Category: Read

  • Counter-Strike Trolling Leads To Transgender Inclusion

    Counter-Strike Trolling Leads To Transgender Inclusion

    Over the past few days, you might have come across a news story regarding a group of transgender women who were barred from participating in ESL’s all-women Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. In compliance with the official rules of the tournament, the women were asked to show official documentation stating their gender, such as a passport. This issue…

  • Why Doesn’t Social Status Affect How You Get Money In RPGs?

    Why Doesn’t Social Status Affect How You Get Money In RPGs?

    In the typical RPG, your relationship with money tends to follow a certain trajectory. Regardless of social status, you usually start out broke. By the end of the game, you will probably end up with more money than you can spend. For the most part, you barely need to put much effort in amassing money,…

  • Narcissa Wright sets Breath of The Wild World Record

    Narcissa Wright sets Breath of The Wild World Record

    Narcissa Wright is one of the people who made speedrunning what it is today, famous for her work with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, co-founding SpeedRunsLive, and accumulating tens of millions of views on her Twitch channel. Unfortunately, wrist injuries began to prevent her from speedrunning, as well as ending her high level…

  • Let’s Talk Historical Accuracy in Games

    Let’s Talk Historical Accuracy in Games

    The new Call of Duty, poetically titled Call of Duty: WWII after its setting, will allow players to play as women in its multiplayer mode. It will also allow them to mow down waves of zombies. Guess which one of these has players up in arms about historical accuracy. COD: WWII will likely feature any…

  • The Hypocrisy of our Love of Sheik: A Character to be Seen and Not Heard

    The Hypocrisy of our Love of Sheik: A Character to be Seen and Not Heard

    The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, wasn’t a very popular game in my social group. The Scottish kids I grew up with were more interested in soccer, boy-girl pop groups, and Furbys. As such, I never really heard the name ‘Zelda’ being thrown around. [SPOILERS For Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, and…

  • Relatability and Symmetra’s Autism

    Relatability and Symmetra’s Autism

    Earlier this spring, Jeff Kaplan, game director of Overwatch, replied to a young fan’s letter about Symmetra. She is the only autistic character in Overwatch, and perhaps, in all AAA games. In Kaplan’s response, he stated that the Overwatch team felt Symmetra “does a great job of representing just how awesome someone with autism can be.” As someone not on…

  • Gaming is a Drag

    Gaming is a Drag

    The Emmy award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race is currently in its ninth season, and shows no signs of slowing down. With drag becoming more widely accepted and celebrated in society, how do we engage with our own gender identity? RuPaul famously said “You’re born naked and the rest is drag”, essentially meaning that everything you do is…

  • Dear Gamedevs : Long Hair Doesn’t Work That Way

    Dear Gamedevs : Long Hair Doesn’t Work That Way

    Hair has always been a problem for game developers. The Witcher 3 managed to make Geralt’s mane grow in real time, yet it, like the hair from so many games, is constantly clipping through his clothes. And of course black games critics like Evan Narcisse and Tanya DePass have spoken at length about the important…

  • Andromeda’s All About Women

    Andromeda’s All About Women

    Mass Effects’ Milky Way galaxy was cool and all, but right now, Andromeda is where it’s at. Sure, plenty of people have finished the game and are bitching about it, but whatev, I’m enjoying it. However, let’s focus on what the game is really about. WOMEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. The Andromeda galaxy is overflowing with…

  • Fighting The Stigma of Depression and Anxiety With Games

    Fighting The Stigma of Depression and Anxiety With Games

    Though approximately one in four people will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime, there is still far too much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding them. By creating games about depression and anxiety, two of the most common mental illnesses, developers have been demonstrating openly their own experiences in a way that helps both sufferers…

  • Racist Rant Demonstrates Deeper Problems of Toxicity in Overwatch

    Racist Rant Demonstrates Deeper Problems of Toxicity in Overwatch

    Two weeks ago I wrote a long, long article about toxicity in Overwatch. This week, Matt “Dellor” Vaughn, formerly of Toronto Esports, destroyed his career by spending 30 widely publicised seconds screaming the n-word at a player who had upset him. (Content warning for racism the video within the link.) In doing so, he demonstrated…

  • Why Are Mass Effect Fans Obsessed With Romance?

    Why Are Mass Effect Fans Obsessed With Romance?

    Second only to the controversy caused by the game’s supposedly wonky animations, most of the talk surrounding Mass Effect Andromeda has been about its romances.  Fans were speculating on who they could get in the sack (and who they could live happily ever after with) since even before BioWare’s sci-fi RPG was released. But is…

  • 2064: ROM Devs Punished For Their Politics On Metacritic

    2064: ROM Devs Punished For Their Politics On Metacritic

    One of the most effective ways to show displeasure with a company or product is to refuse to buy it. If you don’t like something a creator says or does then don’t support them. Gaming offers even more recourse in the form of user reviews. Fans have learned to utilize these to vocalize displeasure with any…

  • Sony Must Not Fear the Female Protagonist

    Sony Must Not Fear the Female Protagonist

    Recently, the Playstation exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn became the best selling new IP on the platform, shifting over 2.6 million copies. In fact, it’s the second best selling Sony exclusive of all time, after only Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Yet at first Sony’s head of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, was worried that having a…

  • Nier: Automata’s Refreshing Take on Gender

    Nier: Automata’s Refreshing Take on Gender

    Sci-fi and fantasy have long explored topics related to the borders of consciousness, of technological beings that almost breach the threshold of humanity. These genres beg of us to ask: what makes us human? What is the purpose of life? These are the riveting philosophical questions at the heart of Nier: Automata. These aren’t the…

  • Why We Need a Bigger Feminist Let’s Play Community

    Why We Need a Bigger Feminist Let’s Play Community

    If there’s one thing that I wish there was more of on YouTube, it’d be more feminism, specifically within the Let’s Play community. There are many Let’s Players out there who have called themselves feminists, or at least hold some feminist values, but imagine a video game channel that was dedicated purely to feminist discourse…