The Student Loans Company have sent me a letter in their usual aggressive tone, claiming that HMRC say that I am no longer in employment, and if I don’t respond quickly enough about my circumstances, they will charge me £150 (helpful!).

HMRC are still charging me 30% tax. I finally received a P45 from one of my previous employers, so I can call them on Monday and hopefully talk about the tax rebate I’m due. What galls me is that the P45 supplied is a document from HMRC sent to my previous employer. Surely that means they already have my information?

I still stand by my primary issue with the 30% emergency tax rate. Overcharging on tax particularly on a new worker who has only just started to pay tax under the pretense of an “emergency” would be a joke if money wasn’t such a big issue right now. I am extremely lucky as a loyal customer to HSBC that they don’t charge a higher interest on my overdraft limit, which I’m still dipping into. Again though, this is more money that’s disappearing.

Unfortunately my circumstances aren’t going to change for a while. Until I can stop paying additional rent on an apartment in York I no longer live in, my balance will be perpetually sitting in the red. On a personal level, I work the usual Monday to Friday. I can visit my boyfriend on weekends, but I don’t even see him for almost the entire duration as he always works weekends. Because of the money situation even those visits are rare. What I have to remind myself, is that these circumstances really aren’t bad in the grand scheme of things. I don’t live in Oklahoma, so as a woman I don’t have to surrender my rights to my own body. I don’t live in poverty. I’m not dying.

Until finishing University I don’t believe I’ve ever had any particularly complicated or numerous aspirations. I wanted to get better at running, I wanted to play video games, I wanted to leave school, I wanted to go to University, I wanted to learn how to make games, and then more than anything I wanted a job. But it is in getting a job that life has become much more complicated, and my current home isn’t the stress-free sanctuary I want it to be. So in an attempt to get things back to the way they were, to have simpler goals again, I’ve returned to running.

Me during MONEYGEDDON

Me on my last day of school. I’m the kangeroo on the left. It’s still Moneygeddon.

Me going to University and forgetting how to dress normally, blowing all that extra Moneygeddon cash on alcohol and silly ears.

Me now

  I may need to find some old grimey walls to photograph myself, when I look for ‘grime’ Google is mostly returning album covers and men in sideways caps, because apparently grime is a genre of music as opposed to a persistent stain of dirt (judging by this image it’s just as good).

Kinect Star Wars only came to my attention in the uproar that followed our first peek at the dancing.

It’s impossible for me to gawk at it – I have a pair of Star Wars trainers and a Jedi dressing gown. I love Lego Star Wars, and Star Wars Battlefront, and I have a cuddly Wookiee on my desk. The brand is eternal to familiar fans, I assume steps like Kinect Star Wars branch out to whatever new audience there could be.

My only real complaint is that the number of moves in the dancing look extremely limited, there’s no-where near the same diversity you’ll get in games like Just Dance and DanceStar Party, and I’m not fond of the music or the covers I’ve heard so far, but if it’s a good game, it’s a good game, albeit surreal and disjointed to the universe it is set in (and dancing is only a small part of the offering). When I was little I played with cars, dinosaurs, and a Luke Skywalker figure. I’ll always fondly remember where it all started for me.

In gaming as a whole, there’s an endless circle of coverage and debate on these three groups of people. One of these, the Female Gamer, and often eluded to lack-of, I largely denounce now as a myth. During my degree at university I learned that one of the first games known to have a larger female player base than male, was in fact Age of Empires II, a real time strategy game for PC, released in 1999.

If we humour the view that people playing video games on different formats, and of different genres, are not really “gamers”, then perhaps this area is massively male-dominated. Although this entirely depends on what you believe determines a “gamer”. Today, I would simply call a person who plays games, a gamer. That way, you can ‘um’ and ‘ahh’ over the hours dedicated, genres covered and platforms owned as much as you like, and still encompass any consumer counted. They can be hardcore obsessive or having a dabble, but they still exist as an entity purchasing, downloading, and playing video games. You may see less obvious female voices on games forums, talking through a headset or leading a clan, but just because someone chooses to neglect a female name, avatar, or voice, doesn’t mean you can discount their existence as someone consuming the medium. Regardless of how vocal or seemingly silent, they are still an audience, arguably targeted by more developers today than ever before.

