Episode 44: A Conversation with Women in Gaming

We use more than a friend. We're beyond friends at this point. We're partners. We we work so well together. Yeah, oh yeah, we just love it because we also do. People don't know. I mean people do know this if they follow us, but we butt heads sometimes, but in a respectful brother sister man. Oh yeah, always Um, And

that's what it's all about, you know. It's really just having open dialogue in a sense of where you actually want to have a dialogue and you're not just trying to shout down the person, which I feel like it is going to be lots of points that's going to be made on this episode. Yes, Um, and Veginia is the best RYMZ care and if you're moving okay, I'm gonna let that one pass because so yeah, and I want to, you know, set that preamble up if if if you don't after this episode, be like, if you

why didn't you talk more? Because this is a topic where I'm going to be doing a lot of listening and you know, you know, we have two dope experts who are really gonna take the floor and I'm gonna lead by example. I'm gonna show y'all fellas how to do. I did want to say before we introduce our amazing guests, just to housekeeping things. One is please go and rate and review us on iTunes. Thank you to everyone that

has done it so far. It really affects, you know, getting our name out there and helping people find this and boost our numbers. Um if you take a screenshot of your review, we might share it, so definitely tweet us that and also check out our tea public sites, to public dot com, slash nerdificent. If you send us a picture with some merch, we will post it on our Instagram or we will tweet it. Put it inside

my locker, or we'll post it. If you and I have both shared we love seeing people in merchant but like um, we've both shared it on our Insta stories and it's always so I feel like it's Christmas Morning scene that someone cared enough about our podcast to go And if y a T shirt, all our single folks out here, you know it's it's it's February, we're getting

to Valentine's Day. If you post a picture of a merch and it's on a tinder or bumble or whatever the kids are using to say, well, write your bio. Just I would love to do that. Write your bio. And a shout out to Fluff, who I had to check because he was he was posting a pic of him writing a review for The Daily Zekes. I was like, wow, I don't see one for Nerdificent and he went ahead and did it. So thanks for doing that, Flu, But you know I'll call you out. Help hell being us,

call helping us, you know, find other people. And thanks to everyone that's tweeted at us. It really really does. If you and I read those in it it um and we try to retweet as many as possible, but it really and engage and check out our discord too. We have a lot of great conversations on there. I am popping in there to take down people that say

that they don't like my Jimmy Stewart impression. Really really gotta call y'all out for turning y'all backs on your all on the stream, Like, yeah, Danny shows up in the discord. People were like, no, I like it. I think it's good. I'm everyone's little sister joining us today. We have one of the hosts at hyper RPG. She's also a youth gaming coach, Janelle Santa Cruz. Okay, thanks for having me, guys. Yes, Janelle, you've known IF and

I for a long time. Yeah, it's been Yeah. I've actually known of you before I knew you because you were withdraw wrestlers and and my my buddy Coyle was like, oh, there's there's this person in the wrestling I think it was Tights and Fights you used to post it in. Yeah. It was like, it's it's her drawings are so good. And then I saw you were streaming and I was like, let me check this out. I think we met previously, uh previous to that through Danny through comedy. I think, um,

because I think I met you. It used to be like a long time tournament words, tournament nerds. Yeah, tournament nerds. Uh and uh nerds again like comedy source stuff. Um, but yeah, that's that's how you kind of brought me into hyper a Bug actually into the family there because they needed for the wrestling. H Yeah, and so that was so thank you for that. I'm still there. You're great and joining us our other guests. She is a senior writer at in Samni at Games. She's also been

a game developer at BioWare, sam Max. You don't even include all your because you've also written several books. We here like shortening it. I know. I was like, no, you need to flex. We're trying to tell her before you need to flex your stuff. I'm not good at it. Yeah, and you're a host nerdice with me on our show fan Girl. That's how we know each other. Really has been super fun. It's been great kind of like this discussion as women to talk about things that affect us

in the in the nerd world. Like it's just such a positive environment to have other women, people from other marginalized cultures getting together to talk about things that we love so much and we're so passionate about and I think that's really why I'm stoked to be here today, is because I think a lot of the time people when we talk about like women in games or stuff like that, they're like, oh, it's all about like, oh, it's it's because you hate games, or like you want

to be so negative. But it's because I hate them. That's why I play them. It's like we we love games, we love comics, we love all the stuff. We want to make it better, you know, And that's why we're all here. And and I wanted to say this is going to be a little bit different than our traditional format and that we wanted to have an open conversation, so it's kind of going to be a roundtable discussion.

I really wanted to just Janelle and I were having lunch the other day and she was telling me some of her experiences, um of being a woman in the in the gaming world, and I was like, you have to come on and talk about this, because even I, as a woman in the nerd world, was not aware of some of the stuff that she goes through. And so I was like, I just want this to be an open conversation about some of the great, amazing things that we've gotten to experience and you know, things that

we want to work on, uh and problem solving. But for both of you, I guess where would you say probably more professionally or even like you Sam working on game developing, Like how did you? And I know both of you have different stories, but how did you get to where you are? Yeah? Uh guess. For me in terms of getting into game development, my my path was kind of weird. I think a lot of people have a really weird path into game to have. There's no one right answer. I'm a game writer, So for me,

