Games almost always want us to feel like a great deal is at stake. Our hero’s life, or the outcome of a war, or maybe the fate of the universe. But few games succeed at making us feel the weight of those stakes, because we know that if we fail, we just get a Game Over […]

PLEASE NOTE: This piece discusses the ending of Nier: Automata in extreme detail.     I finally finished The Witcher 3, that beast of a game. I have plenty of gripes with it. It egregiously sensationalizes violence against women, repeatedly putting the bodies of female murder victims on sexualized display. Yennefer has a ridiculous tendency to stand […]

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the demo I saw for Beyond Good & Evil 2 had reminded me of the open-world adventure of Breath of the Wild, or of The Witcher 3’s efforts to tell human stories in a vast landscape, or of how The Last Guardian’s mechanics emphasize cooperation between characters. I certainly didn’t […]

For the past two years, we’ve produced gender breakdowns of the games showcased at the major press conferences of E3, the game industry’s biggest annual event. We do this not because we believe that every game starring a female character will be great, or that every game starring a male character will be awful, but because, […]

Right across the Öresund Bridge from Copenhagen, Denmark, you’ll find the lovely Swedish city of Malmö which, in addition to all its other charms, is also home to the Nordic Games Conference. Join Anita for a quick look at this year’s event, featuring gorgeous glimpses of the Malmö scenery and illuminating chats with the developers of […]

Anita spoke with some great folks in Stockholm at Geek Girl MeetUp on May 13 about gaming, the future of pop culture, and the theme of geek evolution! Geek Girl Meetup is a non-profit organization for geek girls interested in the web, coding, and business development. Its purpose is to create new networks and promote female role models in the […]

Link and Aloy, the heroes of 2017’s two biggest and best open-world action-adventure games thus far, are both born of the world to save the world. In Breath of the Wild, Link emerges into the vastness of Hyrule from a mysterious structure, awakening from a century-long slumber during which he slowly recovered from wounds sustained in a […]

Well, here we are folks. I knew this day was coming but it always seemed so far away. After five long years, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is over. This is one of the most emotionally complicated projects I’ve ever created. It has been simultaneously awful and wonderful, and the journey is one which I […]

This episode examines how female sidekicks and companions in games are often designed to function as glorified gatekeepers, helpless burdens, and ego boosters, a pattern that works to reinforce oppressive notions about women as the ones in need of protection and men as the ones in control, who take action and do the protecting. We then […]

On a recent visit to Sweden, Anita bravely ventured out in the decent Stockholm weather to visit Toca Boca, a game development studio that designs apps for children which celebrate the value of play. Toca Boca creates apps that let children experiment and express themselves, rather than games with set goals and rules. Anita speaks with Toca […]