crowdfunding | Polygamer

Polygamer #97: Dr. Carly Kocurek of Save Point & Games for Girls

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Ken Gagne

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 iTunes, 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.

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Polygamer #87: Tifa Robles and The Explorers of Azullucent

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Tifa Robles is the author of The Explorers of Azullucent, a young-adult fantasy novel currently on Kickstarter. Over 16 years in the making, this book features a trio of diverse female protagonists on an epic adventure of discovery. Tifa is no stranger to writing, being a regular contributor to the board game website Tabletop-Test. Her love for gaming continues as co-host GenCon’s TableTakes show and as founder and former organizer of the Lady Planeswalker Society, a community for introducing players to Magic: The Gathering.

In this episode, Tifa and I reunite after three years since her last appearance on Polygamer. We chat about how her book has evolved over almost two decades; the advantages of going the crowdfunding, self-published route; who she turned to for help with peer reviews, art design, and crowdfunding; how a degree in creative writing informs her non-fiction writing; how a minor in biological anthropology can be essential to developing empathy; the challenges and tricks to being a writer with dyslexia; and how she juggles it all with being a mom.

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Polygamer #81: Cynthia Lowen, director of NETIZENS

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Cynthia Lowen is the director and producer of NETIZENS, a documentary that details the proliferation of online harassment faced by women. The film follows feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, attorney Carrie Goldberg, and businesswoman Tina Reine as they fight back against the online harassment that has threatened their careers and livelihoods. Lowen ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for NETIZENS in late 2016 and is now showing the movie on the film festival circuit prior to its general release.

In this interview, I chat with Lowen about what inspired her to make this film; why she chose to focus on gendered online harassment broadly and not just in online gaming; whether the past few years have made the Internet safer or more dangerous for women; the role that men and video games can play in solving the problem of online harassment; how NETIZENS compares with her previous film, Bully; her experience with crowdfunding; and when we can look forward to NETIZENS‘s wide release.

This interview was recorded on Friday, September 21, 2018, while Lowen was in Switzerland as part of the film tour. Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, 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.

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Polygamer #75: Matt Baume of Queens of Adventure

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Queens of Adventure is a comedy-adventure podcast in which four drag queens slay their way through pencil-and-paper role-playing games. Adapted from the live stage show Dungeons & Drag Queens, Queens of Adventure has as its dungeon master Matt Baume, host of the podcast Sewers of Paris, director of documentary Playing with Pride, and returning guest of Polygamer.

On this episode, Matt provides an introductory lesson to drag and how it’s similar to D&D; how he’ll adapt an over-the-top live show of one-off adventures to an audio-only ongoing campaign; how designer James Morris is creating a role-playing campaign for drag queens that’s different from off-the-shelf modules, including using the language of polari; and the exciting stretch goals for the podcast’s Kickstarter campaign.

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Polygamer #57: Natalie Juhasz of ReVenture Games

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Ken Gagne

Natalie Juhasz is the co-founder and creative lead of indie game studio ReVenture Games. After producing several successful point-and-click adventure games in the Lorna Bains franchise, Juhasz and co-founder Marcus Seyer have launched an Indiegogo campaign for their first commercial title: Lorna Bains in ‘For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls’. As part of their exploration of narrative, the studio also recently attended narrative games convention AdventureX, where Juhasz attended several panels on the proliferation of adventure game mechanics, the intersection of adventure games and virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift, and more.

In this interview, Ken and Natalie discuss the myth of adventure games having died and been resurrected; the differences in tone and gameplay between Sierra’s and LucasArts’ classic adventure titles; the strengths and weaknesses of modern game engines available for creating adventure games; the decision to take Lorna Bains from freeware to commercial; and how games can have narrative without being about narrative.

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Polygamer #38: Ashe Dryden of AlterConf

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Ken Gagne

Ashe Dryden is the creator of AlterConf, a traveling conference series of marginalized voices from the tech and gaming industries. Since its founding in 2014, AlterConf has been held at a dozen cities throughout the United States and Canada, hosting talks and panels that go beyond Diversity 101. And in 2016, AlterConf will expand internationally, with events in South Africa, France, India, Australia, Germany, and more.

In this podcast, Ashe discusses how AlterConf will address global issues of diversity while respecting local values; how the Code of Conduct applies in different cultures; why all AlterConf speakers and organizers are paid, not volunteers; and whether AlterConf will ever exhaust the range of topics at the Diversity 201 level. Finally, Ashe also mentions her new project, The Fund Club, which uses crowdfunding to inject significant financial boosts into non-profits supporting marginalized voices in tech.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:03 — 27.9MB) | Embed