The Iris Network: Women Gamers' Forum Launch

Tekanji over at the Official Shrub.com Blog has joyfully announced the launch of The Iris Network:

"After what seems like years of yearning, plotting, planning, discarding, and plotting and planning again, the dream to have a feminist-oriented community for gamers has finally been realized."

Tekanji put together The Iris Network forum with the help of site administrator Ravena in record time over the course of the last few weeks.  Their resolve to make this happen was fueled in part by a recent post on Kotaku which asked the question - Why aren't there more female gaming bloggers? - written by editor Brian Crecente.  In his post Crecente complained about not being able to find women writers for Kotaku, blaming his difficulty on this cryptically expressed perception:

"So I know they're out there, but why aren't there more of them out there, or more specifically, why aren't they, you know, more out there."

His post in no way considers the often rabidly misogynistic sentiments directed toward women gamers (nor the sometimes harsher responses regularly present in the comments section) that have been the standard for Kotaku for some time.  Perhaps he is trying to foster a change, but it may require a bit of introspection in the process.  Whatever editorial direction things end up taking at Kotaku, at least now there is an increased opportunity for women gamers in the form of The Iris Network.

Here is the mission statement for The Iris Network:

"After yet another bout of the “where are all the women gamers?” on the internet gaming communities, The IRIS Network (TIN) was finally born. Though there are many individual women gamers who write about their experiences, and many sites for women who game to connect and play with each other, none of these sites are there for the express purpose of highlighting gamers (both in the industry and outside of it) and bringing women’s perspectives into the mainstream. Though it may be a lofty goal, that’s exactly what we here at The IRIS Network aim to do."

And a description of the target audience: 

"Q: Who is this community for?

A: While I just described the forums as "feminist-oriented", this isn't a community just for feminists. It's for women of all walks of life who count gaming among their passions, men interested in networking with women gamers and perhaps learning more about inclusive game design in the process, and, really, anyone who has ever felt that they have been excluded from most games and/or gaming communities at large."

There are more things planned for The Iris Network, including an expanding directory of women who write about games, and an upcoming online gaming magazine called Cerise, due to launch next month.  I am very happy to see this online community for women gamers coming together and look forward to seeing it develop into a strong online community. 

UPDATE 4/9/07: I received some flak for describing the sentiments on Kotaku as being "rabidly misogynistic" (apparently we are not allowed to use the "M" word - I missed that memo).  Tekanji over at The Official Shrub.com blog has written a thoughtful post, Harrasment, silencing, and gaming communities, that covers a number of examples specific to the Kotaku website that were in my mind when I chose those descriptive words in my post.  Her post is very well done, and worth reading through, and gets to the source of the larger issues women gamers face in online communities.  I stand by my original assessment.

Comments

[Trina]

Congratulations for setting up a blog highlighting women's opinions on gaming. I run a gaming community that showcases women's reviews of games because I felt that women were sorely absent from Gaming Journalism. I look forward to watching you grow and if you want to do anything with GamingAngels.com, let me know!

Trina ^_^
CEO
GamingAngels.com

[Guilded Lily]

Trina - Thanks very much for your invite, I am glad to hear about your review forum at Gaming Angels. Be sure to visit The Iris Network forum and add your site to the directory there. - GL

[Guilded Lily]

Greetings All -

There seems to be some residual confusion about things due to the post on Kotaku so I will try and clear it up a bit:

The Guilded Lilies blog is a solo blog project that I started writing in January of 2006.

I am a member of The Iris Network forum, but I am not one of the creators. That credit goes to Tekanji, Ravena, and other forum members who have done all the work to make it a reality. The prominent display of my blog banner on the recent Kotaku post may lead readers to think that TIN is a Guilded Lilies forum, and that I had a hand in bringing it into existence, which is not the case. I wrote the post to promote and celebrate the launch.

Brian Crecente's original post on Kotaku that I mention above provided some fuel for getting The Iris Network finished, but it is a project that Tekanji & others have been working on for quite some time. With or without his post The Iris Network would still exist, so it isn't actually all about him.

If there is anything else let me know. Thanks! - GL

[Guilded Lily]

Greetings All -

I also feel the need to establish that in spite of the link in March 28th Kotaku piece on the 2006 Girl Gamer awards, the Guilded Lilies blog was not involved in any way with that project. Also contrary to what that post suggest, I don't 'hate their guts', at least not yet. Thanks - GL

[Le Driver]

Where are the women gaming bloggers? Well, I'm one of them. I simply do not have GIRL GAMER plastered across the front page of my site.

I think Brian and others might be surprised to find that many of the blogs they're reading are only assumed to be written by men. In the absence of any gender indicators, readers will assume a blog about gaming is written by a man.

I think a smarter question to ask would be: where are all the gaming bloggers? Kotaku and Joystiq have such a monopoly. You'd think there'd be heaps of popular blogs on the subject.