My other article ended with the desire to see more female champs that are non-humanoid, more humanoid champs of colour, less sexualized or fan-servicey skins, and more female Tanks and Fighters (and more male Supports).

Since August 2014 the following champions have been released:

Looking at the champions released since 2014, we can see a couple of interesting things.

On Gender

By adding 4 female characters, the ratio of female to male characters grew from 32.8% to 37%, but this is still a far cry from a 50% female champion pool that would be preferred. As well, these additions are not happening at a rate that will create a champion pool that is 50% female any time soon.

Also, I would like to add a special nod here for Kindred who may possibly be the first intersex character. The character is actually a combination of two parts, the wolf and lamb, who have different genders. The character still falls into some sexist tropes where the lamb is female and the wolf is male and they are often considered two separate entities.

Kindred is the white embrace of nothingness and the gnashing of teeth in the dark. Shepherd and the butcher, poet and the primitive, they are one and both. – League of Legends Wikia

However the part I want to address, and I’m not really sure whether to applaud or critique, is the fact that Riot used the pronoun “they” through the background article for Kindred on the League of Legends wikia, which is an accepted singular pronoun, but returned to using his or her when talking about the entities separately.

Lamb’s silvered bow and her arrows will lay you down swiftly. If you refuse her, Wolf will join you for his merry hunt, where every chase runs to its brutal end. – League of Legends Wikia

I really, really, really want to see a game company do a gender fluid character without reverting to the crutch of gendering two separate parts, or chickening out and not using “they” as a singular pronoun consistently.

On Race

Of the humanoid characters released, 100% are people of colour, which is a 100% increase to the existing champion pool. Previously, the only people of colour were, arguably, Lucian and Karma. This means that out of 67 human champions (from stats below + 2 new characters) only 0.03% are people of colour, and is only 0.03% of all champions.

Stats collected for my prior article:

My categories of human, humanoid, and other were based on my own subjective analysis of the characters bodies. I tried to approach it with some rubric, human is typical human proportions, with typical human limbs and facial structure. Humanoid were clearly non-human characters that had human face structure and characteristics (for example Nami the mermaid character) or characters that have compressed anatomy like Poppy, and Tristana. Other were characters whose anatomy is drawn directly from animals or other influences, this includes characters that are beastial or have gaseous bodies.

This is interesting because considering the UN’s prospects of world population distributions we can assume that the world is less than 30% white. As well, considering Riot games has offices in over 12 countries worldwide and players in even more, they are responsible for catering to a large and diverse fan base, so I think it’s really great that they are making an effort to increase the diversity in their human characters.

On Ekko and Illaoi

I want to acknowledge the characters that they have released, because I think they have done a really good job of creating an interesting foil to avoid stereotyping.

Ekko and Illaoi are both people of colour with almost contrasting beliefs, ideologies, and abilities. I will make a chart to illustrate:

Also a better shot of Illaoi is in game, because her splash art white-washed her.

I feel like these characters were made in direct opposition to each other, particularly because the influences are very different. I think that both are amazing additions to Riot’s champion line up and have deep complex backgrounds that many people with diverse backgrounds can relate to.

On Non-Humanoids (Rek’Sai the shark of my heart)

This. This is the 100% increase in non-humanoid females.

BUT I think Rek’Sai gives us more than just another female monster. She is an unforgiving, teleporting desert shark with a fucking mandible. Boo yah. The first line of her bio sums it up.

The largest and fiercest of her species, Rek’Sai is a merciless predator that tunnels through the earth to ambush and devour her prey. – League of Legends Wikia

Rek’Sai is important, she exhibits unfiltered dominance, something we so rarely see given to female characters. She is depicted as something to be feared, a depiction that is unmuddled by sexual confusion. Frightening female characters are too often depicted in media as someone that the audience (presumed straight male) should be attracted to. She is like the Queen Alien from the Alien series, except without the focus on reproduction. Arguably there are many similarities between Rek’Sai and an ant queen, but the fact that she is without minions or offspring is important because it creates this powerful loner character that is not something female characters are usually portrayed as. Rek’Sai is awesome.
So to conclude on that note, I think Riot has made so much progress with their character design in the last year and a bit, and I’m so happy to see new champs coming out. For the future I would like to see more people of colour, more non-humanoid female characters, and more trans and non gender binary characters, and characters of different sexualities.

Just to clarify, I am inexperienced, but I am a developer working for a AAA company. I think this puts me an interesting position when talking about this topic because I was just recently on the same job search you are embarking on! I also made a lot of friends throughout my degree and various conferences, and watched them enter the gaming industry in multiple ways. My knowledge will not be complete, I am not a recruiter, nor do I work in HR. But take this article as a personal anecdote of paths myself and my friends have taken.

Before we get into the real logistics of getting into the industry, let us try to get some clarity of what is out there. Basically, you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions.

1. What do I want to do?
2. What kind of games would I like to make?
3. Is this industry for me?

What do I want to do?