I wrote books first. I wrote a couple nonfiction books. Um, I wrote a lot about video games. I wrote video game reviews for national newspaper up in Canada, which is where I'm from originally, And that's kind of how I sort of connected with a lot of people in the video game dev community. They knew my work, they knew that I was passionate about games, and so I got in that way. But for people looking to get into games and game writing, I always recommend that they check

out Twine. It's a free online client. Basically you don't have to download anything. You do it totally in your browser and it allows you to make your own interactive

choose your own adventure novel. Basically, it's all writing. You don't have to have like any art skills or programming skills maybe like basic HTML or whatever, but you just go and you write your story and it it lets you write branching dialogue, dialogue choices, that kind of stuff, and if you finish a full twine, like, it's a great piece that you can use when you're auditioning for

game gigs. And even if you're not using it to audition for like Triple A game gigs, it's something that you can put out there and be like, look, I wrote something, I finished something like, here is what I can prove to you that I'm actually good at this. That's so cool. Yeah, I didn't know. We're going to drop that in the footnote so you'll have a link to That's awesome. It's literally what I used to audition for by Wear. So you can look at these BBC we're given last week it was v O stuff inside

nuggets on how to get into this industry. Yeah, that is so cool. Um yeah, Janelle, how did you get into youth gaming coach like becoming Yeah, well, my family were always big gamers, and you know, we grew up with games and UH used to like sit in my bunk bed and watch my dad play Silent Hill and just like you know, all these things. So it's just

a big in two stories and everything. And um, because we were such a big gamers, my younger brother got into playing over what's professionally and I was big and Blizzard, you know, played Diablo. I met my husband actually because I when I was doing stand up, I did a joke about Diablo. They are so cute together, They're so cute. Our first was like playing Diablo online and he brought us friend because he was nervous. Um, but there is that. And so when Overwatch launched, um, you know, I had

never really played in the first person shooter before. It took me two years of grinding to learn how to aim and so um, I met a lot of kids who had small voices and things like that, and so

I just bonded with them. And I also worked as a day job, you know, um, with special needs kids, and I worked with at risk youth and so I knew how to work with with teenagers and people that didn't have the skill set and wanted to learn to get better and needed to reform because maybe they used things, you know, language that they shouldn't be using on the internet.

And so that's how I got into it. And so now we have this this Date Night Discord, which initially started as a place for me and Andy to actually just play games online as a you know, a date night, and now there it's just like hundreds of kids and stuff and we do pick up games and we work on on tactics and strategies and run scrims and stuff. And so that's how I got there. What I love.

I love that you said that you had to grind for two years to get good at Overwatch, because I feel like so often people look at streamers and like women streamers and are like, oh, they know, it's so easy, Like all they do is sit there and play video games all day. But it's like it's really hard work. Like streaming is really hard work. Playing games professionally, it's really hard work. It takes a lot of time and

effort and super impressive. Because like again, like my brother, um, he's five years younger than me, but had been playing games for so much longer computer games, you know, because I was playing you know, console stuff, and and I just like I didn't have the proper equipment, and so he was ahead of me. So had that two years of aim experience and now you know, it transfers over to other games, like we were talking about Apex Legends earlier. My aim is decent enough, like I can keep up.

You know, I'm not not a god by any means, but you know the kids are because because culturally, like they've been playing since they were younger. A lot a lot of boys have played, you know, and so um that's something that yeah, that I feel was really important for me to do for myself was was to spend like I spend like five hours a day playing the game, um at least minimum. And that's nothing compared to people

that spend you know, eight hours or twelve hours. Like it's it's ridiculous, like the using you know, the learning the hand eye coordination between the mouse and keyboard instead of a controller, because's not a controller. It's it's so much more um intricate like using yeah, you know all that, and so yeah, and I know a lot of my friends that have had to you have to be consistent with your streaming schedule, um. And so if I know that I've seen you posting about that too, like I'm

gonna be on here, I'm gonna be streaming. These are the hours that I'm streaming. I think a lot of people don't realize, Like what you were saying Sam about like the fact that Janelle said that she was grinding is you also have to be entertaining. You have to be entertaining, like you can't just like silently, you know, like you have to be That's how people, uh, that's

how people build their following and have loyal fans. So there's so many things that go on that I think people don't realize, right, And Yeah, and streaming did sort of take a hit for for a while for me because it was so hard to focus on the game and you know, learning how to make in game calls and stuff, but also like trying to manage your chat

and all that stuff. So I did have to take a little bit of time from my streaming to focus on actually you know doing that, And so that was that was a challenge within itself, like to do to take away that time. I talked about this at my

like work a lot. But it's so funny that streaming and also working in game dev are both jobs that you really have to be on and you have to be talking to people all the time because I think a lot of the time us nerds are like very introverted and shy, awkward, and streaming and hosting is so like being on putting yourself out there and working in

game dev is so such a collaborative medium. You always have to be talking to people, talking to level designers, talking to environment are talking to like every person who has a finger in the pie, and so it's like, what what did we do? We're nerds? Are there other women that y'all enjoy watching, like other gamers and people that you have met? Um fran is Is she's an

Overwatch player and she's an to player consistent. Her hero pool has a lot of aim based heroes because the game over Watch has low mechanical you know, like skill requirement characters like we're you know, there's a healer named Mercy who a lot of women tend to play because you don't have to aim. All you do is you point your staff out a teammate and you heal them and you follow them around the map and sort of when they die, you ruse them like that's your ability, um,

but fran herself. She uses Anna, who is a sniper who snipes her team to heal them, which is very She's my favorite character. I mean, I'm terrible at her, but I like to play her. Yeah, if you do. You have some female streamers that you like watching? Oh man, Yeah, Zombie Unicorn, she's great. I also Austin Marie, another good friend of mines, you know, pop over to what she's cooking up to. Vana is great Eric the time to time, and then like you know, uh, there there is where

is this um? I forget her name, but she like she's a scientist, so like she'll just have pul on conversations. She's like, uh, I was going to say astrologist, astronomist who I guess I don't know. Anyway, she and she just like literally talks about space her whole stream. So so I have tons of I really want to watch that after this. Yeah, and Lady Danger as well, she's great.

