We are continuing our mental health chats! Joining me this week is Eve Crevoshay, the Executive Director of Take This. The mission of Take This, in its own words, is “decrease the stigma, and increase the support for, mental health in the game enthusiast community and inside the game industry.” Our discussion is wide ranging, from why building a healthy community is so important to why being a helicopter parent may not be a bad thing.

Episode Resources:

https://www.takethis.org/

https://www.healthygamer.gg/blog/video-games-and-mental-health-explained

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2021/10/05/heres-how-instagram-harms-young-women-according-to-research/?sh=b0058fb255ae

https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=jade

https://gameshotline.org/

Welcome to the meadow woman podcast we address the

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boss parts. The metal woman podcast starts now.

Hello, and welcome to the men and women podcast

part of the holodeck media Podcast Network. I'm your host

Lindsey, the boss poss from struggle to success recovering

and all taller returning listeners, thank you so much for

supporting the show. I love getting your messages. I love

hearing your feedback, it truly warms my heart. For all the new

listeners welcome, I hope you enjoy and feel free to drop me a

line in time. I'm really excited to introduce today's guests for

several reasons. One of them being that I'm actually not

feeling my greatest, I think my voice reflects that. And I think

that this person is just going to be a really like wonderful

person to talk to you when I'm not feeling thing that she does

for a lot of people. And it's really wonderful. She is someone

who I've met recommendations from different people at

different organizations that I just have to meet. Know, when

different people who don't even know each other are recommending

the same person to do that. They have to be doing some truly

wonderful work. So with that being said, I'm happy and

excited to introduce Eve crawfish Shea, the executive

director of take this, if I hope I said your last name correctly,

please started. Asking before again, I'm trying to get better

about that. But I keep forgetting. So Eve is the

executive director of take this mission up take this, in its own

words is to quote decrease the stigma and increase the support

for mental health and the game enthusiast community and inside

the game industry. So Eve, welcome to the show. I'd love

for you to introduce yourself and take this and just add a

couple sentences onto that very

sure thing. Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it. And I'm

really excited to be here with it. I've been looking forward to

this conversation. As you said, I'm executive director I've been

with take this about four years. And the organization itself was

founded in 2014, so about eight years ago, and and we do a

variety of things across games and across mental health. We do

research, advocacy, training and workshops, and resource

development for people who make and play games and people who

are streamers and content creators as well. So we cover a

really broad swath. And our perspective is that we need to

address some of the underlying challenges that are baked into

the culture and structure of games and the game industry that

can contribute to mental health well being and mental health

distress and challenges. So we talk a lot about what it's like

to work in the industry, the content and design of games, the

experience of being in online spaces as players and makers,

games, and a variety of things related to that. And so, So

increasingly, our our our work has broadened to include those

kinds of underlying issues related to mental well being.

It's really cool that you touch on a lot of

different aspects within the gaming industry. Because I I

love research and hopefully people listening know that by

now. I'm a big data nerd, wanted to start this discussion just by

offering some conclusions from various studies and literature

reviews, which I will definitely link in the show notes. These

are on the link between gaming and mental health. I found Yes,

a little bit more between people who play games. I think a lot

about what the industry does to mental health

too, but

yeah, which we absolutely can I never shy away

from it. But these the certain kind of statistics and stuff I

was trying to bring sort of a different view. So a one

quotation I found is every one conclusion I found from a

particular paper is quote, excessive video gaming is found

to be associated with positive emotions and social

relationships while playing. However, problematic and

excessive video gaming is also associated with maladaptive

coping strategies, negative emotions and attitudes, low self

esteem, loneliness, and poor academic performance. And so

video games have been linked to not shown to cause in any way

and I want to draw a distinction very rare depression, anxiety

and other poor mental health outcomes for a myriad of

reasons. One being that that can be used as a coping mechanism.

environments within video games have also been linked to low

self esteem. As you mentioned, there's a lot of representation

issue there's there's a lot of toxicity in the environment

issues for streamers, there's a lot of a whole host of content

moderation issues and chat moderation issues. And I I sort

of struggled to frame them So because we are obviously people

who also believe in the positive impact of video games, yeah,

we'll kind of under the rug. And this is why I liked that

particular quote that positive that video gaming can add a lot

to people's lives. But yes, so with that framing, I also wanted

to bring in a couple of facts from about mental health

directly from take this as website, an estimated one in two

Americans will be diagnosed with a mental health condition in

their lifetime, approximately one in five will be diagnosed

and given year, the most common types of diagnoses in the US are

anxiety disorders, of which there are many types, and 50% of

lifetime cases of mental health conditions begin by age 14 75%.