There are several different paths you can take into the industry. I only have experience with one, being software development. But there are infinite possibilities in this highly diverse industry! Consider where your passions lie, and what you are good at. One commonality across most professions (I have found) is you have to be somewhat tech savy. Usually you will be working with very robust pieces of software, whether you are an artist (photoshop), programmer (game engines), or producer (project management tools.) Even writers, and designers will often work in the game engine, so knowing your way around a computer as well as basic troubleshooting skills come in very handy.

Evaluate your skills and recognize that even within your discipline there can be multiple fields of interest that require different expertise. For example, within programming, working with the engine or gameplay mechanics are two very different things. As well, depending on the size of the company, your responsibilities may encompass many diverse things, like design and writing, or one focused task, such as honing a specific combat mechanic.

Some careers to consider:

• Design
• Programming
• Producing
• Writing
• Editing
• Quality Assurance
• Human Resources
• Information Technology
• Art
• Audio
• Community Management

Keep in mind, some of these tracks are easier to break into than others. For example, quality assurance usually has a large turn over where many people are hired on temporary contracts. This can be a great opportunity to get inside a studio, but it’s often hard to secure a full time position this way. In contrast, disciplines like writing, art, and animation have a lower turnover and usually require a portfolio and prior experience.

What kind of games would I like to make?

There are huge discrepancies in the ‘types’ of games that are out there. If your dream is to make a small scale moving narrative adventure with radical feminist ideas and a cast of 100% trans characters, you probably will not be happy working for most AAA companies. I would instead recommend the indie game industry. There are pros and cons to both indie and AAA and you will need to weigh where your values lie.

The first thing to realize with applying to work with a AAA company as a new graduate is that you will be working on someone else’s intellectual property. You will probably not be included in major design decisions, you will most likely be working on an existing franchise that has already been in development for a couple of years. Most companies have their next few titles planned out in advance, and beyond that you will have very little power or flexibility as a junior. However if your dream is to work on an existing franchise and be part of something big that will launch internationally, then go AAA all the way. If you have the financial finesse/support, want to work on your own ideas, and take more creative risks, then go indie.

The next thing is asking yourself, what do I play, what do I like? The culture of a company is very important and I would recommend applying for companies whose games you enjoy and whose mandate you support. If you hate FPS games, you might not like working on the next Call of Duty. Apply for the companies whose games you play and whose culture you agree with.

Is this industry for me?

There are some downsides to working in the video game industry. The biggest downfall of the games industry is crunch. Developers notoriously work long, hard hours, and that sometimes doubles before launch. Depending on the company this can be better or worse, but I won’t hesitate to say that working in the games industry is stressful. High expectations yield high reward. Most people I have met who work in the industry don’t have families (implying kids), or have partners that are extremely supportive and act as the primary parent. But, I will say that the industry is changing, and many companies are making an effort to decrease the strain of crunch as well as accommodate their aging employees. As well, hours can be flexible so with some careful juggling I can see how many people manage a family and their jobs.

Despite the long hours, the job is extremely rewarding, and I hope this doesn’t discourage you! But if long hours and high stress are something you absolutely cannot do, please think it over carefully.

Baby Steps

Alright let’s get to the fundamental question, how do I get a job?

I’m going to break it down into some simple steps.

Step 1: Education

Education doesn’t have to be a degree – but it definitely helps if it is. I personally have a Bachelor of Science in Computing Science, with a certificate in Game Development and Design. These things were very important to me getting a job.

Having the proper training increases your chances of an interview and thus an offer. If you don’t have a degree and do not have the time/patience/money to get one I recommend working on a portfolio. So you have to start making games and teach yourself. If you are a programmer, learn C# and C++. There’s lots of neat game engines you can mess around with to get started.

Some free ones I’ve tried out are:

• Unity (Used a lot for indie games)

For smaller 1-2 person projects

• MelonJS
• PyGame
• RenPy

The second part of “education” is game education. Play games. Play AAA games, play indie games, play mobile games, play console games, play platformers, RPGs, FPS, MOBAs, all of it. Everyone around you will always be making references to various games to describe the mechanics, atmosphere, plot twists or whatever they want to emulate. You have to play a lot of games to be informed about your market.

Step 2: Produce a portfolio

You can get kickstarted on this by attending game jams and hackathons. Usually you wind up with something you can show off with 48 hrs of effort. It also is a good way to meet people who you might want to potentially team up with in the future.

This step will be the hardest, it’s doing unpaid work and it sucks. Of course, when you are passionate about something grinding a few hours in your spare time doesn’t seem like much. The most important advice I can give here is to think as small as possible. What is a cool thing you can make and throw up on the internet that displays how innovative you are? Perhaps an experiment in Microsoft XNA which creates a 2D world with cyclical levels? Maybe a Skyrim mod? Perhaps some art or a 10 minute visual novel using Ren’Py? Or a remix of the Super Mario Bros soundtrack? Think of small projects, very small projects that will show off your skills without eating a few years of your life. Know that projects inevitably get larger the more you work on them. As well, if you have work from school throw that in there, put it all together on a nice website and voila, you have a portfolio.

