April 19th-21st welcomes the Women In Games conference '07 to The University of Wales, Newport!

Boy, was it a buzz, and only succeeded in making me want to join the game industry even more!

Not only did this happen, but I also managed to see some really awesome papers; two of particular interest to me being Jacki Mori's on dress-up (being a new fan of cosplay) and Dr Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Justin Parsler on the motivations behind roleplaying and gender-bending in MMO's (being of particular interest playing as a guy in them, I'm 1 in 100!!!)

Not to mention Alice Taylor's BBC talk on how they are attempting to include games into what we get for our license fee money; a really interesting presentation, and also brought the attention of the genres that often get excluded from video games, namely;

Romance, Comedy, Character Drama; can't remember any others, sorry! It also got me thinking about how game developers should be exploiting the horror genre in an attempt to reel in female gamers; horror able to be (as Alice said) a very good seller to females, which is in fact true, knowing many fans of the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, comprised of many females.

Also got to have a little chat with three representatives from Microsoft; Karen Wilkins-Mickey, Kelly Murrell (Lionhead) and Michelle Everitt(Rare) Which was awesome, particular Kelly Murrell(Lionhead) for remembering our faces from our previous week's testing.

Saturday brought about the absolutely awesome Raina Lee, who was just fabulous, and got to sign the copy of 1-up (her zine) that I bought from her, she was just so immensely cool, it is beyond description!

We also got to meet the most hailed (by me and catherine anyways) Aleks Krotoski (the coolest woman in gaming; having grown up watching her on TV); who wanted to meet the people that had made the biscuits (I'll get to them in a moment) I only wish we had had longer to talk to her, but she had to catch a train.. but there's always next year ^_^



Now here comes the awesome part, and a topic of much discussion at the conference (apparently).

My Game-Related

Gingerbread Biscuits(Nice with a hot drink)


I must admit it was a hard job, generally baking from 8ish to midnight, but I felt it was all worthwhile, perhaps I could have sold my self a little more, I'm not sure many people actually knew who had made them, my name in particular, but I suppose as soon as I find pictures on the internet of them (which some people said they would do) I can always ask them to credit me.

I thought that they wouldn't be very popular, with perhaps the registration desk munching on them throughout the day, but I've been complimented so many times on them its awesome. Not to mention the few suggestions that I should make them to sell, marketing to a small but sometimes obsessive -re: me- niche.

The only real downside to the biscuits, were gingerbread three days in a row did tend to get a bit samey, and the general hype of them cooled down, but prevail I shall, I'll have to give thoughts to the next game related baking that I can pursue... any thoughts or suggestions/requests, please do gimme a comment.

So from now on, I'll try to show off a bit of my stuff on here ^_^


I apologise for my lack on photos on the event, but I was a little tied up helping out.

I also realised that I forgot to wish Buffy a happy 10th Birthday on March 10th, so Happy Birthday to the amazing series!