Good afternoon,

Let’s talk about games! We’ve done chess, now it is time for me to turn to less cerebral games, but – in the case of Mario Kart – one that I am actually good at.

Mario Kart is mainly a site where people of all genders can let one another down in frustrating ways. I enjoyed this piece about using gaming analogies in a therapeutic context:

I suggest that we recognise video games as a font for cases where kids have already encountered (and often triumphed over) real-world issues. Mario Kart wasn’t just a thing that those kids knew — it was a place where they felt anger and betrayal. It confronted them with the fact that their friends don’t always support them. For those kids, a reference to Mario Kart was an acknowledgement of these complex experiences.

http://ontologicalgeek.com/gaming-analogies-in-group-therapy/

In contrast to all of this heartache and letdown, it seems that the women’s pinball scene is a delightful and supportive place to hang out in and to learn a new and extremely niche skill:

"A lot of times you just have to talk to people who know more than you," says Vrabel. "That's the biggest thing about playing in tournaments as a new player. I always say, talk to the person you're playing against. There's no defensive 'I'm not going to tell you because then I might not win', because if you don't have the skills to play the game, you shouldn't win. Learning the rules of a new game is very collaborative—it's not about hoarding secrets."

http://boingboing.net/2015/08/03/pinball.html

Happy weekend,

Alex.