Step 3: Attend conferences

Recruiters use conferences to recruit. Need I say more? I attended GDC 2015 with a pass I won through Microsoft, they had us attend several different events where we were introduced to recruiters from XBOX, Riot Games, EA, Blizzard and Ubisoft. Sometimes companies even interview at conferences. So if you are ready to strut your stuff and just looking for a more personable approach than applying online, I recommend attending a GDC, PAX, E3, Blizzcon, or whatever other conference that suits your fancy. Keep an eye out for contests or draws where you can win passes for free.

More positive points of conference going are the educational sessions, networking with peers, and seeing the new amazing stuff out there. In the industry it’s important to stay cutting edge, or at least be aware of where things are heading. Conferences are a great way of staying on top of new ideas.

Step 4: Apply apply apply

So now you are going to want to email all those recruiters you met, or add them on LinkedIn. Don’t get hopes down of you don’t hear anything right away as the games industry is very competitive. As well consider polishing your resume, or getting some advice on it from friends or a mentor in the industry.

Most people I have met started in games through an internship, so if you are a recent grad (or in your 3rd or 4th year) look into internships.

To help you out, here’s a list of some major companies’ career sites:

• Square Enix
• Nintendo
• Blizzard
• EA, Bioware, Dice, others
• Riot Games
• Konami
• Namco Bandai
• Activision
• Zenimax, Bethesda

Not to mention the hundreds of other companies out there. Also if you have a favourite game, look up who made it and check out their site.

It’s important to keep trying! When applying for positions you might not get swamped with offers at first, the industry is very competitive. But keep improving your skills, attending events and networking, eventually it will pay off.

The original lineup of characters you can play as consisted of 50% women and 50% men (6 of each), which was pretty awesome. (With the recent Dragonslayer Expansion, there are now 7 women and 8 men.) Even better, the classes were almost equally balanced between the genders, with there being an option to play as a woman for almost every class. So if you want to play a lady character with a greatsword, you could. The only exception is that there was originally two male archers and two female dual-wielding knife users, but no female archers or male knife users. This didn’t bother me, mostly since dual knife users are not stereotypically gendered as a feminine, and the number of men and women to play as is still equal. (There is now an extra female knife user, male two-handed weapon user and male staff user. I hope future expansions will even this back out a bit.) Of course, if the only women were archers and mages, for example, I would find that annoying. Since women are, more often than not, placed in a “long-distance” class, I am pleased to be given the opportunity to play as a female close-range fighter. In a complete reversal of stereotypes, the Reaver, who I will be talking about more shortly, is a close-range fighter and is probably the most bloodthirsty.

This is unlike the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3, another multiplayer mode from BioWare that I also played plenty of and enjoyed quite a bit. The classes in ME3 were much more gendered. Although the first two choices for each class were a male human and a female human, there were still fewer female characters to play as overall. There were relatively more women to choose from in the adept, engineer and infiltrator classes, but all of these tended to have indirect skills. (For example, turning invisible or summoning robots. Of course, you could build an infiltrator for close-range combat, but that was not one of the defining features of the class). As well, none of these classes had a 50/50 split between men and women. The closest class that could be argued to be 50/50 is the infiltrator class, but for that to be true the “genderless” asari infiltrator has to be counted as female and the “genderless” geth infiltrator has to be discounted. Unfortunately, one of my favourite classes, the vanguard, had very few women to play as. Again, I perhaps would not have been as unhappy with this if any of the classes that seemed stereotypically masculine did not have fewer women to choose from.

Also unlike Mass Effect 3, each of the characters in Dragon Age have a personality and a back-story. This adds some nice ambiance to the game. While the multiplayer matches may not be very different, the characters that you are playing with make a large difference, at least to me. All the characters have their own quirks and they are all interesting. I looked forward to hearing them chat in-between battles just to hear how they interacted together. Each of them has different observations on the others’ pasts, goals, and motivations.

The Reaver and the Alchemist

In particular, the relationship between the Reaver, Tamar, and the Alchemist, Luka, is one of my favourites. Most of the other characters react to Luka’s strange suggestions and observations with annoyance, boredom or dismissal. Conversely, the others usually react to Tamar with fear or an expectation of violence. Most of the time, Tamar dismisses the other characters’ suggestions brusquely. When fighting with the Archer, Hall, she will tell him that “[They] are not friends” in response to one of his suggestions. Of all of the relationships alluded to by the dialogue, I found Tamar’s and Luka’s one of the most interesting and I looked forward to what they would say next.

One of the reasons I enjoyed it so much likely has to do with how atypical I found the relationship to be. Well-developed relationships between women are rarely portrayed well in media (see the Bechdel Test as a demonstration). I wouldn’t necessarily call the relationship between Tamar and the Luka well developed, but in 12 lines, they offer each other advice, support and assistance for future goals. They are unexpectedly friendly with each other despite both being treated as odd or scary by the others. I find this kind of relationship rare, particularly in multiplayer games, which are often light on story and characterization, and where there is regularly only one woman (or very few women) to play as. Overall, I have found the multiplayer in Dragon Age: Inquisition to be quite fun, and I look forward to hearing what all the characters say to each other.

Panels

In my search for knowledge, new media, and enlightenment I stumbled across some amazing panels. I want to highlight some of the panels here and talk about how they relate to game studies and feminism.

