After writing about Among the Sleep a few weeks ago, I have found myself continually thinking about the idea of children as protagonists. Indeed, I have been working to understand just what it is about the embodiment of childhood that is at work in such figures. In other words, what […]
gender
56 posts
I’ve been doing a lot of research in the past months into representation in video games, particularly gender representation, with a few forays into racial representation. As a woman who prefers to play as a woman whenever possible, this is an issue close to my heart, and it’s one that […]
I recently had an enthralling conversation with a close friend about the various representations of strong female characters. My friend, using Morrigan from the first Dragon Age game as an example, explained that the sorceress doesn’t have to forfeit her traditionally feminine appearance to be a strong and able character. […]
Last week, I shared some analysis of gender signifiers in character models from State of Decay, a game that seems to do a good job of presenting practically dressed and designed characters, while also featuring some diversity in body types and more. A commenter pointed out, however, that including some […]
In some ways my experience last week could have been the closing scene from a cheesy Disney movie: a girl enters the room and a hush falls across the crowd. The sudden arrival seemed to have fundamentally changed the character of the environment. Except, of course, it wasn’t a ball […]
With the release of the upgraded State of Decay Year One Survival Edition just around the corner, it seemed a good time to revisit the original game, which I explored at length over the months after release in terms of realism and representation (as well as gameplay and mechanics). At […]
The trope of the disguised female is problematic because it reinforces the idea that male or non-female entities are more capable than female bodied characters. Both Ocarina of Time and Fantasy Life feature female characters who disguise themselves as men. Laura (Fantasy Life) and Zelda (Ocarina), princesses of their own […]
I admit it, sometimes I feel like I’m being a little bit hard on Nintendo and of the various studios they direct and/or publish for when I critique the way they present gender in their games. After all, in comparison to some of the other big name game studios, they […]
Last week, I wrote about the revelation that Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard was originally conceived as a woman, at least in visuals (not necessarily in terms of game content), a piece that sparked a bit of discussion on my Facebook page about the nature of the industry and reality. “Reality” […]
As we discussed in our podcast last week, one of the community-selected sales in Steam’s Summer Sale was “Story-Rich Female Protagonist” games. Dr. B and I were decidedly unsure what to think of this category. Of course, one of the first questions she had is whether the creation of this […]
Episode 71: The Unconventional Dwarf: An Interview with Tof Ecklund and Rhiannon Reyes (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode where we talk to Tof and Rhiannon about their new book on creating non-traditional/non-standard characters in Role Playing Games and anything else that we can think […]
In my continuing look at game covers, I thought I’d explore the best-rated games of 2013 according to Metacritic’s compiled review scores. So far, I’ve looked at top-selling games instead of best-rated, or I’ve looked at a particular selection, as when exploring Xbox indies, and the results have been surprisingly […]
A little over a year ago a woman named Debbie Sterling put a project on Kickstarter to develop “engineering” toys for girls in the age group of 5-9. The Kickstarter funded all of its $150k in just four days and continued to receive donations until it had received over $285,000 […]
I wanted to keep expanding on my look into game covers, but I think it’s important to search beyond the top-selling mainstream titles and most-hyped games across consoles proper, just to see if trends continue past the very middle of the mainstream, so this week I’m doing something a little […]
For the next phase of my research on game covers, I initially planned to look at this year’s releases, but found myself instead falling through an Internet black hole and browsing the listings for the next generation releases. After I was done calculating all the money I would need to […]
When Gears of War first debuted in 2006, I hated the game — the controls felt wrong to me, the game bored me, and everyone I knew was obsessed with it, which made me hate it more out of sheer annoyance. So if you’d told me that seven years later […]