Last night, some of the women of the NYMGamer team started tweeting under #yesIplay. #yesIplay is about telling the stories of of “gamers”—a term we’re using loosely here—that are often silenced or questioned. video games, board games, whatever and however you want to define it. #yesIplay is intersectional; we want to hear from all people, especially women, about all games. This is about ending stigmas associated to not only women who play, but everyone; we are simply using women as a focal point because women are the most frequently targeted in discussions about so-called “real” gamers. If you play games, whether it’s on consoles or computers, a tablet or Facebook or on your dining table at home, you’re playing—and your voice should be valued, not questioned.

We started #yesIplay because we all know people who play games for hours who would never consider themselves “gamers.” Because many of those people would say that they don’t play games, because the games they love—mobile games, Facebook games, “casual” games—aren’t considered real games by a vocal swath of the community.

We started #yesIplay for all the women who’ve been told mothers don’t have time to play, that professional women can’t play games, that pretty girls don’t look like gamers.

We started #yesIplay for the people who never felt quite right until they discovered an identity in games.

We started #yesIplay for every one of us who’s ever wondered why there are no characters that look like we do, or few options in character creation engines that allow us to reflect ourselves.

We started #yesIplay because we are so often treated like we don’t—we are challenged, we are othered, we are marginalized and often told we’re not “real” gamers. #yesIplay is about celebrating all games, and all the diverse, wonderful people who play them, and we want to hear your stories. Tweet us and we’ll engage and retweet you, but contact us, too, about sharing stories. We are interested in hearing from people who would like to write about their experiences, their hopes, their futures. If there’s need, we will build the infrastructure to support such a project. We would love to build a repository of essays and experiences, a foundation for a new conversation about games, because it’s time to rebuild and reframe the conversation around video games. Let’s get it started.