Drawing Herstories, with Taryn Mahoney, Leah Schmidt, and Sarah Dorchak is a panel touching on the history of women in comics, alternative representation of women in comics including lesbian and indigenous representation, and underground comics. This panel was presented by three very well spoken women of academia and was aimed at an academic feminist audience. I really liked seeing this content at Calgary Expo, it isn’t very often that feminist panels at conventions get to touch on more than “feminism is a thing, women should have rights.” However this panel presented rich material about women in underground comics and dove deeply into the underappreciated herstories in underground comics. The panel was moderated by one of the host’s of CJSW’s feminist radio show “Yeah, What She Said” and a full recording of the material (recorded prior to the panel) is linked above. The kind of herstories presented in this panel are something I long for in speaking about women in games; too often we get wrapped up in arguing about issues of harassment and marginalization instead of highlighting the amazing indie material female developers have been producing for years. Attending this panel was a cold bucket of water dumped on me that highlighted my own tendencies towards reactionary style journalism when blogging about women in games.

Men of Cosplay with Sunday Cosplay, Henchman Props, Nathan DeLuca, Michael Hamm, and Ryan Brandt. This panel was really awesome! The premise of this panel sounded super cool to me, and I know nothing about cosplay so I was eager to learn. The men on the panel discussed a variety of topics including how they got into cosplay, poor costume choices, their family’s reactions to cosplay, and getting hate online. The content was really interesting, the video game references were rampant, and the panelists were forward thinking and knowledgable. From a feminist perspective some highlights included talking about gender bending and the differences in sexual harassment between being a male and female cosplayers. For me this helped me think more openly about gender issues from a male perspective in fandom and it was uplifting to see such awesome men standing up for alternative perspectives on gender and representation.

The Indie Author Road with Adam Dreece was another panel I attended. Adam Dreece is the author of “The Yellow Hoods” a female positive indie fantasy novel. He presented two panels at the con, Indie Author Road and Things to Think About When Writing Strong Women, I attended the first. Adam was energetic and realistic. He emphasized how distribution methods for the mediums we consume have changed and reviewed some challenges and benefits of being an indie author. These kinds of talks are extremely important and directly map over to the games industry. First, games are also a form of literature so many of his writing tips apply. Secondly, distribution structures for games are also changing, which means the demographics of who is a developer or writer of published games are changing. By providing indie producers, writers and developers with tools to help them market their materials we diversify the market and allow more experiences and voices to be heard.

Some other notable panels I attended were a panel on Controversy in Geekdom which talked about doxxing, sexual objectification, and cyber bullying. I also attended a Geek Girl Gathering session where we met some cool people, learned about initiatives to get more women into comics, gaming, and other geekery, as well as ate free pizza and won door prizes! I won a copy of volume 1 of Lumberjanes, a comic about five teenage girls fighting yetis (if you are into comics read this it is awesome).

Controversy

I’m writing this part of the post in response to the MRA/GamerGate booth controversy. In summary, a Men’s Rights and GamerGate group was given a booth at Calgary Expo. The group was expelled from the conference on Friday morning and asked to take their booth down and leave the premises.

Calgary Expo has released a full statement on the issue.

I do not personally know the comprehensive or official reasons why this group was expelled from the con. The Mary Sue covers the story well in a full post here.

The only thing I would like to touch on is the use of the word GamerGate. Please do not approach any woman centric panel with the guise of addressing “ethics in games journalism” and say you are part of GamerGate. Women in gaming do not want to engage with you and will feel endangered by your presence, this ensures no hope of an intelligent discussion taking place. This is a direct response to the massive amounts of harassment that women have received from the GamerGate movement in the past year. They are completely within their right to remove you from a space. Especially taking into account that GamerGate has become so terrifying that they have threatened to bomb women in games panels, they have threatened school shootings, they have doxxed women, and threatened them out of their homes. Therefore if you associate with GamerGate, regardless of your position or intentions, you appear as a threat. GamerGate is the mark of a terrorist organization.

Women in Games Panel

Finally lets talk about women in games and the Women in Games Panel, which is in its third iteration. In 2014 myself, Maren Wilson of Women in Game Studies, Stephanie Chan of Women into Comics, Karin Weekes of Bioware and Susan Wright of Infinite Monkeys spoke about how to introduce women to game development and design and issues women face in gaming. This year Maren was unable to make the con so we had Kristin Lindsay of Penny Arcade Expo fill in.

The highlights from the discussion included the usual talking about how to get into making games. This is the part where we always encourage people to participate in Global Game Jam and other Hackathons. As well, there are always questions about where to attend school and what to take. To this I say, look up game development and design programs at your local Universities (or ones abroad) and don’t shy away from computing science!

We also spoke briefly on GamerGate, acknowledging the above about harassment, but also how it is important not to shy away from these conversations. We also talked about how we each got into gaming and I tried to encourage more women and girls to participate in esports.

The conversations that occurred in Calgary gave me insight into a lot of issues I haven’t thought about before, and inspired me to research a couple different topics. Therefore keep your eyes on the blog for some upcoming content about esports, how to get into development and learning some more difficult games to get into.

