Hi! My name is Isabela and I’m the intern here at Game on Girl. I help out with some of the behind the scenes stuff on the site and with the podcast.
My introduction to gaming was when I was eight, when my parents bought a Nintendo 64 for my brother. My younger brother and I obsessively played the three games we had: Donkey Kong 64, Mario Kart 64, and Star Wars Episode I: Racer. I may be terrible at them, but I still get nostalgic playing racing games. I still have the ol’ gal and she still works great. The same can’t be said for the GameCube we still have, poor thing.
A lot of people would call me a dabbler, but I prefer to think of it as being a Renaissance geek. How am I supposed to know what I like if I don’t try everything? I’ve played exactly one session of Dungeon’s and Dragons (which I loved but our group had always scheduling conflicts). I took almost all the art classes my high school offered (drawing, yes, photography, no). I studied three languages in college (French stuck, Japanese didn’t). I had a brief foray into World of Warcraft when I learned from Regina that it was free to play to level 20, but I stopped playing well before I ever got there.
It turns out that starting an MMO halfway through your last year at school is a terrible idea.
Even so, I learned something really valuable. It turns out that I love character creators. I created three WoW characters in the few weeks that I played. None of them looked anything remotely like me and they were all created with distinct personalities and traits in mind. My experience with Sims 3 was the same. I’d create new characters every few months. (It’s probably a very good thing my friends never let me play their Sims games when I was younger.)
As much as I love creating characters, I also love a good story. And more importantly, I love a good story told well. If there are also compelling characters involved, I’m hooked. Last year, I played The Walking Dead game and Gone Home… I may or may not have shed a few tears at the end of bothgame. They go at the top of my favorite games list, right next to the Portal games (come on, who doesn’t love a murderous AI?). I’m very interested to see what other ways game makers utilize unconventional storytelling in the future.
Can you guess my player type?
Yup, I’m a near even split between Role and Self. There’s maybe a few drops of mastery blood in my veins, but I’m much more of a “completionist.”
You can find me on twitter @izzorizzo. I’m a huge television dork and I love to talk (and gripe) about my favorite shows. You can also email me at Isabela@gameongirl.com or at Intern@gameongirl.com (for official site business)!
*No, I couldn’t resist making “Hello, World!” the title of my first post. It’s still the first thing they teach you how do in a programming class.
Welcome to the fold, Isabela! We are so glad to have you as part of the Game on Girl team!
It's funny… I had never thought about curly hair and avatars but now that I am, I am not sure I've ever seen a truly curly option. Hmmm. More research needed! 🙂
Welcome aboard, Isabela! It's always nice to have some new voices on the site. 🙂
And you're onto something there with the lack of curly hair options. My wife agrees! Original research project, everyone?
Probably for the same reasons that most games don't offer a below the shoulder hair option. Short hair is easily dealt with but long hair has to be tucked away or animated (usually) in a terrible way.
I don't know why we can put so much effort into modeling, animating, and prettying up flora in game worlds when we can't even do HAIR correctly.
That is an excellent point, Kirie. There are SO many environmental options, especially in MMOs. I remember when they made the environmental changes in WoW so it would snow or rain depending on where you were. I thought it was cool but I wondered if they could make those changes why can't they have BODY options for avatars? The designers always say something along the lines of "Body options would change too much of the visual" but that can't *really* be the reason since there are tons of other environment changes they are willing and able to make with a patch or two.
Ok. Mini-rant over. Thank you for your comments! Great to hear from you.
Regina – Even the Sims, which has so many character creator options, doesn't have more than a few curly hair options. It's very frustrating! And I had the same problems with the body type as well! Not every one wants to create a tall, relatively thin, and busty character. If you can choose a race where you're fairly small and not affect game mechanics, why can't height or body type be changed for other races?
Jerry – Oh no, now the idea is stuck in my head! Hmm. I'll think about it. I'd be interested in gathering more data… maybe even expand it to representations of other ethnicities in general?
Kirie – I totally agree with that reasoning. Long and/or curly hair must be a challenge to model, but you'd think somebody would have come up with a good solution for that by now!
oooOOOooo! I love that idea, Iz! You and Jerry should totally collaborate on that! Do a survey of some sort, write it up for the site, and come on the show to talk about it! Go go go! 🙂