No-one can deny the fact that many female gamers, on certain platforms more than others, are on the receiving end of terrible abuse due to their gender; a massive embarrassment to those gamers who are not hot-headed, raving, sexist, gob-shite verbal diarrhoea machines (read Fat, Ugly or Slutty for examples of these people).

As for female games journalists, I actually find it easier to remember and distinguish many more female games journalists than males. I’m wondering if this is because they tend to amass a larger gathering of followers, tend to generate a larger amount of turmoil in debate (mainly if they mention ‘gender’ in their writing), and in turn, trudge through levels more gender-based abuse and insult, again, particularly if they have written an opinion on the subject of gender in video games. There are still plenty more men writing than women, however, there are still reams of women who review, preview, and interview in video games online, in print, and on video, and I would strongly argue that there are in fact more opportunities for female writers than male. The first site I got to write at was partly because of my passion for writing, but also because the site wanted to have a woman to balance the currently all-male team.

Ready Up, where I wrote for three years, proudly champions their roughly even balance between male and female contributors. This is a rarity indeed. It is for these reasons – that female writers might generate more traffic, there are less of them, and that some places make an honest effort to have both male and female voices (or sometimes exclusively female), that so long as there are less women involved, there will be more opportunity to the ones that are, and want to get involved.

For games development I hope and believe the boundaries even out. I find it impossible to imagine someone being hired for being female – unless an interviewer is faced with two identical candidates who only differ in gender, not experience, skill, or attitude.

Female programmers are, and may still be, the unicorns of the games industry for a very long time. (I should mention I didn’t come up with that myself, this comparison came from a friend, who heard it from a lecturer in programming).

In games development, men outnumber women in nearly every department. Sometimes female developers get a lot of attention from games media, but it’s comparable to the most well-known male developers.

Strangely, of all three groups, gamers, games’ journalists, and game developers, the developers are plainly the most gender-imbalanced by population, yet in my experience, developers are by far the most gender-equal. No-one at work pays any special attention to me because I’m female, but I am still treated differently for being female (for better or worse) by gamers and games’ journalists. In one of my most loved pieces of writing, Brenda Brathwaite flips this uneven attention on its head – Op-ed: Women in Games: Who Cares?

Every few months, I am reminded that I am a woman. Not just any woman, mind you, but a woman in games.

I decided to call fellow game designer Jeb Havens from Maxis to remind him that he’s not just a man, but a man in games.

“Jeb,” I say, “I am writing a piece for GameCareerGuide about men and games. Can I ask you a couple questions?”

“What?”

He says it two more times thinking he must have misunderstood me. When I tell him I’m writing an article on being a man in the game industry, he says, “That doesn’t make any sense, Brenda,” and he laughs when I ask him what advice he has for fellow men looking to break in to the industry.

To simplify this even further – I believe I could have gone to my interview as an Ed rather than an Emily, and reached an identical outcome. As a gamer and wanted-to-be journalist though, as Ed, I might have continued to play Halo 2, and not cancelled my Xbox Live subscription, because I wasn’t repeatedly singled out or ganged up on for being recognised as female. I also might never have got into writing in the first place, as my first break, among others, were partly due to being an Emily.

There’s a self-perpetuating myth that gender makes you special and different, we exasperate this belief by constantly singling out, writing on and talking about the rarer sex in games, when they have literally nothing more interesting to offer (my hands are up, I’ve added fuel to the fire myself, and I’m doing it right now). Reading a more recent piece, Are gamers really sexist? , illuminates to me where the real problem is – the misogynistic ass-hats who have been given a voice they don’t deserve.  Where the rubbish is spouted, it should be reported, moderated, and where possible, banned or ejected, as a lesson and an example to others. Arguably a huge operation in an area that has shit pouring out its eyes, but the sooner people actually face consequences for their behaviour, the sooner we can all move onto something less dull.

(some of these screenshots are a lower resolution than usual, I’ve been playing on the smaller monitor for the last month or so)

Some men of Skyrim looking stern

A couple of my characters

I am no longer writing at or for any web site, paid, waiting to never be paid, or voluntarily. I have found myself falling out of love with games journalism for a long time, both writing it and consuming it.