So very young population. And now that we've talked about this

picture, I want to get a lot of your thoughts on what you're

doing to address some of the issues mental health and video

games, what you tell parents that are saying these are bad,

and how that's just not true. But some of the things that you

do some of the missions that you support? Yeah, just let's let's

walk through the take. This actually does.

Yeah, so um, we do, we do a lot of public advocacy, and

we talk to parents, we talk to media, we talk to the public, we

talk to the industry itself. But primarily, we are we want what

we want to do is bring good science to bear on these

questions and to an accurate and like, normalize. So we want to

say, in a way that's translatable to people who make

and play games, like, Hey, it's okay to get help, it's okay to

need help that the communities, so one of the biggest protected,

we talked about protective factors and mental health, one

of the biggest protective factors that helps like, build

resiliency helps people feel like they're supported, and like

they're going to be okay. Is community. And what is, you

know, the experience of playing games online, if not community,

right community is really, really powerful. And if you

could find a positive supportive community, it's especially

communities Wade, we try to help people build communities that

are, that don't stigmatize mental health and that are added

that provide accurate information and access to good

resources. And, you know, help community moderators, and

managers and creators do that, right. If you can do that, you

often set people up for success without them needing further

intervention. That said, especially as we come into year

three of this pandemic, like mental health challenges are

ubiquitous, that people are really suffering. And the truth

is that a lot of people need access to services, that's that

there's problems with that continuum, what we call the

continuum of care, especially in the US, and across Western

Europe. But there's and there's, you know, there's, there's

problems with, like, supply, like the availability of care.

But there's also challenges around just stigma and not

knowing how to access it, and what to do and where to start.

So we try to talk about that stuff, which is just general

mental health, you know, knowledge. But, um, but we also,

you know, we want to one of the things that we're increasingly

talking about, and you're like, how do we talk to parents, what

is the issue is, you know, what do we want to say that's about

the positives and negatives, like, in general, playing games,

and playing games online is really wonderful for people.

And, and it, and it fulfills all kinds of needs that people have

for play. I mean, play is like a universal need. And it turns

out, adults need to play not just kids and all kinds of

stuff, the psychology around that is really interesting. And

the evidence about you know, play and games as a cultural

force exists for millennia, you know, across all kinds of

cultures. And so we, we know that, but we also know that the

ways that certain games are built, the ways that communities

function online, and the experience that kids have

online, it can be really, really problematic, and in some time,

and sometimes downright dangerous. And so when I speak

to parents about online gaming, I say, in online spaces in

general, including social media, I'm like, and I have an 11 year

old. So you know, I talk to parents a lot. I say this is the

only place where you need to be a helicopter parent, you

actually want to be a helicopter parent, you want to be really

aware of what they're doing online, where and how. And, in

fact, you know, my child, my 11 year old, a lot of her peers

have cell phones already. My child is not getting a cell

phone for a number of years to come. And I and that's a very

intentional choice right? There. She spends a lot of time on

screens more time than a lot of other parents would. But that's

because she's doing all kinds of things on screens, and one of my

research director talks about instead of talking about like,

screen time, she talks about a digital diet, this kind It's not

from her, but it comes from other really interesting

research, the idea of a digital diet, what are the things you're

doing on line? And what needs do they fulfill? And what kind of

activity are they? Like, it's one thing, if you're gonna sit

in front of Netflix for six hours a day, it's another thing

entirely. If you're talking with your friends, if you are playing

or creating cool things online, if you're writing, you know,

those are all really different kinds of activities. They may

all involve a screen, but that's okay. Right. And so, so I, we

tried to bring a lot of nuance and,

and perspective to the conversation around gaming and

game use. There are things that are very concerning online, and

they especially around extremist behavior, the normalizing of

hate speech, white supremacist fascist and a neo Nazi language

that's really scary and real, it's small problem, but it's

loud. And so a lot of people get exposed to it. harassment and

abuse across across online spaces, including in games, it's

really tough. And we are only at the tip of the iceberg

understanding what's actually happening in games, because

there just hasn't been as much research and as much work done

inside games, or as much acknowledgement of the issue.

