Elisa Meléndez recently spoke on a PAX East 2015 panel about how we create and identify with our avatars in virtual game worlds. This is one of just many topics she’s researched as part of her Ph.D studies in comparative sociology — and her academic career is just one of Elisa’s many aspects. In this podcast, she discusses being, in her husband’s words, a "triple threat" — a queer woman of color — in the gaming industry, the whitewashing of PAX East, a sociological perspective on GamerGate, being a FragDoll cadet, how gaming saved her marriage, fronting for the rock band Crimson and getting her music into the Ubisoft game Rocksmith, coming out to her father as bisexual, whether being a badass is sexist — and much, much more! So much, that this episode of Polygamer clocks in at two hours, twice its usual length.
Download the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, Overcast, acast, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, or RadioPublic. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.
- Different Games
- IvanExpert of NYC
- Less Than or Equal‘s Patreon
- Elisa Meléndez
- Khadeja Merenkov’s interview on Polygamer
- PAX East 2015 panel "Player Select: Identifying with Our Virtual Selves"
- AlterConf
- Does PAX East need a separate Diversity Lounge?
- FragDolls
- Elisa’s experience in the Xbox Gamer Spotlight
- "Game Developer Harassment: How To Get Through" at GDC 2015
- Randi Lee Harper’s Online Abuse Prevention Initiative
- Polygamer‘s outside perspective on GamerGate & Anita Sarkeesian
- The key to a happy relationship? Maybe it’s Borderlands
- Gone Home
- Less Than or Equal
- Crimson rock band
- Every review of Black Widow in Captain America is wrong
- An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior (Tracy L. Dietz, 1998)
- Imposter Syndrome
Podcast: Download (Duration: 2:07:25 — 59.2MB) | Embed
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