When playing video games really dominated every spare second, it was all about my PlayStation.  Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Tekken, Toca Touring Cars, 007 Racing, Final Fantasy IX, Wipeout 2097, V-Rally, Theme Park World, Gauntlet Legends, Cool Boarders; off the top of my head, these were just some of my adorations.

My favourite publication was always the Official Playstation Magazine, which I bought regularly. For a few quid, I’d get to read about new games, I could try them out on the demo disc, and they’d usually throw in a free poster too, sometimes cheat books, sweets, stickers, all kinds of things. This magazine (and later during my PS2 era) contained everything I believed I needed and wanted to know. One of the things I loved most is that the writers made me laugh (I remember a bad video game being smashed with a rounders bat). As soon as I could get to my dad’s computer, I wrote reviews of all the games I owned, they had to be funny, I had to make outrageously unrealistic analogies as often as possible, I had to make fun of everything I could.

With the normality of playing online, being able to download demos for free and watch new trailers in so many different places, print purchases became invalidated for me. I could read reviews, previews, and interviews online for free, but the only games reviewer I could name today that always makes me smile is Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation.

Now we’re almost all connected by the internet, everyone has a say. Do consumers need to read hundreds of reviews of the same game? Do we need a slightly different opinion from thousands of people willing to sum up the game-playing experience with a number? Perhaps even a percentage. I’ve always wanted someone to explain the difference 1% makes between game A and game B, and I didn’t have to go far for an example of this. According to the Official Nintendo Magazine, Mario Party 9 is worth 86%, and Dillion’s Rolling Western is 87%. If there’s one reason for Dillion’s Rolling Western to be a better game, does that mean there are 86 other reasons why this game is good? Are there 14 bad things about Mario Party 9? Are the good and bad reasons identical? Do different reasons carry a different percentage value?

If it’s impossible to justify creating such a precise score, then why is it the norm to do so? If you ask a someone what they think of a game, does anyone say “I think 45″?

Would Zero Punctuation be improved with the addition of a number at the end of every video?

My 3 out of 10 could be your 2 out of 10, but we may both love and hate exactly the same things about this video game.

I don’t think in numbers (I’m really bad at maths), I think in words. I never liked putting a number at the end of a review, and that’s one of the reasons why I had to stop.

The other, is how massively over-saturated games journalism feels to me now. Matt Martin touched on this in The games media: manifestos, agendas and hot air, and as originally mentioned, this is what ruffled my feathers, and sparked a response. Seeing the same press releases recycled and re-hashed, the same screenshots with a different watermark, the same non-news repeated (on this note, I recommend reading Game Journalists are Incompetent Fuckwits, although I stress I don’t tarnish everyone with the same brush), the obsession with numbers, and a new pet-hate illustrated by IGN, a hypocritical preach to all game developers (below).

As I continued to fall out of interest in the subject, I questioned, honestly, why would anyone read my review, my preview, my feature, or my opinion, when there are so many more just like it? What makes my words special? What makes them more important? The answer is absolutely nothing.

I managed to get back to my PC over the weekend, between being reunited with my boyfriend (it seems work is trying to pull us in opposite directions across the country) and playing Skyrim, I had a muck around with some of the textures. I still have so much to do, big things and small tweaks (for example, a consistent scale of stonework, and a more accurate red sandstone colour) but I put some inner walls in place for now, and the lead roof will need re-modelling to be smoother.

A few people have recently got in touch with me about Penrith Castle, and I just want to let anyone reading know how eager I am to continue working on the project.

Here in Newcastle I walk past a church with a wonderful lead roof every morning, and I recently had a peak at the priory ruins in Tynemouth – it seems there are countless places with gorgeous history still in tact wherever I go. There’s always something around to admire and learn from. Unfortunately being without my camera and PC I still can’t actually do anything, but for now I’ve brought everything castle-related under the Penrith Castle category, so at least it’s all in once place.