Finally the last point I want to write about is failing. Women often find it very difficult to find their place and stay in gaming communities because they are less skilled or feel there are greater expectations for them because of their gender. It is also worth acknowledging that everyone was terrible at some point and failing is a crucial part of getting better (this applies doubly in gaming.) So keep playing, keep trying, and keep failing.

One of the characters in System Shock 2 is Melanie Bronson. (I should really write about Dr. Marie Delacroix someday, but today is Bronson’s day.) She is the Chief Security Officer on board the Von Braun, the space ship most of the game takes place on. She isn’t a particularly likable person, and many of the other characters mention that they hate her or her by-the-book attitude. Actually, I can’t think of any character in the game that say that they like her. I feel that it is rare to find women in media that are unlikeable, but also with understandable motivations. I definitely don’t agree with every action she takes, but she always acts in the way that she thinks is best, the way that she thinks will secure the safety of the ship and the crew.

So when the ship starts getting taken over by The Many, she believes it falls to her to stop them. Her motivations are very clear, and she makes some very militant decisions (arguably the wrong ones) in order to keep the peace on board the ship while everything is spiraling out of control. She orders fully-armed turrets to be set up, and when they are hacked, tries to get them offline. She personally tracks down the man who hacked them and executes him. She enforces martial law, locks down several sections of the ship and orders her security personnel to kill anyone who gets in their way.

If anybody is found to be interfering with the normal operations of this ship or impedes the work of the security forces they will be shot on the spot.

She follows through on that threat and murders several potentially innocent people. All in an attempt to regain control of the ship and do what she thinks is right. Let me be clear: I am not saying that her conviction in her own actions makes them the right actions. What I am saying is that there are few female characters in video games who make the wrong choices–for what they believe are the right reasons–and have the conviction to stand by them till the end. This conviction meant that her battle against The Many could only end with her death or her triumph. And appropriately, she is fatally wounded in a last-stand firefight, during which she leaves a final message to the player. Even the message itself tells the player to never concede. She never compromises, even when everyone else hates her, even when she knows everyone else hates her, and it costs her her life. I wish there were more characters like Bronson: very different from the roles that women are usually put into. For me, Bronson is a breath of fresh air.

Back in August a game developer, Zoe Quinn, the mastermind behind the award-winning free game Depression Quest, was accused of sleeping with a Kotaku gaming journalist, Nathan Grayson, in an exchange for a favourable review. These allegations, (made by a scorned ex in a nine paged diatribe) were later proven untrue, as the review in question never existed. Due to this controversy Quinn began to receive a tirade of misogynist threats, that built on earlier harassment she had received after the game’s release in 2013. Later these gamers united under the hashtag #GamerGate, after some celebrity endorsement courtesy of Adam Baldwin, and began calling for the reform of journalism ethics in gaming.

Thus, #GamerGate is a movement consisting of many of the online personas responsible for harassing women in games. The group uses the guise of ethics of gaming journalism to harass and attack female developers and critics including Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander and Brianna Wu. Quinn and these other prominent women in games received various rape threats, death threats, and were doxxed (the act of getting your personal information hacked and posted online) because of their “corrupting” influence on games.

Various sources have come to light that prove many of the accusations against these women were manufactured. Quinn and Wu have both released chat logs showing the orchestration of these large scale hate campaigns coming out of a small group of users, typically originating from 4chan, 8chan, or miscellaneous IRC channels.

This movement #GamerGate must stop. It has been acknowledged by several gaming news outlets that there exists a conversation to be had about ethics in gaming journalism, however #GamerGate is no longer the place to do that. The movement has become so toxic that sources like Polygon, Kotaku, and Game Informer recommend it’s abandonment.

We implore all involved to let “GamerGate” go, because GamerGate is not an issue. It is a nebulous term that has served no master, but has been misused by those who wish to divert us from the real issues that the game industry faces as it evolves from its humble beginnings to a place where gamers of all types are accepted. [4]

Right here you have one of the largest magazines in the industry telling people to knock it off. Why? Because the longer this so called movement remains active under this banner, which is supposedly all about making the gaming industry and community better, is actually making it worse.

I was originally supposed to write about #GamerGate last week but held off because I was optimistic that this debate would cease to be an issue when #StopGamerGate2014 emerged. It emerged as a response to Sarkeesian cancelling a lecture at Utah State University because of a threat of mass shooting.

I thought to myself, this new hashtag is great! We ladies don’t have to be afraid about speaking out against this movement. I felt really good going through all of the tweets where support was strong. It made me feel like the gaming community I knew, where we are all a band of misfits that don’t fall into mainstream popularity, was coming back because ladies and allies were banding together. Women have been in games since the beginning and are now finding their confidence and voicing their desire for inclusion in games due to the rise of supportive gaming communities we find online. Adult women are now largest demographic in games, considering we make up 36% of the gamer population [5]. Personally, I’ve played Duck Hunt on the NES when I was four and moved on from there to Pokemon and other various WRPGs and JRPGs and whatever else Steam sales tempt me to buy. I finally felt at home when I found other women online who loved games as much as I do. However, the feeling that us gamers will get out of this wacky circus unscathed only lasted a couple of days because #GamerGate attacked another woman who is a public figure. Shortly after speaking out about her fear of even talking about #GamerGate, Felicia Day got doxxed.