So those are those are all my shouts outs? Yeah, Janelle, I did want to say so when you and I were grabbing lunch, you were telling me about how difficult it is actually for women to advance because when people find when people here, and this was something that I listen, y'all, I take a lot of abuse as a woman in the nerd world, like in the common section and the

names that were called. So I was very aware of that harassment happening to women in gay You mean, I wasn't aware though, that it's actually affecting your job because when people find when people hear your voice and they hear that you're a woman, they will hop off the game. Yep, they will, um, yeah, they'll jump off of the map. Um, and so they will not play with you because the team over watches the team based games six six verses

six and um. So I would you know. At one point I I made a call because it's if you have to communicate, you have to say you know so some and so's left right, you know, main whatever, and um somebody yelled at me that this was one of the first times somebody's like, you know, what the hell are you doing in this game? Like get off and go um go make makeup tutorial on YouTube, and I was like the hell, like, okay, whatever, like And because specifically I I play DPS characters which are um, it's

not traditional for women. They play support a lot of them play support characters like Mercy, the one that I described earlier, and so it offends them to see to see to hear a woman's voice coming out of you know, the McCree guy or a soldier male character. Yeah, because they want to play those characters, and so it's their

right they feel. Um. And uh, you know, I've lost so many games and it's been crazy because I will play, We'll stack with some friends, you know, I'll have a couple of of guys with me, and they're like always so surprised or like does this happen to you all the time? And I'm like yeah, like like all the time. People will just stop playing because they don't want to play with me or they don't they're not doing what they want me to do. They go go play Mercy.

I bet your Mercy May and they tell me about your Mercy May, but I bet you played Diva, and I'm like, I don't, like, I don't have a problem with those characters, but I don't play those characters. My hero pools completely different. And and so it just they love to harass you. They They've have been called like every possible word you know for a woman. Um, but I know that that in order to combat that, some people were using voice changers. Um, but you were saying that.

When you did that, people thought that you were because you still sounded like uh yeah, so they thought that you were a gay man that was a man, but they were they would not hop off the game, but then you would get slurs, No, would get slurs. And you know what, Actually, my hero that I that I play the Soldier Sony six. So he's like a Captain America type guy right where he's like, um, he's the leader of the organization of Overwatch named Soldier because he's

like the most generic looking soldier character. And I picked him because I was like, this guy has a kit where he can take care of himself. He can heal himself, so I don't have to ask for healing from a teammate because he can heal his damn self. He runs fast, so I can run around and get kills and I don't I can carry myself. I don't need anybody. Well, Um, this game has been out for two years and about three weeks ago they announced, um they lore wise they

announced that he's gay. Yeah that so they were a huge win. I feel like it was fantastic and so so now people were really excited, and so I'm it's been a fast return to the when I did the experiment with the voice changer, where I don't even have to speak to be called the word or whatever you like,

where they're just look at the hours. I have five hours on this guy, and so that they immediately like, I bet you gay, but you know like this, and I'm like, yeah, I am so like and it's just it's ridiculous, Like it's have lots of women in my discord that say, oh, why to drive a voice change one, I mean, and I want to see what it's like. And I say, I've done it, and yes, like, if you you get more respect still even sounding like a gay man because they assume that you've played games more.

They assumed that as a male, you've culturally you've played games more. Well. The thing about the voice changer is that it treats the symptom, but not it's not addressing the problem. Yeah, you find stuff like that because that's that's the insidious stuff that you know, when guys jump off, it affects your ranking and your to compete, and you find that in the professional world as well, it's that

insidious stuff that people don't talk about a lot. That's actually the stuff that really affects people's ability to work in this world, like to advance, Yeah, like get noticed by leagues. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean girls at a young age aren't encouraged in the same way that boys are to explore programming or coding or you know, gaming in a lot of different ways. So it puts us behind. It puts us at a disadvantage even trying to get

into these fields. Like you said about your brother, Like Eve been playing PC games a lot longer than you had, and that put you at a disadvantage age wise. It's the same in gaming. I think a lot of girls aren't brought up being told like we're making a real push for it now, which is awesome, trying to get more women into STEM, like it's great. Girls who Code is a great organization for that. But you know, girls I feel like don't feel encouraged or able to get

into these fields that traditionally have been advertised. I would say as like for boys, and I think that's a real shame because games are for everyone, and they should be for everyone, and the more different types of people that we have making games, the more different kind of stories we're going to get in games, because I'm going to I come to games with a different life experience than Danny does as a Latina woman than if he

does as a black man. Like we all come to the table with our own stories and our own experience, and getting more different kinds of people to tell those stories just makes her better and more exciting games. Like, I feel like we all win when we open up

the table to everybody. So I am hopeful that the more we have discussions like this and the more we put out into the open, we can start to say stop treating the symptom, you know, with like a band aid, with the band aid, and start going back and drilling down to how can we fix this from the start? Yeah, and and to like really speak on your issue as well.

I've met someone at twitch Con. She's also another female streamer I forgot to shout out ferociously, Steph who also happens to be trans and she played Blizzard game but a different one, Heroes of the Storm, and she um she was very vocal about not adding a voice chat feature to the game, and and you know, they ended up adding it anyway, and it just totally affected her ability to rank up because now she ran into the

same issues as you did. And Overwatch. I'm glad you brought up Apex Legends for that exact reason actually, because they have that communication system where you can just ping objects in the world without speaking. You don't necessarily need to use the voice chat to communicate with your teammates. And I think that's great not only for you know, women and trying to make things genderless or an even feel,

but also for like accessibility issues. You know, if people are hearing impaired and they can't talk or speak over voice chat, now they're able to play this game, you know, and it again opens up the table for where people. So it's a very dynamic ping system too. Because when I was playing, you know, because my buddy Manny Manny Hugpian is the lead writer for it, so he wrote

all the voice lands. He's like, you should try all those pings, you know, we wrote it's like I've been there every night and until nine pm forever, please listen

to my life. But what's funny is like, yeah, because you know, normal pings are like like I'm coming, I'm here, but like this one's like I feel like someone's been here, I've been Like, they're very dynamic in the sense that it's like one of our friends did have a mic and it was totally fine, where normally in a BR game, a Battle Royale game, it's very hard to play with someone without a mic, and that was a huge accomplishment.

I think, Yeah, for accessibility, I think it you know, just to take a quick sidebar on accessibility, where you know, it's it's very easy to forget about things that other

people need when you don't. For example, I made a joke recently because uh, you know, porn Hub had those like interactive videos where they you know, team with a fleshlight and I was like, we've gone too far, blah blah blah, and somebody like one of my d ms is like, actually, I was hearing on a podcast that like, that's great for accessibility for disabled people to use those products because you know, they don't have access to their hands or you know, they don't have that level of mobility.

