Resist Jam: Games about Protest
Resist Jam took place recently; dedicated to “creating games that resist oppressive authoritarianism in all its forms.” With over 200 games submitted, it’s impossible...
Shovel Knight Body Swap : A Bold Step Forward for Gender...
A commonly heard excuse when explaining why a game couldn’t feature playable female characters is that it’s ‘too much work.’ It’s why Ubisoft found...
Maternity Leave and Democracy 3
I purchased Democracy 3 on Steam in June 2014 after watching Sips play the game on YouTube and feeling incredibly frustrated with how he...
Inclusivity in Overwatch Continues to Improve
At his recent DICE Summit talk, director Jeff Kaplan mentioned again the importance of inclusivity in Overwatch. This has been a continued rhetoric of...
Diversity in Virtual Reality: The Next Step?
I love VR. I’ve loved being a bird soaring over post-apocalyptic Paris in Eagle Flight, getting up close and personal with a shark in...
Safe Spaces For Dark Tasks
Videogames let us do some pretty fucked up things. Sometimes that’s part of their appeal, after all nobody played Postal for its gripping narrative....
Gender Representation at the Game Developers Choice & IGF Awards
Diversity can’t just be a numbers game, and certainly isn’t limited to gender, but having facts and figures can be crucial to addressing further examinations....
Post-Escapism and Video Games
Post-escapism, according to Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson in The State of Play, is a "discourse that looks for meaning beyond entertainment and the...
Everything in A House of Many Doors is Bizarre, Except Queerness
A House of Many Doors is a recent exploration RPG where everything is fantastical and bizarre, yet queerness is treated as entirely normal.
Somewhere among the...
It’s Time to Retire the Phrase ‘Diversity in Games’
When discussing making games with characters who aren’t white, straight, male or cisgender, a phrase often used is ‘diversity.’ When publishers and developers disclose...
How About a Poem?
They say that crying is worthless.
But those are simply lies.
It’s when your throat burns with salty tears,
that the pain truly subsides.
The hurt will never go...
Confessions of a Gaming Addict
Hi. My name is Subject 16, and I'm a gaming addict. It's been... about six hours since I last touched my PS4 controller, and I...
Jacob Frye: The First Bisexual Assassin
Assassin's Creed is an action-adventure series beloved by many, including myself. Ever since the Ubisoft released the first game in 2007, the series has...
And Now, a Word on Kirby, Jane the Virgin, and Poop
Nintendo’s Kirby is arguably one of their greatest characters to date. He’s easy to drawn (draw a circle, and then draw like 6 more...
Everyday Life in A Cyberpunk Dystopia
VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action is a drunk, psychedelic dream. It presents a vision of a different era: dark and dazed, equal parts criminal...
Mental Health & MOBAs
I used to be completely addicted to MOBAs. Every day I would come home from work, stick some mac’n’cheese in the microwave and settle...