Kickstarter

First, we reached our initial funding goal in less than 24 hours! Next, we achieved our first set of stretch goals in under 1 week! Now we have met our second set of expanded goals in just 2 weeks!

I feel inspired, energized and hopeful by all the incredible feedback and support from folks of all genders about this project.  Ultimately, I think we all see the amazing potential in gaming as a medium and believe that better representations of women and less sexism will make games better. And better games are good for everyone!

I've been getting quite a few messages recently inquiring about how this project might evolve.  Amazingly, we have already reached the production quality stretch goal and still have over two weeks left on the Kickstarter clock.  So here's the plan for any additional money pledged between now and June 16th when the fundraiser ends.

$24,000 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games Curriculum
I believe that video games and gaming in general should be integrated into classrooms and educational institutions to a much larger degree.  With this in mind, I will create a curriculum with teaching guides and classroom activities to accompany this Tropes vs Women in Gaming video series.  My hope is that this curriculum can serve as a small example of how discussions around gaming can be an important part of media literacy education.  These mini-lesson plans and classroom exercises focusing on female representations in video games will offer teachers an easy way to encourage critical thinking, enhance media literacy skills and promote conversations about gender representations in the mass media with their students.  This curriculum will be Creative Commons licensed making it available for anyone to download and use with their schools, organizations or families.

$26,000 - Bonus Video #2 - The Top 10 Most Common Defenses of Sexism in Games (and how to respond)
Anyone who has dared to offer criticisms of sexism in gaming on the internet will be familiar with the inevitable counter-arguments that arise in defense of sexist representations. If you've braved the comment sections below almost any post on this topic, you will recognize classics like: "But it's just entertainment," "But it's just fantasy," or "But sex(ism) sells," just to name a few. I've even seen these types of defensive knee-jerk comments surface on gaming blogs and online forums discussing my (as yet unmade) Tropes vs Women in Video Games series.  One commenter even suggested that I have now displaced Hitler as the worst human being to have ever existed on account of this Kickstarter project (this would be funnier if it were the first time I'd been compared to Hitler).  I keep a running list of the most common counter-arguments used to dismiss, deny and derail concerns about the representations of women in gaming. I think it might be useful to round out the series with one additional video that deconstructs the top 10 typical defenses of sexism and offers some helpful rebuttals to those arguments.

Thank you all so much for your continued encouragement, feedback and support!

ps. Stay tuned for updates on the project including our 'Best/Worst Female Characters in Video Games' survey (which I'll send out in Update #4).