It's like games outside of games like social media and stuff. And

it's less visible. It's harder to find, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Because we don't, they're not public spaces. So they're harder

to

do. It's harder to comb through hours and hours

chat. Yeah. And if it's written, yeah, it's

really. Yeah. It's really, yeah, it's and some of

the tech challenges are really big. Right. And so like, we

acknowledge that it's not like, I think people are just, you

know, bad. And don't care. I think it's just really we've,

we've come up against some big problems. So so we try to, you

know, we try to talk about stuff in in nuanced ways. I think I'm

answering your question. You

are no little business. Tell me your thoughts,

questions, though. You're doing great. Tell

me about that. Yeah. So that's Yeah, yeah. I mean,

that's, that's kind of the like online space. Conversation,

there's a whole separate conversation around. Harm and

working conditions and cultural norms in the industry. Like a

few years ago, we put out a white paper on the state of

mental health and games, we've now started the culture shift

project, which is addressing specifically gender based harm

in games, in partnership with Feminist Frequency and other

great nonprofit. We've talked extensively and have an older

white paper on crunch and the issues of mental health issues

around crunch and trying to debunk all of those myths, we

talk a lot about the danger of the myth of passion and games

that like if you're passionate, you come to games, because

you're passionate about games, which means that that can be

kind of weaponized and exploited and turn into something that

forces people to work long hours and in dysfunctional

environments that are so we talk a lot about those pieces. We're

increasingly interested in what the Fair Play Alliance and

others across the industry are doing around positive design,

like how do you design for pro social outcomes. And a little

plug to my husband's game studio, Spry Fox, which has made

a number of games that like really are trying to actively do

that. They're not the only ones. There's some other really

wonderful studios too, and a lot of indie studios are thinking a

lot about pro social design. And so yeah, so there's, we have our

fingers in a lot of different places, and are just really

trying to move the needle where it feels like we can measurably

impact people's experience, and their ability to be well while

enjoying this wonderful hobby and, and industry, which I love.

Um,

there's two quick things to discuss. One is that I

individually, yeah, specifically when it relates to parenting, I

had read an article about you know, everyone was kind of

thrown wasting time when school cancelled and all this stuff was

happening. And one woman said her son had been recording like

videos and stuff on his golf round and coming back through

and editing them and making all these YouTube videos and showing

his friends and she basically said, I can't believe I think so

worried about limiting screen time when all I was doing was

like limiting his creative outlet with video editing and

creating. I think I thought that was really poignant observation.

Yeah, digital diet. That is what you said. The second thing is

that I did a really, really cool interview with with three

developers that was released couple weeks ago who are

building a game tries to reward positive social behavior and

rewards role models and create different levels. As a vertical

competition, you want to earn more points, you can go in with

the beginners and teach them. But if you just want to get

logged on our game Oh, dance play and do that. Anyways,

really cool interview it was it was, like you said, kind of a

reframing the way we think, in development. So that those

things are baked in from beginning. It was really, really

cool concept. So I remember that. So anyways, with that in

mind, totally. What steps are you hoping to see within the

industry? And these are very broad sort of conversations.

Yeah, and in help improve or promote better mental health

awareness for how players are interacting with games. And

again, very broad strokes here. But we've there's just there's,

there's been a lot of negative news, like, what can game

companies do to start working on that? Yeah, and these are a big

question.

Yeah, I mean, I think

one of the challenges that the game industry is facing

right now and has been for a little while is there's such a

moral panic around games. That's wrong. The moral panic is around

games cause violence and games are addictive. And like, that's

been disproven over and over and over again and insanely. In

fact, to who is starting to have to publicly walk back its

adoption of game internet game addiction as a or any internet

gaming disorder as a as a valid diagnosis, even though because

they were pressured into it by certain countries, which is

fast. So the but the moral panic, what the moral panic has

done, it is made that whole industry and people who identify

as gamers are played people who love games, very defensive, and

not really feel comfortable, like they can talk about the

real things that they worry about in games. Because they're

so busy defending games from these stupid accusations that

are not true. And, and then you then the industry is like in

this environment, this online environment that's really toxic.

Like, being a game developer. In public online means that you,

you receive harassment, like there is you can't do one

without the other. You can't say I'd make games publicly without

expecting expecting harassment online. And so in sometimes,

like really awful harassment, like Daxing, and swatting, and

those kinds of things, but but but not always. And so that

makes people really cautious and scared. And also, at the same

time, the industry has, like a lot of tech and a lot of

society, a real problem with harm, gender, race, harm,

marginalization of people of color, and marginalized genders

and sexualities. And over and over and over, and over and over

again, in the way that hiring and promotion is done in the way

that games it's topics are chosen in the way that

portrayals in the way that people portray characters and,

and, and mythologies, and tropes and etc, in games, like over and

over and over again. And then you get people see people trying

to claim that their games are political, which drives me nuts.