And I was like, well, you know that change, yeah, and I don't think about it, and it was like that actually now made it way cool, and it's like, yeah, definitely there's a big push I think in the industry right now, and certainly an insomniac where I am to make games more accessible and to really expand out those

accessibility options. I was playing Shadow of the Tomb Rader and they have a really dynamic accessibility system where you can change individually the level of difficulty for different things in the games. You can make combat really hard, but you can make puzzle solving really easy, you know what I mean. Changings like that, a lot of push for

like color blindness options, which yeah, it's it's great. I love I just you know, I feel like the more marginalized people we can get into games and into making games and into streaming games, the better the community is gonna be for it. And thinking about my guest today Andy Um, it was on My husband was on Twitch and a and he was like, look, you know this is the commercial that I saw and then maybe cryer earlier.

It's it's like disabled kids with the and then and I just I watched it over in his screen without like it sounds and and he was like and I was like crying too, where I was like, like it it made me so happy because there's there's new controller that's out for them, and it's just been's fantastic. We have to take a quick break, but we are going to continue this conversation right when we get back, and we're back still joined with Janelle Santa Cruz and Sam

Max and Sam. I wanted to say so, Insomniac Games, I remember you on our show interview just in int A chew Right. She's been there for like fifteen years or something. Yeah, she's a really talented, wonderful art director

who's out Insomniac. We have a lot of really wonderful women on the team and Insomniac and I think it's really cool to see the gaming industry going out of its way, like a lot of tech businesses to look at their you know, company makeup, and they're hiring procedures in HR to see like how we can level the

playing field a little bit. Because there are all those studies you know about resumes or how you know what I mean, Like if the resume has a certain kind of name on it, maybe it doesn't get looked at necessarily. There's a lot of studies about how the way companies right job requisitions, Like when you go to a board and you look at like the job ask or whatever,

and you before you apply. A lot of the ways that companies, right those appeal specifically to men and maybe don't appeal necessarily to the way women think about themselves. Like they'll say, like, we need an expert in and women often don't consider themselves experts in the same way.

So there's a lot that companies can do in terms of being really careful about how you write those being really conscious about going out and trying to recruit in places where you know there are going to be a lot of people just to balance that, you know, interview pool, just to make sure that you have women, you have people of color, you queer people interviewing for these positions. You know, on that point. I know, Janelle, if you

knew this. But at hyper RPG back when I was hosting there as well, Zach Ebank, who's the head of Hyper was saying they were looking for a social media manager. This was like two years ago, and so he put out a call for a social media manager and he said all of the women that applied were overqualified, were overqualified and all like he said, a ton of guys that applied were like, I've never done it. Before. But you know, I figured I would throw my hat in

the ring, and that was like I couldn't. He was like the women that applied, I was like this, you're too good for this job, like you know, And it was at the time when the channel was new, so they were just starting out, and he was like, I couldn't believe some of the guys like the confidence of just like yeah, I figured I would, you know, I tweet, so I figured I could be you know, do you remember that if I've done on Twitter before? So and I agree Sam that I feel like a lot of

times we and I've seen that so much. I see that on Twitter with in film Twitter and women that are are our film reviewers and stuff just being like they think that they have to be I don't know, like it's it's exactly what you're saying. What we we hold ourselves back in some way and just because of because of I think what we've dealt with. I think we've been conditioned there how we've been conditioned to think

that we're not good enough. And then and then you see the resumes of other people like oh yeah, no, totally, yeah, it's important, Like there there's you know twenties six plus heroes on the roster for for Overwatch and on. All of the women that I work with and play stress themselves out trying to learn all of them because they feel like, you know, they have to have we have to have this deep of a hero pool in order to qualify for for so and so's team and whatever.

One there's guys like I blow one trick this one hero and whatever. I guess I'll play professionally. Like that's like prove yourself nerd stuff. Right. Where as soon as you say like I'm a game or like I'm a nerd or like writing books, you get quiz and you're expected to be this expert, you know what I mean? I mean, I have Goku in a geta from dragon ball Z tattooed on my body and I'm not and I had a podcast I've had to dragon ball I mean,

that's too much, that's too too many. Both, OK, so I blame him, but like if I don't know if you remember this, but I tweeted something I think about our dragon ball podcast. You know, we were having some guests or something on and someone was like, do you even watch dragon ball Z? Like something like that or like have you do you even know who a curatoryama is? And that's the creator and Funimation who like owns dB Z,

you know, does all the dubbing and stuff. They somebody went on their account and replied to them and they have like hundreds of thousands of followers. Replied and said, yeah she does. I know. It's nice when you've worked for huge companies that have employed you because of your expertise to drop in and be like, yeah she does. That's like when I I'm from Canada, so I moved to Toronto ten years ago. Oh and that's where a

lot of my like nerd community started. And I remember I was twenty one and I was going to my very first nerd party. It was thrown by the local comic book store, and I was super nervous and and know anybody you shy like showed up by myself. And I remember talking to like a cute dude who worked at the comic book shop and being like, this is my moment and talked to a cute nerd. Doesn't be great? And I was like, yeah, I love comics and he was like, oh yeah, names Spider Man's parents and I'm

like gateke, like literally this. I feel like it's the thing that people say happens, and I was like, I can't believe this is happening to me. And now I write Spider Man. You yeah, for y'all that don't know. I mean, one of the biggest games is past year Spider Man at Insomniac Games, Sam worked on that. That is cool, so so cool. You know, vindication he's getting paid,

But that's it. But that's what it is. And that's because you and I and the people in this room, like, despite having to deal with things like that, kept out of so much. And my hope is that we have had to deal with a lot of that stuff so that hopefully the next generation of gals try to deal with it less and then after that less and less, and you know, that's that's the goal. Every time I want to give up, I'm like, I can't. One. I've already made it this far, and it's farther than other

women of color like I have to be. I'm a Latina that's made it this far in the industry, and other people are counting on me. My niece is counting on me, like people are. I'm I'm taking the brunt of it because the generation before me took even more than I did. Um. Yeah, I I totally agree, and and it is nice. I mean I have seen progress, and I know Janelle that you've built a really nice community.

