Maggie Greene

A few notes on obvious matters

Maggie Greene — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 01:22:23 +0000

Another day, another disgruntled post on how breaking into games journalism is hard (well, more a post about how breaking into games journalism is hard and I QUIT). I was struck yet again about how similar it all is to academia – so many people wanting so few positions, the same advice given to aspiring hopefuls (‘Don’t do it’), the complaints about that advice not being supportive enough, the accusation that it’s an exclusive and exclusionary club. Yet I think the author misses the mark here: it’s not necessarily an exclusionary club, and all the help in the world from people who have ‘made it’ won’t spell success for all the hopefuls. There are too many people who want jobs, or even just occasional nibbles on their freelance pitches, and not enough jobs; even when you remove all the people who don’t have the writing or intellectual chops, there are still too many people. Just like there are too many English PhDs and not enough jobs for English PhDs (insert department of choice here – it’s true for most of them, to some degree or another). The ‘don’t do it’ advice is not so much exclusionary as it is cautionary. [...]

From Shanghai to Kunming & weiqi to Warcraft

Maggie Greene — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:47:53 +0000

As if I didn’t have enough to do in my last two weeks in China, I enthusiastically accepted an invitation extended by a good friend of mine: come to Kunming (the ‘Spring City’ in China’s Yunnan province) and give a lecture on a topic of my choosing to his study abroad students in the Duke in Chinaprogram. So thanks to Brent Haas, one of my favorite people from grad school & one of the very finest teachers I’ve ever seen, for showing me a good time in a lovely city & allowing me the opportunity to talk about some of my favorite stuff. As it turned out, the school administration was pretty excited to have a guest speaker, so my audience was significantly bigger (and more diverse) than I was anticipating: around 100 students, most Chinese. What follows is a condensed version of my talk (I also have a bit of discussion afterwords and some thoughts on what I could have done better – things to file away for next time. Here’s hoping next time goes just as well!). The talk itself was a bit basic, but I think I’ve started pulling out some core themes (and in the process [...]

Iron girls

Maggie Greene — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:45:35 +0000

I’ve been trotting through the history of Chinese women in the 20th century in preparation for a course I’m teaching this coming winter. Unraveling these narratives that have been put in service to nation building has been both a trip down memory lane (recalling the early days of my fascination with Chinese history) and diving into new-to-me secondary sources that have popped up in the past couple of years, while my attention was turned elsewhere. It’s been dovetailing nicely with other talk of gender, one that played out (for me, an outside observer) on Twitter and on blogs – I’m referring to THAT panel (“The Words We Use”) at Freeplay 2011, a games event in Australia. [Some relevant links: Brendan Keogh's take, Ben Abraham over at Gamasutra, a post by Searing Scarlet, and lots of other links to be gleaned from those] It’s been interesting, as a woman-journalist-that-once-was – I’m not sure I still count among the illustrious crew anymore, having mostly been resting on my laurels for the past few years, but I was once – interesting and sad and irritating and all sorts of things. I was never made to be uncomfortable at Kotaku – part of that [...]

In summer, it is the nights that are most beautiful

Maggie Greene — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:33:45 +0000

In summer the nights [are most beautiful]. Not only when the moon shines, but on dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is! (Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book, trans. Ivan Morris) Summer in Shanghai is draining – it’s hot and very humid, and it hasn’t been raining as much as one would expect in the summers (or at least, as much as I was expecting). Nights are not particularly beautiful either, and there are no flitting fireflies, just mosquitos – though evenings are at least a respite from the sun. I’ve survived heat and humidity before; Virginia is no cool paradise come August, and Taipei is on par (at a minimum) with Shanghai temperature and humidity-wise – but it seems particularly unrelenting here. Rain storms were a near-daily occurrence in Taipei, which makes summer more bearable, and Virginia at its worst was the equivalent of a normal day in Shanghai. Which is to say, I’ve felt like doing precious little other than hibernating in air conditioning. I think the weather has contributed to my terrible case of incompletitis – the inability to finish anything. Oh, I’ve met immovable deadlines [...]

The cosmos is a weiqi board. A fair one, dammit.

Maggie Greene — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:10:14 +0000

Kris Ligman had a nice piece over at Pop Matters on class and games (RPGs, more specifically) – the class-blind, wonderful lands of opportunity that they are: Is there any ludonarrative dischord greater than the capitalist, white, middle-class attitudes of unrestrained play coming into conflict with issues of class and race so utterly failed by these biases? The class- and race-obliviousness of these pastoral, easy, and free game worlds don’t reflect the lives of the serf characters that we so often assume but reflect their lords instead. (The essay is worth reading, so go take a look; however, it’s just sort of the tangential jumping off point for what follows) This got me thinking about the subject of ‘fairness’ in games, at least in the few that I’ve dealt with directly. I’ll say off the bat I’m more interested in perceptions of fairness – how people have talked about it – versus technical definitions of whether a game is fair or not. Mostly because the world that Ligman talks about, the ‘middle class’ world we inhabit in RPGs regardless of a character’s origin story, is a ‘fair’ world, right? Limitless opportunity, bounded only by your own playing. The deck isn’t [...]