I’m still in love with my job, and I don’t see how that’s ever going to change. If anything one of the most obvious things I’ve learned is what a massive novice I am, but this makes the experience even more interesting. (With regards to NASCAR I was guilty of wondering at first, “how complex can an oval be?” – this, if you haven’t already guessed, was incredibly stupid).

I’ve been watching footage from the 2011 Sprint Cup every day, to be honest the aspect that shocks me the most is how many cars clamour into the pit lane at once, while crews fly out the walls and beat their vehicles back into shape in just a few seconds.  Then again I mainly watch the BTCC, Moto GP and occasionally rally cars if I’m lucky enough to find them – I’m not familiar with the pit lanes being used at all!

So without a PC, I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid HD, it’s timeless, wonderful, and looks totally fantastic on the PS3. If you like Metal Gear, there’s really no excuse be without it (unless of course you can’t find it in the shops, in which case it sucks to be you, sorry)

I want to talk about the money situation for a moment.

I like to think I did my bit when it came to work while I was at school. Not school work, I was terrible at that. But I started work in an off-license when I was 14, briefly helped in an estate agents, worked in a library, then during university I earned a small amount reviewing video games for a few different sites. During my placement year I developed iPhone games and made absolutely no money at all, (I think 3 months pay by the end does not constitute a salary to live from, but on reflection I’m just grateful for the experience) and in my final year had a brief stint with a software developer before caving in and realising I couldn’t do it alongside my degree. I wrote for GameFan briefly, and they decided not to pay me. But hey, I’ll happily remove that from my blog if they decide to change their minds and reply to my emails.

After university I moved to York with my boyfriend. This was a costly move on its own, and Jim was the only breadwinner while I searched for the right job. Four months later I was searching for any job, and felt rather lucky that two retailers took me on for Christmas. This saved my sanity as well as my plumetting balance, and I was slowly working my way back out of my overdraft. Recently I was blessed to find and get a job I actually want to do.

Before I move on, I want to put some praise here for GAP, one of the retailers who hired me over Christmas in York.

The staff are all friendly, approachable, and instantly likeable. I felt like part of a cohesive team effort. I’m not a good sales assistant and I’m amazingly rubbish on the till, but the staff recognised and spoke to me about where I might be struggling, and praised me when I did well. I got the feeling that, even if I was only a temp, they wanted me to be the best Christmas temp I could be, which actually did wonders for my self esteem. When I hurt my back, they were sympathetic and attentive as to how this affected me in the work place.

This is considerably more than can  be said for my experience working at, let’s just call it ‘the other clothes shop’, the every-man-for-himself dust crater where time is always more important than the customer or the goods, where staff don’t smile or even open the doors for each other.

Anyway, I digress. For my new job, I had to relocate nearer. This pretty much waved goodbye to any excess earnings over Christmas (as well as an enormously over-estimated E-on bill, thanks for that guys), and I was right at the very bottom of my overdraft limit again. Despite finding the right job, with the right pay, and going for the cheapest, nearest place I could find, and being exceptionally lucky to stay with hospitable relatives for a short while prior, I still needed Jim and my family to fall back on financially.

I recently got my first pay. I’ve had £50 deducted for my student loan repayment, as I’m over the £15k threshold, and I’ve also had 30% of the final amount deducted for ‘emergency tax‘ – which I have genuinely never heard of before.

I’m slightly… no, completely abhorred by this. As a student finding work in the area I specialised in at university I count myself incredibly lucky, and the legwork I have had to do (and the finance I have had to borrow) has cut everything extremely fine. Deposits, travel, administration, my range of Asda Essentials, new bedsheets, pillows, duvet, pillow cases, towel, and because of the move, double rent and council tax, every little thing has cost money that I don’t really have.

So what, for the love of peace, is HM Revenue & Custom’s huge emergency about getting their hands on the money I have just earned? Of course Student Loans had to jump in at the same time. Of course they did. What could I possibly need my first pay check in my new job for? By all means, tuck in, take far more than you need as a precaution. Fucking hell.

I toyed with posting a comment, and thought perhaps it’d be best to get my thoughts down here instead.