I mean, if if if there are women that are listening that are interested in in in getting into gaming or doing it competitively, like what do you recommend to kind of developed and foster a positive community. There's so many discords out there, um, you know, and and we've we've built one like our Date Night discords it and and that's what I always encourage people to do, is to look for communities for whatever it is that you

want to work on. Because for us, we service the multitude games, like because we have UM experts like Andy's a fighting game expert. If somebody wants to come in and work on something for Smash Brothers, like, he's there and he will help you because he's he's played UM tournaments day for he's been a tournament level and so yeah and so and and UM, and we'd focus on

on UM kids. And also you know women because a lot of women they come in and they just they're new to games because they just got a PC and you know, the games are, you know, and so that's where you know, I can come and be like, okay, like these are the coaching tips I can give you, like and I work one on one with you if I if you need on with these scrims and um, we stream them and UM. And that's always like whatever game it is, there is that there is a community

out there, there's a discord for it. There's like you know, there's Reddit forums and and UM. It's just so important to to reach out to other people because like we provide a safe a safe area for for you to work on something like this is my goal that I want to do. Like there's a fourteen year old girl, um, who wants who's she's so good at Genji? Which is non traditional for for what for a girl to play

let alone a fourteen year old girl? Um, and she's like, you know, she comes home from from wrestling practice and she comes you works on Genji and like that's you know, that's that's what we do. Um. And uh. So that's there's other places a character and can the character and

watching he's a yeah, it's a ninja, um guy. And so I don't know the women tend to to to flock to certain types of characters and stuff, and so that one is that's all the guys love Genji because he's a little he's direct from an anime and so so yeah, yeah, it's so good. Um yeah, joining and joining a community because it's not just discorded as other places to where it's just mostly reaching out and just

searching doing the research. Like it's it's not that hard to do once you once you you know, set the search for finding a group of supportive people. I feel like it's so such good advice. It's so important, Like for people who want to get into game development, it's important to you know, communicate to people who are goals to are people that you look up to, and to kind of make a genuine try to make a genuine like connection with people like that and you know, maybe

find a mentor if that's something you're into. But also beyond that, I always really encourage people to find their community of their own level, like find the people that you're going to come up with, because it's one thing to like look up to people and be like, oh, I'm gonna try to be friend like someone who has already established but that's better thing to do. Is to find the people of your own cohort, of your own level, and to sort of support each other and come up

together and help each other out. And I feel like I've talked about this. I wrote a book called Girl Squads,

which is like about women supporting women. And I feel like a lot of the time, as women were conditioned, like we're talking about before, to feel like we have to compete with these others instead of cooperating with each other, because we we all suffer from this like highland or syndrome of there can be only one you know what, because a lot of times there is only there's only space for one, like there can only be one Latino who podcasts, so that can be only one woman at

this game studio, only one woman streamer. But it's like that's that's wrong, Like yeah, the patriarchy has told us that they made that up. So it's like there's more than enough room for all of us, and when we support each other and lift each other up, we all are stronger for it. So yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that, but anyway, cool with power, Like that's I mean, because I'm going back to uh to school for my master's in sports psychology, Um, so

that I can play for easy works for sports psychology. Um, because my just insane that that is now a thing thing now, Yeah, like that's a new job that is so interesting. I just want you to do a podcast talking about that. My brother, the things that he tells me. You know, he's worked for multitude of organs and uh, you know, he's seen bad orgs and good orgs, and

the good Organs always have reliable staff. And um, that's something that a lot of the the over Watch League is now requiring them to have like a psychologist there for them because these kids are plucked out of their mother's homes and all of a sudden they're moving into a gaming house. And you know, somebody that probably had, you know, like a gor phobia and all of a sudden now has to live in the house, you know,

with something I've never thought about before. You write, these are just kids and and so that's you know, and given that's what I do, because I also provide tutoring for these kids because I'm qualified for that too, So I'll help them with their their schoolwork so that they can work on this other stuff. Um. But that's that's the type of thing that you um, that you want in a for working for, you know, with these kids and um and speaking of going back to talking about girls. UM.

The problem also with living in a gaming houses. You're living with five dudes. You're living with yeah, and you're sharing a bathroom with these That was my life when I moved to l anthing and I lived in a windowless room with four other dudes an apartment and there was yeah, and then I had to had to take Molly. Oh my god, you were there. Oh my gosh, Janelle.

I remember. God. We people don't know this, and I hope this is helpful for people listening, because I think you see us and you're like, they're so successful, and it's like we were in the trenches. We were in the trenches. Janelle used to make fun, like not make fun, but used to kind of get on because my I didn't have any windows in my room. I lived in like a closet. Essentially, I did my time. I remember she was grinding all days. Molly was yeah in the house.

I was like, I'm taking your dog. Yes, this is just the side note. When I was diagnosed with my autoimmune stuff, I was very sick I was, you know, trying to host. I was trying to write, I was trying to submit audition, like all this stuff, and Janelle, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna go Janelle. Janelle took Molly for I don't know, like three months or something when I was really sick and you took care of it. Was a friend to my dad's dog. So that was great. So that it's just so funny too that we're like,

we've come up together, and it is come up. Yeah, we've supported each other. You know what it's so funny is because when you and I both hopped on the scene, we're both in the comedy scene. We were nerdy Latina's and I think a lot of times people did pit us against each other and they tried to do that, yes, And what Janelle and I realized was like, oh, people are scared. I was like, oh, if we work together, we will be we will be two times as strong.