What’s disturbing about Day getting doxxed is that on the same day that she merely voiced concern about speaking about the issue, Chris Kluwe, a retired NFL player and an avid gamer, published a scathing article on how toxic #GamerGate is [6], [7]. Yet they went for the person who was afraid of the movement, who didn’t speak ill of them, just because she is a woman. I am pretty sure the same thing could happen to me.

I had a long debate with myself and a few close friends on whether I should shorten my name to Al instead of Allie, so it appears I’m a man. In that case, I might get a possible pass if, by chance, someone who disagrees with my opinion reads this. If #GamerGate truly was about ethics in gaming journalism then I shouldn’t be afraid of revealing I’m a woman gamer, no one should be afraid about speaking out on an issue! The reality is that a lot of women are afraid to speak up because of the misogynistic death and rape threats that #GamerGate throws out to attack the women who don’t agree with them.

The fear of speaking out is something all women gamers and women in the industry feel whenever we encounter #GamerGate. Brianna Wu flat out tells us that “every women [she knows] in the industry is terrified that she will be next” if they voice their opinion on #GamerGate [8]. She lists off three more women, Jenn Frank, Mattie Bryce and Samantha Allen, who have become victims to the hate that is stemming from this movement, because they dared to speak out. Wu speaks of how this type of hate we see in #GamerGate is also seen in the overall gaming environment where it has prevented women from entering the field as game developers. Both Wu and Quinn have folders dedicated to the letters they received from young girls who dream of breaking into the industry but are afraid of what they see. Right now? What they see is hate and an unwelcoming environment where people are supposed to have the freedom to create and express themselves freely.

So, how do we move on? Well for starters, the people who are associated with #GamerGate and who are promoting the harassment of women and harassing women themselves need to cease their activities. We need to find a way to move on, just like Game Informer said about a paragraph or so ago! I know I am repeating myself here but the #GamerGate hashtag has to be left behind and if people are truly concerned about the ethics in gaming journalism then they need to show it. They can do this by supporting the women who have been driven from their homes by harassment. They can support the women who are too afraid to speak out because of the fear that’s been generated by the vocal misogynist gamergaters. They can heed the advice of Polygon’s editor-in-chief Chris Grant by moving their discussion of ethics in gaming journalism to see if it actually goes against the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics that’s mentioned in Grant’s article.

And the first step in doing what I outline above would be leaving #GamerGate behind.

1. https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
2. http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-following-death-thre-1645280338
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/29/gaming-vlogger-anita-sarkeesian-is-forced-from-home-after-receiving-harrowing-death-threats
4. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/10/20/game-informer-on-gamergate.aspx
5. http://www.dailydot.com/geek/adult-women-largest-gaming-demographic/
6. https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6
7. http://thisfeliciaday.tumblr.com/post/100700417809/the-only-thing-i-have-to-say-about-gamer-gate
8. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/20/rape-and-death-threats-are-terrorizing-female-gamers-why-havent-men-in-tech-spoken-out/?TID%20SM_FB

I adore the Telltale Games adventure games. They’re engaging, interesting, surprising and a wonderful modern look at Point-and-Click adventure games. In 2012, The Walking Dead Season 1, won Game of the Year from over 40 different sources. This is the game that saw players escorting a little girl through the zombie apocalypse, struggling to survive against a lot of extreme circumstances. At the time, though I admit I love the game, I was worried that TWD was just another in a long line of daughter-like sidekicks accompanying the often gruff male protagonist. These sidekicks are often times not totally helpless, but still require protection from the more capable protagonist. Not to mention that players are usually only allowed to play as the sidekick in separate DLC released outside of the core gameplay. I’m looking at you Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us.

Not so with The Walking Dead, after it’s release of Season 2 which saw Clementine, the precocious young girl whom you had to protect in Season 1, a little older, a little harder and the star of her own story. For the first time ever playing as Clementine I truly felt that not only did I have a vested interest in her character, but that I had had an influence in shaping her into the person she is. There were several resonating moments over the course of the 5 chapters in Season 2 where players are reminded of choices they made in the previous game (had they imported their save). Watching what choices reflected onto Clementine was amazing.

Better yet, at no point over the course of the series lament the loss of Clementines innocence. Instead players are rewarded pretty early on TWD 1 for teaching her how to shoot. Saved by her increased independence, showcasing the value of being brave in a survivalist world. Because that’s what Clem is, is a survivor. She managed to make it longer then any group she’s been associated with. She’s a constancy in the world of Telltale Games The Walking Dead. She has no use for naivete and I on more than one occasion took unbridled glee in directing Clementine to bluntly take no flak from patronizing adults.

