ENG495 Paula Stevens Oct. 21, 2012
Felicia Day – Girl Gamer in a Male Dominated Genre By Paula Stevens
Felicia Day is an actress, writer and self-proclaimed gamer. Ms. Day has made her own place in the world by writing and starring in her own web-series called "The Guild." This, along with many other accomplishments, put her in high standing in geek culture. In the summer of 2012, her place and worth in that culture was questioned by a man. The backlash was swift and fatal and is the topic of my paper.
We will start with more information about Felicia Day. Ms. Day doesn't bother with her biographical information at her webpage feliciaday.com. She directs you to her Wikipedia or
IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) pages to get more detailed information about her "acting, writing and producing credits." Ms. Day's Wikipedia page tells us that she was born in
Huntsville, Alabama in June of 1979. She was homeschooled and started college at the age of 16.
She plays violin and was accepted to Juilliard, but she turned them down to attend the University
of Texas at Austin. Ms. Day also plays video games.
Felicia Day moved to Los Angeles around 2001. Ms. Day had several small roles in film and
television; her most memorable from her early career was a character that was on eight episodes
of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Ms. Day wasn't working on a steady series, she did her best
to keep herself occupied. Prior to 2007, she had written a sitcom television pilot that
encompassed her experiences with online gaming. Studio execs “didn’t even understand the
concept of gaming,” she says. “It was like a foreign country to them.”(Ewalt, 2011) When the
show wasn't picked up for television, Ms. Day decided to produce the show as a web-series, The
Guild.
When Ms. Day started to produce the show herself as a web-series, the show was produced
completely out of her own budget. As she told Gus Mastrapa in a Wired.com interview in 2009,
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the second half of the first season was only completed when fans sent in donations through
PayPal. As "The Guild" has gained more fans over the years, Ms. Day has kept creative control
of the web-series. "Day says, "I'm turning down a lot of money. I could be much richer now. But
if I have an idea, I can have it out to the world very quickly.""(Fast Company, 2010) She has
retained her ability to say what she wants, when she wants, and how she wants.
Ms. Day also wrote lyrics for a music video to in conjunction with the web-series in 2009.
The video is titled Do You Wanna Date My Avatar and showcases all the main characters of the
web-series. She didn't expect the video to "hit the top 10 on iTunes over all the label stuff".
Around this point in her career, Ms. Day had more roles coming her way. One of these was a recurring role on the science fiction television series Eureka on the SyFy channel. The role lasted for the last two seasons of the show.
Along with now having her own YouTube channel, Geek & Sundry, Ms. Day has done voice
over work for several video games. One video game company even approached her to make a
web-series in conjunction with their new upcoming game. Dragon Age: Redemption is the
second game is a series from Bioware, a division of video game giant Electronic Arts. Ms. Day
was so excited that she stated, "I even wrote a script before the contract was done, and I was like,
‘Here, this is what I want to do, please let me do it.’ ”(Ewalt, 2011)
On Friday, June 29th, internet writer Ryan Perez, in a drunken state tweeted the following:
"Does Felicia Day matter at all? I mean does she actually contribute anything
useful to this industry, besides retaining a geek persona?"
"@feliciaday, I keep seeing everywhere. Question: Do you matter at all? Do you
even provide anything useful to gaming, besides "personality?"
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ENG495 Paula Stevens Oct. 21, 2012
"@feliciaday, could you be considered nothing more than a glorified booth babe?
You don't seem to add anything creative to the medium."
At the time, Perez had only had the Twitter account for a month and he only had 48
followers. The tweets might have gone nowhere, but they were noticed by Veronica
Belmont (who has 1.6 million followers) and she brought wide attention to the situation
with the following:
@destructoid Hey, your writer is a fucking dick. But you probably already knew
that. cc: @Dtoid pic.twitter.com/1ThlHCPZ (Smith, 2012)
Wil Wheaton (who currently has over 2.1 million followers) responded with this:
"I have fucking had it with idiot asshole men being shitbags to @feliciaday
because they're threatened by her creativity and success," Wheaton tweeted. "I'm
sick of idiot men giving *any* woman grief in gamer and geek culture. Enough
already, we're better than that." (Baker, 2012) So @destructoid wants "fans" to
be "understanding". I want @dtoid to hire writers who arent ignorant, mysoginist
assholes. (Wheaton, 2012)
This resulted in a firestorm on the internet. Felicia Day’s friends and colleagues came to her defense immediately. Her fans spoke up in great numbers. The reaction was so great and swift that Ryan Perez and Destructoid, the online magazine that he wrote for, parted ways the next day.