And so those two things, and then you have this history of

the gamer identity and this marketing and reinforcement of

an idea that a gamer is a white male of a certain age, which

excludes a lot of people from that identity and from that

space. And you know, and people are starting like companies are

showing recognize that that's wrong and starting to break out

of that, but it's a pretty persistent identity and we've

got some new research that my research director is doing on

gamer identity that makes that even more scary and but

interesting fascinating because of the way that gamer identity

is matched with like extremist belief and enter and neo Nazi

and fascist identity and and that's fun. But yeah, really

delightful. But But what you do is you have all of those things

packed together and you have a really challenging environment

in which it's hard to push the needle forward. Especially at

big game companies who really are risk averse to in thinking

about how do I, how do we talk about games differently? How do

we build games that are really different and how do we how do

we Get out of this idea of people who play games are the

same people who make games and who are they? And what is their

identity? Right.

And so so you have to find disruptors in that, in that

cycle. And one of the, there has been these these three years or

others in these really major breaking stories about game

companies being abusive and harassing and bad working

environments, especially for women, but for many identities,

and, and like, they're the most egregious and the most, and

they're in cat two in the morning, California. So the

state of California was like, we're gonna get on this

bandwagon, right? They are, they are the tip of the iceberg,

right? They're the visible tip of the iceberg in the sense that

they are indicative of a larger culture across the industry. And

that has been an opportunity that we've seen to say it come

in and be like, Okay, we need to talk about and address this

thing, this work environment. But when you do that, the

business case is that then you will make games and create

spaces that are better for and more representative of a larger

audience. Right? Because if more people are included in the room,

when you make games, you're gonna make a game that addresses

more experiences, more needs, etc. And so we're seeing that

gradually shift across the industry in very exciting. These

are big ships to move, and then cultural forces to address like,

I am not any under under any illusions as to like how far

this needs to go. But that's kind of that's what I see.

That's what I see. What's good. I mean, I'm

encouraged by it in this is a sentiment that comes up on the

show quite a bit that progress is being made, like you said,

they're big shifts to move, it's slower than we'd like. Um, yeah.

But at least there's things that are happening.

That really are and yeah, I mean, I want to say that

you know, this is, this is really about cultural change in

hearts and minds, right? And we're growing faster than we can

get almost faster than we can manage it, take this, which

means that there is some level of demand and interest. That's

substantial. That's it, we're not going to change everybody's

mind, we're not going to impact everybody's work experience. And

also, there are vast cultural differences, especially when it

comes to mental health, and the way people talk about mental

health and mental illness cross culturally. And so we're really

good at speaking to this in in the US, Canada and Western

Europe. But when I try to speak to a company that's working in

Malaysia, or in Japan, or in South America, like the, the

conversations that I can have, and the the people that I need

to work with, in order to have even have those conversations,

because they're culturally so different. Those are those are

bigger gaps and bigger shifts. Sometimes, and you know, I, we

just have to be real about that, like, there's going to be shifts

across the industry that come faster in some places than

others. Well, that's good. Yeah. You. We all do we all do

every little thing from that one. So, yeah, I want

to talk more about culture shift and what you do, and this

frequency actually talks in the space. I was actually fortunate

enough just to sit in recently on on research that's coming out

soon, by a woman who saw the scale of what she called the

glass monitor, in that term. Industry and it's something

you're familiar with, I'm happy to say more, said it was a lot

about women in gaming. The problem from the very beginning

is lack of familial support as young girls and gaming is seen

as a boy activity, all the way up to hostile environments for

all the gamers and playing a wide developing game streaming

all of all of the energy associated activities, whether

you're just someone who started playing a game when you're 17,

and went online one time, all the way to you are, you know,

poking at one of the biggest streamers on one of the largest

gaming streaming platforms, what that looks like. So I want to

talk more about culture shift and Feminist Frequency and just

about the resources that you offer people who are in

traditionally underserved communities, from women to

people of color people of different sexual orientations.

And, and what advice you're giving on the industry side to

try and get those folks more in the room, make sure that their

needs and just their general safety requirements are being

met.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'll say I want to frame this to say that

harm is happening across lots of different intersectional

identities. And and it's really important to acknowledge that

we're talking about gender based harm at the cultural shift

project, because it's the one that has come where the opening

is where the opportunity is. And because we have to, you have to

be really specific when you talk about harm, and unpacking

different types of harm. And so we have to start somewhere with

something very specific, in order to do it justice. So this

is the one we're starting with is gender based harm, with an

acknowledgement of those intersectionalities and Anita

Sarkeesian. And I began speaking, like, three, three

years ago, when the first allegations about riot came out.

