Gender at E3: Nintendo

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The Nintendo E3 press conference opened with a reel showing a diverse cast playing a bunch of Switch games, from Arms to Rocket League. Unfortunately, while they were happy to show people of all kinds enjoying their games, they weren’t so keen on including them in the games or the presentation themselves.

Female characters were sparse. Princess Peach was in the Super Mario Odyssey trailer for a brief second, wearing a wedding dress and clutching a bouquet of piranha plants. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 wasted no time sexualising their lead women.

And Nintendo linchpins like Reggie Fils-Amie and Eiji Aonuma weren’t joined by any of their female colleagues to present the games.

An ongoing presentation

A silver lining, perhaps: there will be continued Nintendo streams over the next few days, and the Treehouse streams do tend to feature female presenters.

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Jay Castello

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Jay is a freelance games writer specialising in intersectional feminist critique, how to improve games and use them to improve the world, and cute dogs. She loves inhabiting digital spaces in all their forms, and being constantly surprised by just how weird and wonderful games can be.

One Comment

  • Gizensha

    Before ‘We’re counting swords as characters, now?’ – Sure, why not, we count weapons as characters for Soul Eater.

    I will point out that they apparently went with female Corrin rather than male Corin (the character in the canonical game is a ‘pick your gender’ style) in Fire Emblem Warriors, though I’m not familiar enough with the Fire Emblem franchise to have noticed that myself.

    …Going to be very interesting to see who Nintendo invited to the invitational tournaments they’re having at e3 on this front, I believe the Splatoon 2 one is 11:30 UK time?

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