Felicia Day can be the blog mascot?

It would be entirely against my writer/gamer crossbreed nature if I denied being a fan of the beautiful Miss Felicia Day, and to describe her sundry accomplishments here would be redundant. Suffice it to say that if you do not know who Miss Day is, then you, my friend, have been deprived of some of the finest Internet entertainment known to man, woman, or android. When it comes to gaming, however, she's known for her work regarding console and MMO titles, as well as other areas of geekdom (e.g. comics) that don't really allow the mention of her name to cross paths with this site. Until now.

In her newest vlog episode, she doles out her "Fave Five" items of personal interest, and abruptly interrupts her delightfully-smiley flow of thought with a more serious musing:

I'd like to take on this idea of casual games, and people not being real quote-on-quote "gamers." I think this kind of talk is bullsh*t. I don't know where this magical checklist is, that measures whether you can call yourself a gamer or not, but I think this attitude is elitist and prevents gaming from being more acceptable and mainstream. AND, the more accepted gaming is, the less likely your boyfriend or girlfriend will complain about you raiding four hours a night. They may even join you!

While this mini-rant is ultimately a lead-in to her praise of Jay Is Games (a fantastic casual games review site that I consider Transcending Pixels's final competition locked away on level 256), it made me grin nonetheless. Grin so much, in fact, that that's why I'm writing this post now.

Her attitude exactly mirrors mine. Or maybe, it's the other way around. In fact, if I could, I would steal this quote, go back in time, make it the official tagline of this blog, and chuckle evily when she calls it out word-for-word on this video. It all sounds so perfectly genius coming from the online-gaming icon that she is, but it's not a new idea in and of itself. She's not the first one who thought of it, and neither am I. But the more we keep talking about casual games in a positive light and promoting their legitimate aesthetic value, the more the general news media will take notice, and, just like she said, the more people will come to appreciate games as everyday works of art and culture the same way books and movies and music comprise what most people consider "entertainment." It's strange to think that, once upon a time, each of those mediums had their own historical struggles fitting into society. With any luck, games will one day achieve the same social significance as its predecessors.

You can hear this quote straight from Day at 2:13. Keep watching the rest of the episode for her hilarious let's-play of retro piece Streets of Rage.



It's nice to know I'm not the only one who didn't grow up with a console either.