And there was also like, it was the same there was there was,

there was the whole, all the allegations about riot. And then

there was also a bunch of exposure of streamers, and there

was a whole bunch of stuff at the same time, it happened all

around PAX West. And, and she and I started with talking, we

had never met each other, but we kind of knew each other's

orbits. And we were like, well, we have to do something about

this. What you know, there's and there's a lot of different

pieces of the puzzle. And so she was able to Yeah, she was able

to get the games and online harassment hotline up and

running. And that's still a project of Feminist Frequency,

right fantastic resource, really, and well informed on

gender based harm but then she and I and spokes on her team as

well. begins talking for a while kind of figuring out what how do

we do culture to culture? Like really, culture change work? How

do you start with leadership? What does that look like? We we

put together a lot of different ideas. And you know, in the

meantime, news kept coming in Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard,

and Activision Blizzard really kind of broke open ever

Suddenly, everyone was was like, we have to talk about this, it's

not going to stop, and it's not going to change. And we had

meantime arrived at this really, at this framework of called

accountability and repair, which comes from restorative

reparative. Justice. And that's, it comes from indigenous and,

and black culture, right? This really different approach. It's

not called carceral, or punitive. It's not legalistic it

is how do you do actual repair, take actual accountability. And,

and put those together at a framework that works in a work

environment. Because the thing is that the industry because

it's a mobile, it's a small mobile industry, where people

move around a lot, and you know, from job to job, is, exists,

like functions with all kinds of whisper networks, and lots of

harm. And lots of like, really, people lots of trauma that

people have, like internalized and, and like SAP lived with for

a long time. And those things don't go away, and they don't

get better. And whisper networks, like, they're all

we've got. But they're really bad tools. Because they, if

you're not in the network, you don't get access to the

information, they escalate things right, instead of de

escalate, and they don't help anyone change. They don't help

anyone, be healed or repaired. And they don't have people

who've caused harm to like, figure out what they've done and

do better. They just like blacklist people. And you need

that new model. And so that was really, we decided that was the

model that we needed to come to the plate with was a different

way of thinking about harm, that really held people truly

accountable, and gave them the tools and knowledge and

opportunity to change and focused on the survivor and gave

them a sense of repair and support and healing. Because if

you don't help a survivor, you just like investigate whether or

not their allegation is right. You've left them kind of high

and dry, and they still have that trauma. And that experience

like that doesn't solve the damn thing. So this was the set of

this is the framework that we are coming to the table with.

And that's like, that's a big shift, especially in corporate

environments with big legal departments and HR departments.

Huge shift. So we're like, how do we implement that? How do we

do the acculturation work? How do we like help people

understand harm and consent and power dynamics? And then how do

we and bystander behavior? And then how do we change the actual

systems and how people implement accountability and repair

process and understand what that looks like and understand why.

And so that's what the culture shift project is. And it's a

it's It's Feminist Frequency and take this and our teams. And we

we're rolling out our first engagement right now. That's

really exciting. And, and we, you know, we're getting the

large studio, it's over 300, folks, that's awesome. And, and

I think and we've got interest from a number of other places,

too. So I think we'll be we'll be doing that more. And then

we're also looking at Indie indie studios, because they have

less capacity to pay and smaller groups, and how do we bring

micronase especially really small studios together and

cohorts and build this program for them like that.

That's the other kind of approach we're taking. So it is

our desire to talk about accountability repair, like I

did a talk with two of my colleagues Casio awkward. And

Jalen at GDC about credibility and repair. How do we like bring

that idea, that concept to the table? More? And then how do we

do this at a studio? Yeah,

well, I think focusing on survivors is

something that I wish. And yeah, really?

Yeah, yeah. Can

I want to give it a little bit just because I

don't often get to talk to folks that are in the nonprofit

space with it. Yeah, absolutely. It's annoying

to hear about take this picture. I hope a lot of

people go and can use a lot of the resources you provide.

There's just definitely a lot of news that centered around the

growth in the industry, which is definitely code for investment

startups, companies. Which nothing wrong with that. That's

all great. I'd love to see that kind of growth. But I would love

to hear more about how what's going on on the nonprofit side.

And you've mentioned several organizations now that you've

worked with, collaborated with paired up with to do different

projects? How what has it been like on the nonprofit side? And

people who want to get involved? How do they find that?