And that's what we started to do, and we started to like work our way up real quick. Because I remember if I couldn't make something, you would I'm like, oh, well I can't. You know, I have another hosting gig. But if you want a nerdy Latina, I know the perfect one and we would tag team out. So that love day in the family. I love that we have to take another break. This is such a good combo. Um. We're going to continue and talk about the future gaming

as well, right when we come back. And we are back, and so I wanted to talk about, yeah, the future that you see of of gaming, but also what we think studios can do as far as problem solving. One thing that I know, just in not being in the gaming world but being in the hosting world, is a lot of studios had a hands off approach when it came to the comments section, and I'm like, you cannot allow And I think Maud Garrett touched on this a

little bit. Mod was on our Zelda episode. She's also a host at a bunch of channels, was like, you cannot allow people to treat your host this way. And I was so fed up with a lot of the channels that I was hosting that just being like, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. And that's not true because Janelle, you and I have both hosted at hyper and they take their mods very seriously. They take

their jobs very seriously. A lot of our mods are people who are fans who are very loyal to the channel and will not let you treat the host that way and and write these harassing comments for me. I mean when you're starting out. I think, like maybe two years ago, I was on a channel which is not going to be named, but um I was did a

couple of episodes with them. The comments were so bad that I took a break from ifian I's podcast, Like it wasn't even our it wasn't our podcast, but I had to take a break just because I needed a break from everything I was doing, Like and it was a studios need to lay down a line of like, we're not going to accept racism, we're not going to accept sexism. We're not gonna allow you to speak to our talent like this. You are not welcome here. And I think a lot of places we're putting the money

over that of saying, oh, yeah, but they're subscribers. We don't want to lose subscribers. And and the nice thing about hyper was like, if you are a subscriber and you act like this, we don't want to yeah, and that's yeah, that's exactly how how everyone. Yeah, I assume that we treat your streams like that. That's the thing too. If people come in and say something, I don't care if you sub to me like, no, you're not going to say that to me, and we don't want that here,

like it's ridiculous. Yeah, this is one place where I will pipe in because I feel like that is a very huge epidemic and a lot of communities and at this point in my career, I've been able to work for a lot of different YouTube channels, and what happens is people, you know, build a brand on a community of white males they like consider your host or generally white male, so you don't see it, so you see so it passes by and you grow a large community,

and then when you're friends who are people of color and or women hop on and you see this, you're in a bad position because this is something you haven't seen before and you now we're in the position of wondering, oh, snap, these are my subscribers, but this is also my fan base, and you have to make the decision of what's more important to you play and it's safe and ignoring it and letting your video get those views, or like addressing it head on and you know, there's been a very

popular media company that we all know of that when they had a recent shake up due to uh, you know people at top being outsted for doing gross things. They've took more control of their community and shifted and it's a lot better and a lot more positive and and it's all because they were gonna take that hit anyway, so it gave them allowance to you know, go ahead and make that change. But that's a thing that people

are there. They'll turn the other cheek like they won't you know, goat it on, but they won't make a hard stance against it. And when you don't say anything as they're just gonna look at you and be like, oh, well, you're letting me get away with it. And that's what I do like about streaming is you can make a

hard and fast stance. And that's why you know, I like to I pride myself on you know, they're being women within my stream community, within the Salt Squad, and that's why you know, we kind of switched from the Salt Squad because we used to be Shocked Boys, which was just you know, not it was just something I made up at Geek and Sundri not even thinking when I was mating Schulk. And then you know that there's just you know, women in my community who are like,

oh man, what do we call ourselves? And you know, you go through that thing because it's it goes back to that agent conversation of using like hey guys, yeah, and you know, it's very easy for for me as a man to be like, well, boys, this for everyone, but I don't have I don't there's that is the

thing that I don't feel the effects of. So and it kind of goes back to when people say like X is and racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic is if you're not you you literally have a blind side because you do not feel what it feels to be excluded in that way. So then I was like, okay, what's something that you know, uh, that can be accepted as Salt squad? You know, in that way anyone can be a member of Salt Squad and then if you join

your the Salt fam and like it's very gender neutral. Actually, like I love that you brought that up, because in terms of Danny, you were asking what can companies do to kind of help this? I think that that's actually one of the really big things I've I've been blessed in my time and games to work at two incredibly progressive companies with like great community managers who value diversity

and great storytelling and all that. But you know, something that companies can do is unconscious bias training, because I think a lot of the time, you know, we don't realize, like you said, the things that we bring to the table in our own mind that we assume about people. And like everybody has those assumptions, like I'm a queer woman, but I'm not a person of color. So like we

all were raised with different assumptions. The world bombards us with things that we're supposed to think all the time. So we all, whether we like it or not, come to the table with these biases that we feel about other people. And that's okay, Like we all have them, and we have to the point is that we have to acknowledge that and be aware of them so that they don't interfere with our ability to hire the best person, to work with, good people, you know, all that stuff.

And so but I think that can be a hard thing for people to comprehend sometimes because if I'm like everyone's kind of racist sometimes like people are like, I'm not racist, and it's like, well, like every you know, in some way, we all have something that we assume about someone that's not correct, and we just need to be able to state ourselves that's okay. I recognize that now and I won't do that anymore. And that's like when HR and like when companies bring in like great

speakers on diversity and stuff. I love that. I think that's so important. It just makes people think, yeah, I mean, just it is funny because you know, we're we're talking about racism here, but I think this can be used across the board for all is m it is, yeah, you do have that hard thing, because I think what's so hard is like, you know, everyone's more afraid of being called a racist than actually being racist, because they're

like that's the worst thing in the world. And I think people miss the point that you can do something that is racist, you can do set something sexist and not be a racist and not be a sexist. It's it's what determines what you are is your actions when

it is called out. Or women can do things that are sexist, like I've worked with women who do misogynist things and they don't even know it, but it's oftentimes because they were raised in this highland or culture where they feel they have to put other women down in order to maintain their position, which I totally understand and sympathize and don't blame them for. But it's like we have to have conversations like this so that then you can examine yourself and be like am I doing that?