According to the article Peter Smith wrote for ITWorld, Ryan Perez's Twitter bio stated this at the time of the incident: "I've been a gamer for about 1.412 seconds. In that time, I've written for GamePro, Bitmob, and now I write for Destructoid. I love the smell of busty women." The article that I'm referencing was written and posted online July 1, at 3:10pm, possibly at the end
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ENG495 Paula Stevens Oct. 21, 2012 of this entire incident. But it doesn't seem that Perez fully understood the gravity of the situation or the audience that Twitter encompasses. Before the article was posted, Smith tells us that Perez had changed his bio to read: "I like curing AIDS, comforting inmates on Death Row, helping children or something, clouds, fluffy dogs, bright colors and l Julia Roberts movies."
By his own admission on his Twitter bio, Ryan Perez does not know gaming culture.
According to his information on his LinkedIn profile, he has not been writing about the gaming community as a whole for very long either. So he learned a swift hard lesson about the internet and intended audience. The medium allows for there to be millions of people "listening in" on your Twitter ramblings.
Felicia Day did not have any immediate reaction to the incident. I feel that this shows great character on her part. The fact that she did not resort to name calling or even acknowledging his remarks helps to build her ethos. She did not sink to his level. She did not lead the "lynch mob" that was after him on Twitter. (Smith, 2012) She did have every right to respond and she had the authority. Ms. Day is after all a prominent female in a male dominated genre. She had every right to respond to his remarks. But I have yet to find any evidence stating her reasons for not responding. Not responding kept the entire incident for looking like a children's school yard fight.
In the end, the question is "Why should we care?" The problem is that the video game community and most of the geek communities are still male-oriented and male-driven when it comes to the all mighty dollar. Even though there are high percentages of women who spend those dollars. According to The Entertainment Software Association 2012 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry report, "forty-seven percent of all players are women, and women over 18 years of age are one of the industry's fastest growing demographics." This is
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a space where women are and have been for some time now. Forty-seven percent don't just pop up over night.
One of the other problems that this points directly at is the portrayal of women in the gaming industry. Perez actually referred to Ms. Day as a "booth babe." In case you weren't entirely certain, the term booth babe generally "refers to the women who have been hired at tech conventions to look pretty and lure men into their booths..." (Pinchefsky, 2012) So Perez basically said that Felicia Day is pretty and therefore she can't possibly know anything about the industry.
Felicia Day truly does have the ethos required of her position. She grew up playing video games. She has the credibility to speak in the genre. She added to her ethos by not resorting to name calling in this incident. Her friends, colleagues and thousands of fans added to her ethos by defending her credibility in the genre.
Whether it was his intention or not, Ryan Perez presented us with a datum. He stated that
Felicia Day didn't actually add anything to the industry. He wanted us to work on the presupposition that because she is a woman and she is attractive that she couldn't possibly bring anything to the industry. He wants us to believe the claim that she is nothing more than a booth babe.
Arguments like this are hurting the gaming industry as a whole. These same arguments are also hurting all of the geek cultures. Women are prominent in these cultures, but these arguments are detrimental to harmonious existence for all members in these communities.
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Works Cited Baker, Katie J.M. "The Fight Against Misogyny in Gaming Enlists Some Big Names." Jezebel. Jezebel, 3 July 2012. Web. 21 Oct. 2012.
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Mastrapa, Gus. "How Felicia Day Recruited Millions for Her Guild." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 29 Sept. 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.
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Wheaton, Wil. @wilw Twitter status. Twitter, 1 Jul. 2012
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