Cerise Magazine

Heather Michelle Rousse is a video game artist and the lead animator at Yatec Games. Yatec Games is a startup video game development company out of Baton Rouge, LA, and is a part of Louisiana’s developing post-Katrina entertainment industry. Yatec’s first game, Enchanted Gardens, was released this past March. Heather was the first employee hired by Yatec founder Dean Majoue, and she now has worked with the company over a year. She is currently the only woman at Yatec, and is interested in helping more women make their gaming hobby into a career. (more…)

If you’re reading this magazine, chances are good that you’d like to see more girls, women and members of other under-represented demographic groups getting into gaming. We all have ideas for what game designers can do to make games and gaming culture more accessible for those who are currently excluded – but what can we do about it? How can we make more gamers? (more…)

Many early role playing games tended to ignore women as players, since men were considered the major audience back when the NES and Sega Genesis were first released. There was one game developer and producer, however, who didn’t immediately dismiss the potential female audience who, while they weren’t as prominent, did exist. Square-Enix has been acknowledging and attempting to reach out and include women in gaming since as early as their second Final Fantasy game for the original NES system. While their early female characters may have been a tad stereotypical, flat, and the lone representation of the gender in the games, by the fourth installment Square had realized the potential for the inclusion of engaging female characters. (more…)

This year I attended WisCon, the world’s leading feminist science fiction and fantasy convention, for the first time. Since it was also my first time attending any convention, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But, at Karen Healey’s prompting, I not only registered to attend, but also signed up to present a paper for the academic track and to be on one of the panels. (more…)

Gaming news tends to hit the mainstream media in a big way. Following are three of the standout stories from the blogosphere to the newswires. (more…)

Have you ever wanted to make your own dice bag, but felt that your sewing skills weren’t up to the task? You may find that felt – inexpensive, easy to cut to a pattern and requiring no hemming whatsoever – is an ideal material with which to make your own bags. And after turning out a few easy felt dice bags, you may be ready to try branching out into other, more challenging materials. (more…)

Last month, we invited you to think of our first issue as the beginning of a conversation. This month, we’re delighted to be able to introduce several new voices, and new topics to the discussion.

Like our cover model this month, Cerise is still small – but growing fast. In this, our second issue, you’ll find interviews with industry professionals in addition to the articles and reviews. We’re also pleased to be debuting a new feature column, “Gaming in the Media,” which will focus on analysis of gaming news, and a new category of writing, “Gamer Stories:” informal personal narratives about individual gaming experiences.

Next month, we plan to bring you more of the same great content, and even more new additions. This month, we hope you’ll enjoy reading about a recent convention, the women of the Final Fantasy franchise, recommendations for recruiting new gamers, and the fascinating histories several individual women gamers have shared with us. We hope you’ll learn something interesting about working in gaming from interviews with Heather Michelle Rousse and Patrick Weekes, that our reviews will help you decide which games to try, and that you’ll gain a better understanding of some recent media coverage of gaming. And we hope that the creative among you will have a little fun with “Craft Check.”

But most of all, we hope that you’ll want to join our conversation. Check out our submissions page and consider writing an article or other content for the magazine, join the Iris Gaming Network forums to discuss articles published in Cerise with other members, or use our contact form to send a letter to the editors. Speak up — we’re listening.