Am I competing instead of cooperating, like yeah, bigger streamers need to, you know, take a take a step forward that too, because one of the things that Ninja, who is like a popular Fortnite streamer which you know, kids love, he refuses to play with women because of the comments in the in the chat because he doesn't want to hear. And that's why I don't do it, and I don't because I'm married. He won't play with the woman because

he's married. See Mike Pence, I mean essentially yes, because he just is afraid of that and instead of instead of like letting that actually be a teaching moment, he just and I think that's what we talk about again, whereas like you let your platform determine what you do instead of determine what your platform is a great example of treating the symptom and not the issue, right, which is again I understand like treating the issue is extremely hard and not easy and not an instant solution in

any way. So it's like the thought of going about doing that seems daunting, and it's daunting to me to be like, how do we dismantle the paintreon key, Let's just figure it out. But it's like, you know, it's small things. Everyone can do small things. Something cool in Apex Legends is they have a character that uses they them pronouns that's like non binary, and that's that's cool. I had a conversation at work today with someone because of that who was like, can you explain what non

binary is to me? And had a great conversation about it and they were like, that's really confusing. I was like, I really applaud that that. I really applauded. Like the roster, the hero roster, the character roster is like so inclusive. It's just and that's what more and more games need to be doing. And that's you know, taking a step forward.

Would you know, um, which Overwatch has been doing. And so yeah, it's like I was so so impressed with with that launch just at the gate, like just like very inclusive just opens up that conversation, I feel, which is so because it makes it more the norm and our in our culture and the younger kids that are in there, they are growing up playing this game with

that being the norm. Yeah, just the simple fact that there are like two separate black women playable characters is a big thing because, like you know, I was just having a conversation with Tonay, a friend of the pod who she was saying, you know, every time there's a black woman in the game, there's only one black woman and she's you know, it just has no and then the other black woman is like Caribbean, which is a total different, you know, type of black, you know, and

you only see one shade. So that's that I thought was really it's great that you bring that up. I have, like I've been in that argument before where people are like, well, we can't have two like Asian women in a game. Players won't be able to tell them apart. And it's

like we have like eighteen different white people. However, just stick a different haircut on or we did it like and it's but it is that moment of like, oh no, you're totally right, And it's just like you have to have that moment of like saying that to someone and have the like light bulb gone. That's not just happening

in games. That's happening all over movies a lot of times one Asian person in an ensemble cast or one yeah yeah, Um, what are some of the great moments that you've had being in the fandom being at cons? Because I know you both have gone to cons, have to I think that honestly, conventions are my favorite thing about being in this world is because that's a way

the screen. It takes away the and you know, the anonymous like comments and stuff, and like it's just fans being fans, and it's people that are passionate, and it's it's all the good things I feel like about about this world when I'm at CON's because people aren't going to say that stuff to my face. Yeah. But and also just seeing young people and and old people and all different kinds. So yes, I wanted to know some some good moments that you all have had at the

places you've hosted at worked at and and at conventions. Um, when people you know, um have have thanked me for allowing them to to practice their stuff. And we did a tournament recently and um, one of the kids is twelve years old and uh and he was able to beat a team of masters and he was just like he was so grateful and he he was like, you know, they got beat by twelve year old on the laptop. And because you didn't have a little more older than that.

I was like, because you're supposed to be thirteen to be in this tournament. We're just like, yeah, just like that at a and and honestly, like online I get a lot of comments from from um, you know on snapchet from the girls are like, you know, I put this much time, thank you for you know, thanks so much. You know, like you totally understand because I'm there, I'm

a voice for for people. UM. And and that's something too like whenever I see anybody, you know, a fan of HYPERRPG that you know that that it is grateful for for the work that we do there, it's just it really just makes me so happy. Yeah, it's amazing. I met like one of my very best girlfriends through

games on the internet. I found I was like scrolling through mass effect tattoos on Instagram when I was thinking about getting my mass effect tattoo and I found this like epic one on this girl, and I was like, oh my god, your tattoo is amazing. And we started talking on Instagram, and like five years later, we're best friends. And now we live in the state. We moved to the same city and I see here all the time.

And you know, games are such a great social space, and not only online multiplayer games, which are like a very obvious social space, but also like games that people care about in game fandoms, because you're playing these characters and you're so much more connected actively to these stories and like passively consuming a movie or a comic or whatever. People are just so passionate about them. And when you connect with other people who have that same passion, and obviously,

like fandom is amazing. Everyone listening to this, I'm not telling them anything new, but it's so cool and it's great to be able to meet these people online, um, to make these friends in Discord and on Twitter, and then to all congregate at the contents and then you get to meet them in real life. And I think about this all the time because when we were growing up, it was always the thing that was like, don't meet a stranger from me, You'll die. And it's like, all

y'all in this room right now. First everyone I know. I have so many twitch creative friends that we all finally met, like at Pitchcon, and it was just so funny because everyone had pieces of art to give each other because I was like I worked on all these things, like and everyone was just trading art and it was just like, you know, you just know everybody right away, and like that's how the Internet we're becas now is like you can fall in love over the internet, you know, etcetera, etcetera.

It's just it's um, it's just fantastic to have to have games as something to do together. It's like going to a thing part together online. You know, it's so fun. We spend so much time. I feel like, what I really love about this conversation is I feel like, oftentimes in the media at large, we spend so much time talking about how like gaming is like bad for women

and scary and like all this stuff. But like the truth of the matter is that the amazing and positive experiences and friendships and interactions that I've made and had through gaming outweigh anything else that's ever happened to me by like a magnitude of millions, like best friends, jobs,

amazing experiences like this, it's real life. And I just encourage girls who want to get into streaming, who want to try out gaming and art sure if they should because they've heard something bad or aren't sure if they'll ever be able to make it in programming, like you should do it. We need your voice and we're waiting for your voice and the amount of fulfillment you get from from putting that out there and the feeling of accomplishment that you do, like it's it always all the bad,

