Futuristic Mental Hike day 1

Today was the first day of MindTrek but I sadly could only visit it briefly due to errands. As I arrived there I really didn't even know where to go and just went where my nose pointed me, and found two classmates and a panel about open source with this guy

(idk who you are but cool beans)

Most game-related panels were today but I only could make it to the last session, but I'm glad I did. First part was about the UI designs used in game live streams, and another was about online [verbal] abuse in MMO games, Dota 2 in particular. 

The latter is something that I'm happy is being researched and getting attention because toxic atmospheres are a huge problem in games. The presener pointed out that many of the people interviewed for the research chose not to speak on the microphone as not to give other people leverage that they can use to harass them. Myself as more or less the member of the fairer sex am especially wary about these things; although as the research data itself was quite biased as 94% of the 364 responses were male, I find as such it doesn't fully reflect the situation. Women are more likely to get harassed just because of that massive gender bias in player pools.

It's a huge deterrent for me personally to even think about entering online games because of the male-dominant, and often toxic culture in them.

Anyway possibly my highlight of the day was seeing this dapper, quite goth, robot. Sadly I had no time to introduce myself.

(I was there! so formal heck)