This post mainly stems from Part 2 – Deconstructing the arguments. I admit for me it’s hard to get a response down in words that doesn’t boil down to one from gaming sexism bingo – I’m guilty of “It’s just a game, no-one cares”, “But men are all super-buff, they’re sexually objectified too”, and “Yeah, the story, dialogue and character design is all sexist, but everyone can enjoy the amazing gameplay”.

In the past I’ve been more reactive, but now I tend to be dismissive, because I’ve accepted that Ivy’s skimpy attire is the norm in a beat ‘em up, along with the men’s equally overdone proportions. I do feel in a lot of cases, we ‘give as good as we get’, the women are ridiculous, but so are the men. But Harris’s words have been a bit of an eye-opener in this department.

The idea that the male characters, as ridiculous as they are, are who men aspire to be, but the female characters are designed purely to please the men, is new to me. And in the example used, suddenly it does make sense to me.

It may sound stupid, but in reading this article I’ve abruptly remembered the only time a game genuinely managed to put me off playing it any further due to.. well… this.

This is Shahdee from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. I played and thoroughly enjoyed the previous game, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. In Warrior Within, playing as the Prince, I’d boarded a ship and was quite engrossed in the gory combat, but then Shahdee made her appearance early on, and I felt incredibly awkward. I think my first thought was, what would my parents think if they saw me playing this game? 14 year old Emily was intimidated and confused by scary bondage woman.

I look at Shahdee now and think – what on earth is her costume made of? It looks like it’s supposed to be a shining metal , but it flexes around her legs and chest. Why is she wearing shoulder pads? Or bracers, for that matter? What’s the point? Why isn’t she just completely naked?

I’ve come to realise that some true equality between men and women can really enhance my enjoyment – but when it’s there, it’s so good that I’ve never really noticed it.

In Metal Gear Solid (let’s ignore 4 and the models for now, just for this), I feel as though the characters have had pure division, never based on gender, but based entirely on their profession. Everyone in Metal Gear Solid is either a soldier or a scientist.

Meryl Silverburgh, a soldier more comfortable with a desert eagle than a bra, Olga Gurlukovich who doesn’t shave her armpits, and Sniper Wolf, who puts more layers on in cold weather. 11 year old Emily loved Meryl, and her one line of dialogue about not wearing make up changed my life.

You might think that Eva in Metal Gear Solid 3 was bucking the trend here, but there’s a reason for this – she’s a spy, and she’s trying to seduce Snake. Infiltrating ranks among Ocelot and Volgin, she dresses as so:

And this is how Eva dresses when addressing Snake:

On a side note, thorough players will learn that Eva has breast implants.

And here are some scientists:

Pictured at the top, Emma Emmerich – she’s a young genius who I can only really describe as a computer wizard. Snake and Raiden fight to protect her because she has programmed a virus capable of destroying GW (let’s not go into more detail than that). Mei Ling on the bottom left is a data analyst, all the player sees through the course of the game is her face from the codec screen – a vital piece of equipment which she designed. Naomi Hunter on the right was head of FOX-HOUND medical staff. She prides herself on being a scientist, not a doctor, although often comes across as an amalgamation of the two – in Metal Gear 4 it is revealed that she has terminal cancer, and has only been able to fight it with the help of nanomachines, and she willingly takes her life by disabling them.

Para-medic saves data for Snake (later Big Boss) in Metal Gear 3, in addition she also advises medically, and offers knowledge on local creatures and plant life to assist in jungle survival. Nastasha Romanenko fulfills a similar role in Metal Gear Solid, this time advising on nuclear weapons. Born in the Ukraine, Nastasha’s parents unfortunately succumbed to the affects of radiation after the Chernobyl incident, and she works pro-actively to prevent others suffering the same fate, and helps Snake and Otacon form Philanthropy.

Metal Gear Solid has such a strong female cast, I’m surprised they don’t get mentioned more often in the discussion to have stronger, sensibly-dressed, and intelligent female characters that aren’t merely eye-candy.

I still don’t think the abundance of scantily-clad women will put me off a great game, and while I can see in some cases the issue isn’t just in a characters appearance, I definitely believe it is worth celebrating and paying note to the games that put the effort in to make all their characters truly brilliant, powerful, and somewhat believable. Except Raiden.