less relevant and more offensive to her. She stopped playing Streetfighter with me and eventually just stopped playing video games altogether. This because there were no definable or realistic characters for her to relate to, and with that video game companies lost a potential lifetime consumer. Was this really worth losing a potential 50 year source of revenue over, I don’t really think so. Now that she’s a parent she also holds the same contempt for video games that she will pass on to her two daughters.
When I saw the preview for the new Streetfighter movie I was amazed to see that it featured only one original character from the game, Chun-Li. Chun-Li happens to be one of the two scantily clad characters from the original Streetfighter 2 game. You may ask yourself why would they make a movie from this classic game and feature only one of the original characters. Well because nearly naked women who beat people up sell, and especially to men. It’s already clear that these gaming companies are not focused on woman as consumers so why should a movie spun off of the video game franchise translate any differently. Every product has a specific demographic in mind when they market it for release. They say we’re going for males aged 18-35 and aim their advertising accordingly. However most products want the widest range of consumers as possible, it just makes fiscal sense. Not video game producers, they’re comfortable with the consumers they have and aren’t willing to change to accommodate anyone.
Maybe to change the types of games available to women we need more women involved in the actual process of making games. It could start at the creative level of designing games and coming up with ideas that will intrigue women to become hardcore gamers. The next step would be in the designing of the outfits of some of the characters to a more realistic and relatable style. Women in real life don’t walk around in bikinis much less fight in them, so maybe it’s time games followed suit. They could also be in the marketing and publishing of video games to help target girls and their gaming needs.
Even with this movie its not too late to change the way woman are perceived in video games. Video game producers can still use the same characters, albeit in a more toned down way. Let the Chun-Li and the rest of the female fighters wear more realistic outfits in the future games. Make it more about the style, substance and intricacies of the fighting and overall game experience and less about the cheapness of sexuality. Granted this won’t bring back gamers like my sister but it could change the gaming future for my nieces. Men are still going to play the games regardless; it’s just what we do. We will always have the internet if we want to look at anything racy and scandalous.
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