Man, I wanted to like ReCore. In its first few hours, both the game and its protagonist, Joule, exude such a scrappy, can-do attitude that I found myself really rooting for it. At a time when so many games are burdened with a grim, superficial self-importance that their actual narratives can’t support, dashing and double-jumping across […]

This episode examines the very limited range of female body types commonly seen in games, contrasting this with the much wider range of physiques that male characters frequently possess. We then illustrates that, when female characters appear who do have a body type that is notably different from the slender physique that games establish as the […]

This episode examines the general lack of female representation among standard enemies as well as in the cooperative and competitive multiplayer options of many games, and the ways in which, when female enemies do exist, they are often sexualized and set apart by their gender from the male enemies who are presented as the norm. We […]

After last year’s E3, we produced a gender breakdown of the games showcased at the press conferences held by Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and other companies. There was a lot of discussion during last year’s show about perceived improvements to female representation, and while the numbers indicated that things could have been worse, they also showed that […]

This episode explores the ways in which female characters are frequently placed in wildly impractical, sexualizing outfits specifically designed to objectify them for the titillation of the presumed straight male player. We then discuss the problems inherent in linking the sexualization of female characters to notions of female empowerment, and examine what positive depictions of female […]

NOTE: This post contains major spoilers for Uncharted 4. That’s Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, discussing why that game’s core party is made up entirely of men. I thought of Tabata’s words when I was playing Uncharted 4, much of which is a globe-hopping adventure featuring the trio of Nathan Drake, Nate’s brother Sam […]

In Hamlet, almost everybody dies. Even those who aren’t too familiar with Shakespeare’s tragedy know this much. It may as well be set in stone; Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, Laertes and others will meet the same fate in every production of Hamlet you ever see, the characters powerless to change the course of events that […]