Industry? Yeah, there is a thriving nonprofit, sector,

two games, which is really cool. And some great advocacy

organizations. And what we all do is we're all able to be there

on the outside as subject matter experts who can, who can act as

advocates, but not apologists for games. So you can be like,

yes, games are awesome. And you can do better in X, Y, or Z

ways, or these are the opportunities and, you know, and

so I mentioned Feminist Frequency, the Fair Play

Alliance. There's a chick Games for Change. AbleGamers is

another great organization, doing advocacy work gamer acts,

you know, and so there are all these great nonprofits, and we,

you know, we have to, we have to find grant funding, we have to

find funding inside the industry, take this, we do a lot

of, you know, we do all these workshops, right, and people pay

for those. And that's an important funding stream for us.

And we have a lot of streamers and volunteers and folks who

come and, you know, do fundraisers on our behalf, which

is really awesome. And so, you know, we have seen our

opportunity and, and scope grow as the game industry has grown.

And as we've been able to kind of find the ways the relevant

way is to talk to the industry about what we're doing. But we,

you know, the thing about nonprofit work is that, like, we

I have a staff, most almost all of my staff are clinicians,

they're, you know, professionals, and that's

intentional. And so the vault we have volunteer opportunities, we

have mod volunteer moderators in our Discord, we have volunteers

who moderate who, who help us run our AFK rooms and our, our

in person presence at conventions. But, but they're

limited, there's not a ton of volunteer opportunities, if you

are interested. The way to get involved is to go to our Discord

and join that community find out kind of get more invested. And

you can find that link on our website, and or in our community

resources page. But the the the truth of the matter is that by

and large nonprofits need money to do our work. That's the way

it works, right? I have to pay the people who work for me.

Yeah. And I have to, you know, we have to pay for all the

systems and tools that allow us to do our jobs well. And when we

have that, then we can provide the services, the resource, the

expertise that is ours to give. But our volunteers are,

increasingly as we build our community out as we as we

increase that profile, that as we increase the number of

community resources we provide, like that's really important to

us. And we also if you're a streamer, content creator, we

haven't a streaming ambassador program, and we will we we have

a semi regular application window, kind of every year where

we bring new Folks in and invite them into a community learning

community and in a kind of promotion, you know, mutual

support community. So it is. Yeah, I mean, that's the

nonprofit sector, we really I thrive most on being knowing

that I can work in collaboration with the industry to do

interesting work and to like change, because that really is

like, if I'm going to move the needle, I've got to get the way

that games are made and the way that game companies operate to,

to change, right. And so that's where I'm most invested in

working and partnering with, and I'm, we're starting to have

those opportunities. Yeah.

What do you do want to take this into working?

With gaming, you know,

I'm, I laugh, because I kind of fell into this. And I'm

so happy I did. So I've been my whole career, aside from a brief

stint as a yoga teacher, which I also loved, has been in the

nonprofit sector. So I've I started as a, like, I worked at

the Boston Children's Museum after college, like working on

the floor and the Children's Museum, like running school

field trips, and, you know, like fishing kids out of exhibits and

stuff like that. I've always done this work. Yeah, well,

literally, there was a sea climbing structure. And I

fell into the koi pond. Yeah. Kind of

felt like that, sometimes, let me tell you, um,

that was, what, 25 years ago. And so So, you know, I always

knew that I wanted to do social change work. And I, it took a

long time of kind of meandering through a number of jobs, going

to grad school to get a master's in cultural studies and coming

back into grant writing, and to kind of figure out where I

wanted to be. And about five years ago, I left an awful job.

And, you know, had to recover from that. And was I was in the

luxury luxurious place of being able to take some time off and

do that, do some consulting. And my husband generously put out

he's, he's, as I mentioned, runs a game studio, and he put out

that I was available for consulting and take this reached

out was like, hey, yeah, we need some help. And it turned out,

they needed a lot of help. And so I came on versus a consultant

than his managing director. And then they were like, can you?

Can you just take the job? I was like, Okay. And it took me a

little while to figure out that being the executive director of

take this meant that I could do the work that I'd always wanted

to do. But once I figured that out, it was like, I was off to

the races, and I so gratified by what I'm doing, and where I'm

doing it. And it's so fun to work in this industry. And, and

to celebrate what games are and what they can be. So yeah, it's

been it's just I can't believe my luck at this point.

