Unit 3: Artist’s statement – Final Draft

Usually when someone sits down to write an essay for a school assignment, coming up with an interesting topic to talk about is probably one of the hardest things to do. The topic has to be something of interest to you, while having enough content to discuss, while also not boring the reader of the essay as well. I was thinking about what topic to choose, when I remembered an issue that’s been popping up a lot on my social media. On Twitter, I follow a bunch of female streamers who play this game called Valorant. Valorant’s a first-person-shooter game where players run around a map trying to shoot each other down — which isn’t really important. The important thing is that in the game, players within the same team communicate with each other through voice chat, as keeping track of locations of the enemy team is a very important aspect of the game. However, this is where the issues come up. In most games, players will use the voice chat productively to help the team out by calling out the locations of the enemy team, until a female player speaks up. As soon as players realize a female is in the same team as them, sexist remarks start flying in. Many of these female streamers have posted clips showing these misogynistic behaviors of these players in-game, and some of the things that have been said to them are just downright disgusting. Toxic comments are never warranted but toxic comments stemming just from the basis of one’s gender is even more rude and unnecessary. Along with these female players, I have also experienced these behaviors while playing Valorant as well. Playing video games should be an enjoyable activity for all parties involved; however, when I experience things like this, it makes me upset and embarrassed for playing the game. 

By talking about this issue, I want other players to be aware of this problem that’s going on — which isn’t just the issue of toxicity in this specific game called Valorant. I want to talk about sexism and misogyny in the gaming community as a whole. These sexist beliefs not only just pop up within these multiplayer games; they exist in the real-life world as well. While researching the topic, I realized that these beliefs carry out in our workforces as well. A large, well-known gaming corporation called Riot Games has been outed multiple times for their sexist practices as well. I want to create a community that welcomes everyone and accepts all genders and the first step in creating change is bringing awareness. 

To be honest, if you personally haven’t been a target of these behaviors, it’s hard to sympathize with these players and want to do something to create change. This is why I’ve decided on making a podcast to talk about this and hear the stories of these women that have been affected. In my opinion, hearing the stories from these individuals would have a much stronger impact on the audience rather than reading some text on a piece of paper. Listening, rather than reading the stories of these individuals allows the audience to get a better sense of the emotions and feelings that the person was experiencing during that time, which could allow the listeners to sympathize with them a bit more easily. Also, considering the topic audience, they’d probably much rather listen to a podcast than read an interview or a research paper on this topic. Listening to a podcast is something that can also be done wherever, such as while running errands or while driving, which fits the lifestyle of the young, gaming population as well. 

Especially since podcasts can be found anywhere online, even in places such as Spotify nowadays, it could be seen by a large demographic of people all over the world. Even though all these considerations have been made to try to appeal to our target audience, these efforts  probably won’t instantly change the attitudes of the people in the community, but it would be a step in the right direction for positive change.

At first the thought of a podcast sounded really fun — until I realized I had no idea on how to approach making the podcast. At first I tried to write a script, like it was some kind of play or movie or something but I thought that would make the conversation flow really “stiffly” so I decided against that idea. After I scrapped that idea, I started fresh and wrote down a bunch of questions for the hosts to ask for the guests. I didn’t really like that idea as well, so I just ended up sticking with a very rough outline of ideas and things that we could talk about as we conversed during the podcast. I liked that idea the best because it gave us at least some kind of structure and topics to talk about, while letting the thing be a lot more free-form and thought it would create more thought-provoking discussion. 

The second big problem came up when I realized I had no idea how to lead the podcast and what the host did. Like I mentioned before, I really never watched podcasts before so I had no idea what hosts in podcasts do and how they led their podcasts. I’m also not much of a natural, talented speaker, so leading a talk show was definitely not something I would be particularly talented with. I was contemplating on deciding if I should just rewrite the script again, so I can have something to read off of and to talk without breaking the flow of the podcast, but I ultimately decided against that. This is where I got the idea to have my friend be the host and actually have me be one of the guests instead. This idea actually worked better, as in having females for the guests makes more sense than having guys, due to the context of my topic. It also helped a lot that my friend actually enjoys listening to podcasts regularly, so he knew the way a podcast should flow and knew how to guide it in a somewhat “professional” podcast way. Having me as the guest also allowed me to answer the questions a lot more detailed compared to what anything my friend might have said due to the fact that I was the one that did the research and was more educated on the topic compared to him. 

If I could do the podcast all over again, I would definitely change a lot of things. The first big thing would be to educate myself and listen to a few podcasts before I started recording mine. This would have probably allowed me to structure the whole thing better and would have sold the whole recording as a more professional product. Another thing that I wish I could have changed was the open-structure of the outline of the things I wrote down to talk about. Since the outline I created for the podcast was so open-ended, we ended up rambling on about a lot of the stuff and ended up just talking too much about things. Because of this, the podcast ended up being a lot longer than I expected and we had to cut the podcast off abruptly at the end to make sure the listener doesn’t fall asleep listening to the never-ending podcast. Another thing was the technical difficulties I kept having while trying to talk on the show. My mic kept cutting out and left us with some awkward pauses while I was trying to work to get my mic to work. This could probably be solved by editing the pauses out and retrying that particular question or situation, but I lack the editing program and the skills to do that. 

Out of the many things we did in the podcast, the thing that I really liked and thought was well incorporated was our little sponsorship ads. I felt that they helped the podcast feel a bit more realistic and helped breakup the podcast into sections. Another thing that I really liked was the dynamic of the entire party. It probably helped as the people that helped me make this were my close friends, but the easy-going dynamic and flow of the podcast probably helped in making the podcast a lot more enjoyable to listen to. 

PODCAST LINK (44 mins): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XHtZNeB8t0TtEXfhDbvd7QMNn5CASMxm/view?usp=sharing