The Bechdel Test, first introduced by cartoonist Alison Bechdel as a part of her comic strip entitled Dykes to Watch Out For, is a test that gauges female representation in film. It revolves around three simple rules: one, that the piece of work has at least two named female characters; […]
Yearly Archives: 2013
220 posts
After years of being a quiet, shy, and somewhat sheltered girl I learned the hard way how valuable it is to just be yourself in life and not care what others think. I come from a family of women who were taught to understand their strength as women, but who […]
Confession: I almost didn’t finish The Last of Us, and I’m going to tell you why. Spoilers abound here. You’ve been warned. In the months before the release of Naughty Dog’s take on an infected apocalypse, I heard the hype. I saw some images, but avoided trailers (in an effort […]
Story in video games is one of those controversial topics, though no video game would exist, let alone be successful, without story. Some of the very first debates about video games, arguments that would eventually become the foundation of Game Studies as a field, were about narratology and ludology, or […]
It’s been that kind of week in this country. The kind that make you question which century we are actually living in. But, don’t worry, the events of this week are not what I am going to write about today. At least not directly. Bear with me and let’s see […]
I have a pink controller for my Playstation 3. The Nintendo 3DS XL I recently purchased is also pink, albeit a pink and white combination. The path in my Animal Crossing town is composed of pink tile. I don’t make any attempt to hide my affection for some of the […]
Since San Diego Comic Con is right around the corner (as in this Thursday!), I figured I would shed some light on the learning curve that occurs when you attend your first few comic cons. This past year I took my boyfriend to his first con ever and it reminded […]
“We won’t even start [a game] if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it,” Ubisoft VP Tony Key recently told [a]list daily’s Steve Peterson. “There’s no more fire and forget – it’s too expensive … until we’re the biggest game of the year we’re not going to […]
I don’t want to hear whining because this info is a “no duh” for you game pros. It wasn’t that long ago that we all experienced our first Steam sale. Maybe you even have a few games from that sale that you haven’t gotten around to. But let’s be honest, […]
I’m a woman and a gamer and I have been for 37 years, since I was a girl of 7 fighting with my cousins over handheld Coleco games. 1976. Back before we even thought about female characters in games. Our characters were blips on the screen. No head, no body, […]
It’s no secret that I’m quite the peruser of the fandom-friendly social media site Tumblr. It not only creates an open environment for fandom flailing but also acts as a medium for average users to call out the various issues and controversies that occur in said fandoms and mainstream society […]
Episode 58: Remember Me and the Plight of the Female Protagonist (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) In this episode we talk about Dontnod’s Remember Me and Nilin as the female protagonist. We answer a few viewer emails and talk about one of a few new and […]
The internet can be a dark and scary place. Internet trolls reside in many places, but are most commonly found lurking on the comment sections of blogs and YouTube, in online multiplayer games, or really just anywhere more than two people are able to communicate and fight with each other […]
I gave my son his first controller when he was six months old, an old Xbox brick that he could pound on while he was sitting in his high chair. The shiny buttons didn’t fascinate him as much as I’d hoped, but like any delighted gamer mama, I snapped photos […]
What is a gamer? This question is at the center of what it means to study women or feminism in games. It is in this label of “gamer” that we are most often excluded. Of course we couldn’t be “gamers” because girls don’t play games, they don’t play real games, […]
Animal Crossing. Everything you ever wanted to know about rampant consumerism wrapped up in cute little animals all speaking in gibberish (which then gets translated into English subtitles). Interpret the title of this post as you will. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly why […]