A fun story, though. Yeah. It is. Because I

know, you know, I know that I have a similar path. But I don't

want to focus on I was previously in the nonprofit and

know our folks in the nonprofit area, I think it's just good to

know that you can pursue the things that you want to pursue,

it's still untapped in gaming years, I think was a little bit

more, maybe maybe more on the chance side of chance and

attention. But it's also an intention side that people can

can take up and if you love nonprofit work, like if you love

games, so

I mean, we're, you know, we're, we're hiring and

we're hiring actually a non clinical job soon. And it's, you

know, like, show a volunteer for us, because because this work is

expanding the work, not just of take this, but a lot of these

organizations, so kind of showing up around them. There's

opportunity everywhere, and there's really cool stuff

happening. Yeah.

Well, in that vein, I want to end with a

question. What am I my big passion from the passions that I

shared on the show a lot is about emerging tech. Sure. So

the building of the metaverse, we talked about that a lot. And

it's mostly just because I really, really like thinking

about web three blockchain and Metaverse, and all these all

these buzz wordy things, actually, complicated tech

behind them. But it definitely definitely seen a result of tech

moving a lot faster than our understanding of the

consequences of tech. Mental health is not necessarily an

early consideration, as evidenced by several people

including one of the whistleblowers last year who

brought forth research about how negatively impacted young girls

are by Instagram use the company's hashtag hold on to

them and not been there. But as we start with these new

experiences, and I think there's a lot of people out there who

are excited about these things, I suppose, and I'm putting in

quotes here, but the equity opportunities and all of this

and blockchain is supposed to be decentralized. It's supposed to

be available. They're supposed to be much more even playing

field out there. What are you thinking about when it comes to

this tech? And how do you feel about that from a mental health

perspective? Like, I don't know exactly how to frame the

question. I don't know how to frame the question. Densely

broad thing, but

yeah, well, yeah. I'll break off a couple of pieces of

it. One is that there's some preliminary research. Yeah. We

can digest this a little bit, but there there. There's

preliminary research into like Metaverse, and when I say

Metaverse, what I mean is immersive online environments

because we don't have Metaverse yet, right? But VR and AR

environments and Metaverse like immersive environments. That the

same kind of harassment and, and marginalizing and, and scary

experiences are happening there as they're happening in the rest

of the internet. Like, I could have probably could have told

you that before. But like, it's not different. It is not

measurably different, it's not measuring better. And in fact,

it might be a little bit worse. So like, we when we create open

spaces online, ah, in especially because all of this stuff has

been normalized in online spaces. Hate speech. All this

all this really like a you know, I mentioned earlier that the

problem around extremist terrorist behavior and fascist

behavior is like really small, but it's really loud. Like,

that's the same. It's the same whether the, whether we're

talking about Web 2.0, or web three, or what else or Metaverse

or whatever, like, it's the same. And so like, before we go

tumbling down that road, we got a lot of work to do. We just do.

The things about

blockchain and NFT. Is, is also it's a similar one to,

like,

two critiques I have about

capitalism, which is who's actually benefiting. And

by and large, it's still a speculators, speculation. And,

you know, it's an it's a market for investors and speculators.

And it's a bubble. And so most people who are involved are not

benefiting and don't have access to the actual boom of it. And,

and, and so there's some nuggets in there that are interesting

and exciting, that relate to people actually being able to

own things online, but like, they're still copyable, there's

still a lot of there's still, it's not like it's, and a lot of

that stuff is also already been done in many interesting ways in

games, right? It's not, it's not dramatically different. I've

seen a few interesting examples of really communities coming up

around NF T's in a way, like shared ownership ideas of shared

ownership. And those are compelling. I just haven't seen

them scale yet. And I haven't I haven't seen them exist outside

of what overall overarching Lee is a is a what, to me is a kind

of wild west speculated. environment. So I'm pretty you

can see here, I'm a pretty heavy skeptic when it comes to this

stuff. But I'm a skeptic, because I've seen how it's

played out iteration by iteration in tech. And who has

benefited and who hasn't. And who continues to benefit and who

has continues to have access to capital and like, if the

structural issues around capitalism and and the

concentration of wealth don't change, then they don't change,

whether it's web 2.0 or web 3.0. Like, that's just, yeah, that's

the way it is. So there is some nugget of really interesting

tech in there and like, you know, and I'm sure that some of

that will shake out, but in the meantime, the other stuff will

shake up too. And I'm pretty short of that.

I Yeah. And that's good. I I've had you know,

people on the show who are very interested in into it and ready

to go and I've had other people who are more on the and of what

is expiring, but like, let's fix some stuff first. And I think

that yeah, on both sides. There's a there's a way for both

Most people to coexist and really get something out of a

relationship that I think would be beneficial for both.

Oh, yeah, I do think there's a nugget there, but it's

right. Yeah, I think I think people kind of throwing all

their eggs into that basket being like, oh, yeah, I just

don't see it. Yeah.