Getting to play as Clem in The Walking Dead Season 2 was a real treat because she offers players a different and unique play experience situated within a zombie apocalypse. Playing as a 13 year old girl and needing to negotiate respect and your independence from the older characters around you is was a great story component of the game. Not to mention the amount of times characters underestimated the capabilities of a young girl. The soon learned the error of their ways, with Clementine overcoming all obstacles through force of will and cool wit. I loved playing as Clementine and eventually seeing her be included in group dialogues over time as she gains respect. Playing as a black young girl in the zombie apocalypse is quite the departure from playing as Lee in the previous season, as a grown black man.

While Lee had to grapple with his groups internalized racism in TWD, Clementine has to face gendered and age biases from the characters around her. One outstanding benchmark moment playing as Clem came later in Season 2, when we are introduced to one of the older female survivors sexual autonomy and independence. Given Clem’s age, she likely understood what was going on in the situation, but had no culturally instilled judgements for the character at hand, you know, outside of potentially endangering the group. Playing as a young girl, we are moderately freed from our preconceived notions of race, gender and class biases. This freed us to have those moments where gendered biases apply to situations and having Clementine link them to survival or not caring in the least. This isn’t to say that The Walking Dead Season 2 lacks ingrained socially constructed biases, just that they come from forces outside of Clementine herself, and are more often than not influencing the gameplay and narrative of the game, and how Clementine must circumvent them for her own survival.

I was thrilled with the opportunity to play as Clementine after completing TWD season 1, this little girl who I felt that I had personally aided in her character growth. Getting to play as a young girl, years into surviving the zombie apocalypse is a wonderfully fresh take on the genre and led to some interesting and unique story moments, that players otherwise would not have otherwise gotten to experience. If Clementine is a herald for the potential future of representation in video games, then I’m totally okay with having a series of layered, dynamic and unique female characters that offer notably different perspectives from their male counterparts. Here’s to you Clementine.

On my adventure I moderated a panel on Feminist Community Building 101 with Angela Webber of the Doubleclicks, Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency, Sheena McNeil of Sequential Tart, Jamie Broadnax of Black Girl Nerds and Ashlee Blackwell of Graveyard Shift Sisters.

These amazing women gently guided our audience towards the end goal – build a strong sustainable project that makes real change in the world. This post will be a short summary of some of the lessons I pulled away from the panel.

1. 1. Pick a niche. Ashlee of Graveyard Shift Sisters had a really good perspective on this, she runs a community focused on horror fandom for people of colour. These kind of niches allow you to be unique and get a lot of opportunities you would otherwise be passed over for. However when choosing your project be respectful of your predecessors, maybe even contact them for help if a similar project to one you would like to start already exists.
   2. Do your research. It is super super important to think about issues from all sides. Angela mentioned some critiques she received of her popular Youtube video “Nothing to Prove,” where someone had mentioned a lack of people of colour.

      With a bit of research you can be more inclusive and realize you may be being insensitive or exclusive to a group without realizing it.

   3. Do the work. Starting a project is like leveling up in Final Fantasy, you have to grind. No one is an overnight success and in order to get more people on board you need to have an established body of work. It is also important, when reaching out to people around you to contribute, that it is an equal exchange. It’s unfair to ask people to do work for you when you haven’t done anything yourself. A great way to start is creating some kind of web-content for your project. A blog, twitter account, facebook page allows you to add content and accumulate a community.
   4. Be inclusive. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be mindful of how to make your project inclusive. There are some really really simple ways to make your group appear inclusive, but it is really important to back up any policies you make. A great way to start with this is create an anti-harassment policy and a plan of how to enforce it. Other ways we discussed were specifically mention “all genders welcome” on advertising material, offer child care at events, or make sure events are held in accessible spaces.
   5. Ask for help. It was pretty unanimous that the panelists at one point had felt shy to reach out to their role models, but now in a position where they had experience and influence they encouraged up-and-comers to contact them. Twitter is a great medium for reaching out to others in the community and keeping in touch with current events in those circles.
   6. Social Media is your best friend. As previously mentioned, social media will help you contact mentors, build a community, and advertise. Jamie, the twitter queen, stands by her online community, and cites it as a way she has met so many people in the geek world. This helps connect her with the fanbase she is writing for, possible contributors, and guests for her podcast. She also spreads her awesome geekdom on twitter with weekly discussions and events like her Saturday night live tweet of Jem and the Holograms.
   7. Be strong, but also conscious of your emotional health. Finally it is really important to acknowledge that we are not all Anita Sarkeesian. Since summer 2012 Anita has received death, rape, and bomb threats almost daily. Due to the popularity of her Tropes VS Women in Games project she has been able to unearth much ingrained sexism in the gaming community and shed light on some really problematic behaviours. However not all of us can handle that kind of emotional strain, and that’s okay. No matter what, your emotional health comes first, and if the project becomes too much, prioritize your health.

Alright, that is a brief summary of the shenaniganery at Geek Girl Con. If you are interested in reading more about the convention here’s a blog post from The Distracted blogger – an awesome woman named Kendall I met at the Geek Girl meet and greet. Also a great list here about some of the Geek Girl merchants.

