New York | Polygamer

Shannon Symonds is a curator at The Museum of Play, home to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG). This institution in Rochester, New York, is home to 60,000+ artifacts of gaming history, from rare game consoles, coin-ops, and prototypes to design documents, periodicals, and transcripts. Shannon, who last month was profiled in the book Women in Gaming, recently curated the Women in Games exhibit, showcasing the contributions of generations of women to video games.

In this interview, Shannon and I discuss what gaming rarities ICHEG houses, where they come from, and where they go; the challenges in preserving a digital medium; what a visitor to the Women in Games exhibit will see if they look up; why Bahiyya Khan deserves a place in gaming history; what to study in college to become a museum curator; why Shannon was surprised to be in Meagan Marie’s Women in Gaming anthology; and what we both love about Star Trek: Discovery.

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.

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The Code Liberation Foundation is a New York City-based non-profit that offers free game programming workshops to those who identify as women. The organization was founded in 2013 by Catt Small, Kay, Jane Friedhoff, Nina Freeman, Phoenix Perry, and Kaira Villanueva, seeking to change the female-to-male ratio in video game development. By creating a safe space free of the pressures often found in a mixed-gender environment, the CLF provides students the opportunities to develop their skills and confidence at no cost to them.

CLF directing member Adelle Lin joins Polygamer this week to discuss how the Code Liberation Foundation prepares students to enter a workforce that is traditionally male-dominated and how to address that issue early in the pipeline; the resources that students need that aren’t always available in more traditional academic settings; why students are taught to make games and not another genre of software, and why p5.js is one of the languages of choice for these classes; how the Code Liberation Foundation is unique from other gender-oriented academic programs or even social organizations; and how the group has evolved in its first three years.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:59 — 22.4MB) | Embed

Tag Archives: New York

Polygamer #85: Shannon Symonds of The Strong Museum of Play

Polygamer #41: Adelle Lin of the Code Liberation Foundation