Yeah, just, I'm with you on that. Um, before we,

before I get into my last question, I'm gonna do a quick

summary of what we talked about so far. So take this supports

people make and play games and content creators. So a lot of

folks within the gaming community by reducing rock

interact with it. One of one thing, one way I found to be

very succinctly describes a lot of what you do is that you want

to bring good and accurate science to the gaming community.

You want to encourage protective factors to help build

resiliency, you want to encourage good community

development, we want to help people fulfill a lot of needs

that they can fulfill online, and bring all kinds of play back

into daily life. And provide those kind of healthy

environments in order to do that. And one thing that we

talked about a lot with parenting is that it's actually

good to be a helicopter parents in these environments that you

can go in and see that those are the types of things that are

happening online, rather than a lot of the other stuff that's

out there and is prevalent. And there's more work to do in

certain geographic areas than others. That was really

important to me, because I get lost us focus a lot. Some lot of

things are happening in the US market things. The big ships are

moving slowly as the US whereas in other markets, yeah, they're

not moving. They're anchored in a really ugly, hard, or they're

different. They're just really different to Yeah, yeah,

yeah,

um, we talked about culture shift, how you

were starting the gender based harm. There's absolutely other

intersections of people that face harm. But this is a

starting point. I wanted to bring back up the games and

online harassment hotline just running linked in the show

notes. And one of the things that we spent a lot of time was

understanding on and taking the non punitive approach by instead

supporting supporting survivors, and creating an accountability

and repair process, which I think is a good take in a lot of

areas. But as I just think that the people who are harmed should

be the priority. And there's a thriving nonprofit sector in

games. So getting a chance to actually work with with the

industry and, and alongside the industry to move the needle and

make a difference is definitely a possibility. If that's

something that people out there are interested in, go check out,

take this, go to your nonprofit passions into gaming, gaming

needs more of it. Lots of good stuff happen. And then lastly,

we talked a little special with the metaverse. preliminary

research into immersive online environments shows the exact

same kind of of the stuff that's happening, there isn't the rest

of the internet, which is 0% Surprising. Still a little sad,

that I like to hear your stance that there's nugget within the

tech nuggets within the tech that's interesting and exciting.

But it's not dramatically different than what's out there.

And there's a need to fix structural issues first, before

diving headfirst into this is what we're doing. So with that,

I like to ask this question at the end of every podcast is

really fun to look back on your career. And I want to ask you,

what is one thing you would like to tell your younger self

getting into the gaming industry needs?

I think I won't answer in terms of getting into games

because it really like that was that was a that was a

happenstance thing, but like the thing that I would want to say,

to my younger self is to have patience, that you're you're

gonna do a lot of things that will feel frustrating, or not

quite the right thing, or won't really answer the question you

thought you needed to ask. But, but at some point, those will

start to coalesce. And it takes longer to get to that place a

lot of times then you want it to

you know, I'm I I've been

working I graduated college in 1999. And, and I'm in

the job, the first job where I really feel like this is exactly

where I want to be and I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do. And

you know, that took a while objectively and as a woman, you

know, there was time I took I made the choice as a mother to

take some time off when my daughter was really young and

you know, that slowed me down but but it's also enriched me

and made me a better, you know, more informed person in a lot of

ways and so, like, have patience with yourself with your or

career trajectory. Get out if things are really bad, like

leave the the shitty jobs. You don't always know that they're

bad when they start, but like leave those, like do that. But

otherwise give yourself the space to not go in a straight

line. And to ask the wrong questions and get different

answers than you expected, you know?

Oh, that's wonderful. Enjoy the winding

journey. Like it. Yeah,

yeah. Yeah. And like, I also will acknowledge that,

like, I'm supremely lucky to do what I do and what I you know,

to be able to be here like, not everybody gets this opportunity,

but it did. It wasn't a straight line here. Oh, god.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, probably Israel, not what I'm

hearing very lucky to have met. Right. So yeah. With you. Um,

thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you? This?

Interact with your work volunteer for you? I know you

mentioned the discord on your website. Where else?

Yeah, so take the set. org we have. We have. We're on

Twitter, take this org and Facebook. Take this org and

LinkedIn, and Instagram. It's all take this work. And in

YouTube, as well, we have a number of resources up there.

And you can find them all on social media or via our website

and we have a mental health resources page. And our websites

are easy to find that has crisis. Crisis lines, emotional

support hotlines, lots of resources for if you or a friend

or family member needs help.

Yes, no. That gives the game. For all

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