Hopes and Dreams and Money

Maggie Greene — Mon, 23 May 2011 05:23:35 +0000

I had a long post regarding the cancellation of the fiscal year 2011 Fulbright-Hays competition written up. It – mostly a ‘What winning the Fulbright-Hays has meant to me’ post – depressed me too much, so I’ve deleted most of it. I was recently told I was being “practically nihilistic” about the future of America and American academia, and this is one reason why. Even though I have won a Fulbright-Hays and have that money safely in the bank (literally and figuratively), the news was devastating for what it signals about our priorities and the future. I hope, though, that this tremendous shock to those of us in fields that rely on the Hays and similar grants to get our work done will mean a more positive, active direction for the future. I’d like to feel less nihilistic, and a lot of us would like for our future to look a little brighter – and maybe we can make it so. A few links to relevant posts on the issue (also see the Facebook group that has sprung up): The official cancellation notice (US Department of Education) Acknowledging the Value of Fulbright-Hays Research Grants (The China Beat) Has the Fulbright-Hays Cancellation Affected [...]

April showers bring May slugs & fierce debates

Maggie Greene — Fri, 20 May 2011 08:27:47 +0000

After a delightful two week trip to Beijing, I returned home to (quoting myself from elsewhere) ”a horror scene of slug trails, dead and dying slugs all over the floor in my main room. Luckily I didn’t notice that one had been cruising around on my bed until the next morning. I had noticed trails here and there on my carpet (but not thought ‘Oh, slug problem’) and caught a few parked on sponges in my kitchen a few months back, but thought it was an isolated issue. I thought wrong, clearly.” It took several rounds of hysterical calls to my landlord and the dedicated efforts of his wonderful handyman to fix the issue (mostly). And gross as it was, the Great Slug Infestation of 2011 (the first and, I sincerely hope, only time I will have to deal with such an issue) somehow spurred me out of my own, well, sluggish period. The past 6 months haven’t been “as” productive as I would have hoped, but I’m back on track and not feeling as slow as the slugs that were having a field day in my kitchen. Still, a couple of recent events reminded me that I’m pretty terrible [...]

Back in the fold

Maggie Greene — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 04:11:09 +0000

Immediately following on the heels of a family visit (and lots of Kindle reading!), I headed up to Beijing for a work-personal visit, which has actually been really great for work overall (and recharging my batteries in a different sort of way). Shanghai has been oddly isolating, particularly after coming off of three years of a small, close knit program and people within easy reach most of the time. And, to be fair, perhaps a lot is due to some of my inherent shyness and general dislike of “going out to meet people” (where people mean strangers, without the veneer of some common interest, as at academic conferences) – or even just being friendly with strangers at the coffee shop. I’m just generally not feeling up to that sort of personal interaction on my own, nor do I find it pleasurable in the least (not the random encounter in a restaurant or coffee shop). In any case, my generalized-yet-subtle angst with the situation seeped into my work (or lack thereof). I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten more done this past week than I have done in the past two months! Some of that is just finding myself in wonderful, well trod [...]

The Fearless Muse

Maggie Greene — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:08:32 +0000

Some assorted musings that are far from complete, probably painting plenty of things with too broad a brush, and a bit kneejerk in reaction. Well, these things happen – it’s a start, and I’ll sort some of this out later. What shade of blue is the sky? A Killscreen piece has been making the rounds of late (“‘Game designers want to be artists without knowing what that means’“). I confess it rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons, some that I haven’t quite put my finger on. It’s just … well. A little too simplistic, even for a simplistic laundry list of questions, I think. Why do you think game designers are so misinformed [about what art is]? I’m generalizing, but game developers are coming out of computer science or a different side of universities, if they’ve studied art at all. At most, they’ve had one or two art history classes and most of those are boring. People haven’t taken time to understand what it means to be an artist. Let me say at the outset: I think it would be great if more people had more courses in things like art history, or history, or art, [...]

Recharging the batteries

Maggie Greene — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:09:25 +0000

So I’ve had the occasion – thanks to a visit from family – to completely set aside work for about two and a half weeks & just relax. One thing I’ve found since starting grad school, lo those many years ago, is that “relaxation” is sort of a misnomer for what’s going on when you’re not working. I tend to be tightly wound and neurotic (several doctors at the clinic on campus have noted with some wonder how tight my shoulder muscles are!), and saddled with a Type A personality with a streak of laziness (a Type A-, perhaps?) – which compounds the neuroses. In a conversation with an undergraduate contemplating grad school, I opined that separation and compartmentalization can be hard to achieve; work comes home with you, never stays where it’s supposed to, and you can never quite turn off the nagging voice in the back of your head telling you to start working and stop watching TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras marathon. In any case, I always have a very long to-do list & this has only gotten worse since I’ve been set loose with only a vaguely defined agenda: “research dissertation” is quite different than, say, “write historiography [...]