Author: Jay Castello

The Playstation E3 press conference was a whirlwind of trailer after trailer after trailer, leaving no stage time for anyone except Sony President and CEO Shawn Layden. The games themselves, then, were mixed in every respect. Out of the gate they showed Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, featuring Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, both women of…

The PC Gaming Show at E3 showed off various bits of hardware and a bunch of upcoming games. Somehow, not one of these things was represented by women. Streamer Sonja Reed was given a secondary presenter role, but the developers interviewed by Sean Plott, who was given the the main stage, were overwhelmingly white men. There…

The Ubisoft E3 press conference was hard to parse. Not just because of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, but because of the shadow that South Park: The Fractured But Whole cast over it. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting South Park to be bad. At last year’s E3, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone discussed…

Immediately after the Xbox press conference I wrote about the women that they had on stage and on screen. But one of the games that they showed, The Last Night, requires something of a closer look. Tim Soret, the game’s developer, once supported GamerGate and stated that he was against feminism. While digging up tweets from…

The Devolver Digital presser was less of a conference and more of a surrealist skit, but it was a surrealist skit with plenty of women in it. Primarily headed up by Nina Struthers’ unblinking comedic presence, she was joined by bit characters like the scientist Margaret as things devolved (hah) into body horror and gore.…

The Bethesda E3 press conference opened with a bunch of kids talking about what their parents – mothers and fathers – did for a living. Both women and men were shown enthusing about their jobs and the games they’re making. Though Pete Hines did all of the presenting, Bethesda was careful to include female Youtubers…

Happy Pride Month! There’s no better time to play some games with LGBTQ+ characters – but how to find them? You would be forgiven for thinking that there are very few options available and, of course, there truly aren’t enough. But there are probably more than you think. In fact, according to Queerly Represent Me,…

The Microsoft press conference featured more women on stage and on screen than EA’s did within the first 14 minutes. They started out with the reveal of the Xbox One X, and the face they chose to be the player was a (white) woman. Immediately thereafter they announced Forza Motorsport 7, with a female driver…

There was a segment in the EA Play press conference pumping up their new esports project, which is designed to encourage more new competitors. “Ladies and gentlemen sitting on your couch, this could be you!” exclaimed one man. Except that the montage of new competitors had not included a single lady. This was in many…

Playstation Europe recently announced that it would be sponsoring Pride in London. Now, normally corporate sponsorship of our events wouldn’t ping my radar, but in the games industry, it still feels relevant. The replies to Playstation’s announcement tweet are full of blatant homophobia and endless complaints about the politicisation of gaming. The reddit thread on…

Life is Strange is important to a lot of people, myself included. I started playing it after episode three was released in May 2015, just two months after I started writing about games, and it was a superb catalyst. I wrote about how much it meant to me to see myself, an anxious queer woman,…

Characters in Western dating sims are often similar: the protagonist, a transfer student or new employee, choosing between a slate of potential love interests – the quiet bookworm; a jock with a roguish smile and a heart of gold; someone aloof and mysterious; a cheery goofball. More troublingly, they are also usually all thin, straight,…

Think of any video game you like. You probably know that a lot of work went into it, but you probably don’t consider crunch. With deadlines looming and a game to ship, developers are all too often expected to work excessive overtime. Not an odd evening or weekend at the office, but 85+ hour weeks…

To play Papers, Please is to be stressed. Stamp, stamp, stamp immigration visa after immigration visa as fast as you can, because if you don’t get through enough your family will starve. But don’t make a mistake, because your pay will be docked and your family will starve. Now you’re holding the life of a…

Some days, it can feel like games are inextricably embedded in a swamp of hostility. Kindness just isn’t something traditionally associated with gaming. That’s a pretty discouraging thought for people who want to change that, or even just to exist and enjoy games freely without being exposed to bile. But here’s the thing: that existing…