Dr. Carly Kocurek is an associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Her work in the analysis and preservation of games includes Save Point, a zine about the history of video games whose second issue is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. She is also researching the “Games for Girls” movement of the 1990s, courtesy a grant from the National Science Foundation.
In this podcast interview, we discuss why a zine is a format uniquely suited to this topic; how Save Point is able to be published with such a modest budget; how to make academic subjects accessible to a lay audience; what the “Games for Girls” movement was, and how it’s evolved over the last 25 years; the research that the NSF grant enables her to conduct; and how listeners can support game preservation efforts.
Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Carly Kocurek
- Save Point #2 on Kickstarter
- Save Point #1
- Learning Games Initiative Research Archive (LGIRA)
- The Agony and the Exidy: A History of Video Game Violence and the Legacy of Death Race
- International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at the Museum of Play
- National Science Foundation grant for Games for Girls
- Barbie Fashion Designer
- Chop Suey game by Magnet Interactive Studios
- Polygamer #95: Shannon Symonds of The Strong Museum of Play
- Polygamer #04: Sheri Graner Ray on Gender-Inclusive Game Design
Full disclosure: I backed both Save Point Kickstarters.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:58 — 24.2MB) | Embed
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