Like honestly, it's just it's so worth it. Yeah, if I wanted to push that over to you too, like do you have good con experiences or experiences in the

fandom that stick out for you? Oh? Yeah, I think whenever I get to meet, uh, someone that you know that really enjoys the work I've done, and I do really enjoy like whenever, like you know, I've this past January, I've been lucky enough to be on the front page of Twitch, and you know, that's been good in the sense of just how many people come in and goes, oh great, it's a black streamer because when you do see you know, the front page, and you know, I

feel comfortable saying this because I tell this to my friends that Twitch in their faces. It's predominantly white. You see a lot of white guys featured, and then you know it's it's and to see like, you know, the change in and them actively trying to switch that up by featuring more women on the front page, them doing

the Black History Months proper artists. Yea, so the so it's that type of stuff that's really going to change the perspective because like you know, Twitch kind of got burned by leg having these grand stage events and people being able to read what Chat was saying during this event and seeing how horrible some of these people can be, and the fear is it's I think it's once again trying to put the band aid on the issue instead of fix it where it's like we're would you we

just won't feature anything that triggers this instead of just like you know, actively being better about your bands and

actively like responding to your reports. And I think it's also just like, you know, give me the opportunity to turn it down if it's too much for me because I have a certain way I like to handle it, and it's with like you know, great mods like Flickery and you know Largo, who who are very quick to just like zap these eyes and then me even like bringing them to the front stage, letting them sit there and try all their silly whack trolls and then let them run out of gas and disappear when they see

that it doesn't like you don't make yeah, So so you know that's that's the thing is it is? It really is like to stop, you know, really kind of suppressing the people it's being affected instead of dealing with the people who's putting these people in all these situations. But I think in the end it is just also just to kind of bring it back to what this

episode is about, is kind of stepping up. Like if you're in a game with someone and you see someone saying, you know, some sexist bs or seeing someone like trolling someone because they're a woman. You, I mean, what do you have to lose? Now you're on the internet. You know, it's it's one thing when you don't even do it in person, but if you're on the internet and you can't even just step up and be like, yo, y'all are being some some butt holes, you know, like chill out.

I do that all the time. It's like chill out and then you know, and then it gets a little spicier after. And that's what I'm proud of. Like the you know, the teenagers, the voice. They group up and and they totally like go out of for any woman that somebody was saying that, Like they're like, it's so it's that it makes me like I feel like a

proud mama, and I'm like, oh, that's amazing. That's such a testament to the fact that when you sit down and you teach people like why you should be cool to people and like how to be cool, they then spread that message and I think that what you're doing is amazing. And then they add them and they bring

them to me, and I'm like, cool, my girls. Yeah, I think and I think it is it is important to do that because the fact of the matter is, gamers get so butt hurt when like the media portrays them as these horrible people, you know, yet do nothing to to to stop that. Yeah, it's like, how about okay, you hate it when it happens. Then when you see trash people being trash, you need to step up in crushing because we as a community can ouse these people.

You know, that's it. It shouldn't only be on women to make this change, and it can't only be on women to make this change, right like, guys have to step up and you know, yeah, here's what we want to do. Here's how we want to see the world change. Just like white people need to stand up for people of color, and you know, straight people need to stand up for queer people. It's important and I think if we all are cool together, we will form a voltron

of awesomeness and then we'll get more diversity games. Yes, this has been such a great conversation. I will definitely have to have both of you back and uh wigne and you know, as as this world kind of constantly progresses and changes. Um, Sam, where can everyone catch you? Oh? I'm just at Sam Meg's s A M M A G G S on Twitter, Instagram, all over the place. You can check out my books. My latest books are Girl Squads, A History of twenty Awesome Female Friendships and

Marvel Fear Listen that I'm so excited. It was so you brought it to our we got to see an early copy of it. It looked so cool. I was like, I have to order this. Thank you. Marvels like female superheroes, so it was like ones that I didn't even know about. I mean when I started writing it, I was half of them. I was like, I know everything about this, and the other half I was like, I'm so cool and so many great ones. So I picked those up and play Spider Man PS four Janelle, what about you?

I am Janelle Santa Cruz on Everything dust J and e L Santa Cruz on all the social media's and nice dream whenever. I'll post about it on Twitter and then um we just started a date night underscore o w Twitch which has all of our preapproved people on their um LGBTQ friendly and um so we all support each other and that's a good place to follow and see who we're hosting. Anymore. And you have a show

on hyper I do hyper Appug every Tuesday. We do blood Curdling Tales from the Loop UM which is awesome. It's a tabletop storytelling and and it's sending the eighties and it's hosted by Karen Rice and it's it's very spooky and I love it and I'm having a really good time. Yeah, yeah, Danny, thank you for having us, if we thank you for having us. I love talking with y'all and just working. So I've worked with you

both separately. I'm like, you'll need to meet each other. Um, and hopefully we can get Janelle on on our show, UM, on Sam and I's show. I am at miss Danny Fernandez on all the things. So definitely check out our tea public site. It's t public dot com, slash nerdificent. We're going to be adding more merch but they've made really public. Has like made special designs for us for if he and I which are really cool. Um. I love them. There's like a Batman one up there, like

old school Batman Robin Uh. They made a Vegeta and Goku, which like when we made a note for them because they're like, do you want us to make this, I'm like, yeah, um, if he has to be Goku, I have to be Vegeta. And it was so funny because they made it so on point that they made my widows peak Geta has a widow speaking, and I even was like, can we tone it? Down just a little because I was like, whoa, that's what I look like with his hair. But anyways, check it out and uh again, follow us on We're

on Facebook, We're on Instagram, We're on Twitter. Please send us, you know, screenshots if you if you review us, or if you buy merch. We want to see that because

we want to boost y'all. We love our fans, and y'all are just so positive and allow us to have these conversations like if you and I were saying, we've hosted at a lot of places, and a lot of them don't always let us have these type of open conversations and and talk about really important issues that I think a lot of people might not know are happening behind the scenes to us. So we appreciate this platform. Yeah, and you know me, it's your boy. If you I F y n W A d I w E on

Twitter and Instagram, if d's on Twitch, come through. Dropping in twitch Prime subs like y'all been doing Anita remind y'all does not renew. If you dropped them like five dollar stubs, they renew. But if you're doing twitch frn, you gotta come back every month. Don't forget me. I won't forget you. Uh As For shows, On the sixteenth of February, if you're in the l A area, I will be doing stand up at the Long Beach Comic Con at from five to six at the Live on

Mint show. You got some other shows coming later this month, but they're far enough to where I'll just promote them on the next one. Thank you so much stopping by and listening, and as always, stay near