First off: System Shock 2. System Shock 2 had great audio logs. They made sense. People were recording memos for themselves or sending messages to each other. They told a story of people trying to survive on a space ship in the middle of nowhere while everything was turning into a nightmare. You got to know several of the characters through their audio logs over the course of the game, if not by name, then by voice. Even the placement of the audio logs sometimes told a story. For example, one of the many mutated enemies that you fight is revealed to have been carrying one. The woman recording it is clearly undergoing some kind of transformation and attempting to document it. She ends with “If someone finds this, don’t have any regrets about punching my clock. I was already gone.” The implication is clear, and that message sent chills down my spine when I found it.

Secondly, let’s look at Dead Space. I feel that Dead Space tried to emulate System Shock in many ways, particularity with the audio logs. You’re on a ship in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of mutated/mutating people. You (this time playing the role of an engineer rather than a nameless soldier) also show up late to the story. As in System Shock 2, much of what happened on the ship is told through audio logs and the player also gets hints and door codes through the logs. But here the audio logs don’t feel quite as natural. I was often wondering “Whhhhyyyy are you recording this???” Like the audio log of two men listening to a third having a strange fit and pulling his own teeth out. (Great time to start recording! I don’t know, maybe try to stop him from hurting himself instead of turning on your audio recorder?) Or the guy recording himself shooting off his own limbs. (It starts out reasonable enough, recording a goodbye message for his family, but why would you then make them listen to you screaming in pain as you dismember yourself??) Or when someone decided to record a man taking another hostage. It just made no sense. Unless everyone was wearing microphones at all times (and then I would expect an abundance of bland conversations to be found), the audio logs just sounded silly and forced, once you started thinking about them. I think this is an example of when audio logs go bad. Not all stories can be told through audio logs, and telling a story only through audio logs can be hard, especially when a developer has a very specific story to tell.

Finally, there was Doom 3. Doom 3 moved away from its run-and-gun roots and accentuated the horror more. With many faulty lights and demons hiding in closets. Audio logs in this game generally made sense. People used them to file accident reports, complaints and records of creepy things that kept happening. They also helpfully recorded door codes for their co-workers (and you). However, unlike System Shock 2 and Dead Space this game liked to, if not break the fourth wall, at least lean heavily on it. People in the audio logs are constantly questioning the tropes within the game itself, such as the almost comically unsafe working conditions and how perhaps having guns and ammo just lying around haphazardly isn’t the best idea. I personally enjoyed this (how serious can you be when you’re playing a marine, on Mars, killing demons from hell with a magic cube?).

To bring this back to the subject of women in audio logs, unlike System Shock 2 (which features a number of women, in many high profile positions) both Dead Space and Doom 3 have very few female characters. In fact, Doom 3 has exactly one woman on the entire Mars base. This is annoying and makes no sense. There is no in-story reason given in either game. In Doom 3 there is more written about why there are chainsaws on Mars than there is about why there are not more women. Not that I think there’s any story reason that I would be satisfied with. Both of these games are set in the future, where I would like to imagine there is less disparity between the genders in the workplace, not more.

There really aren’t any terrible excuses to fall back on when all of your characters are introduced and live only in audio logs. There is no “women are too hard to animate” or “women would require extra modelling and animation work.” The only trace of the character is their audio logs. The only way the player can interact with that character is through their audio log. If you are already hiring voice actors, why not hire some women as well? Even if, by some strange contrivance, you have only have the budget to hire one amazing male voice actor that does every voice in the game, you could probably hire two slightly less amazing voice actors for the same money. Or just hire Jennifer Hale. She could probably do all the voices a game developer could ever need.

My immediate response to the gameplay in Theatrhythm was delight. I anticipated that the songs used in the game would be remixes only to discover that I would get to play along to the original versions of the songs. This enhanced my feelings of nostalgia while playing, as I could remember the songs as they’d appeared in their respective games. Curtain Call offers 221 songs (not including DLC) available in-game (1), spanning an impressive amount of soundtracks to choose from (I’m looking at you, Mystic Quest). Most of these songs can be unlocked via progressing through music stages and acquiring “rhythmia” which functions a sort of reward currency that you accrue at the end of each stage. I’ve noticed I’m unlocking something at every 250 rm milestone and the breakdown for the points seems honestly kind of random to me.

During a stage, notes appear on the screen and line up with a placeholder and depending on whether it’s an FMS, EMS or BMS the notes move in different ways. You can interact with the stage in time with the music by tapping the screen or pressing any button when a note lines up with its placeholder (think Guitar Hero or DDR). It’s possible to combine playing styles and there’s even a one-handed method of playing that involves the use of the L button and the control/slide stick for only the most skilled drivers out there the multi-taskers who don’t want to miss a beat. I mostly enjoyed the implementation of notes with directional arrows inside of them, requiring you to either swipe your stylus or move the control stick in a particular direction, effectively serving as the most challenging aspect of the game when approaching the higher difficulty levels. It successfully breaks up the monotony in what would otherwise be your run-of-the-mill portable rhythm game– which often rely on more notes at ridiculous speeds to introduce difficulty. A little disappointing is the fact that you can still be graded on failed stages if you make it far enough in them. This made me a bit less determined in completing a song I failed at, especially as it’s possible to get a B and still fail.

Touting itself as a rhythm game with a touch of action, Curtain Call is generous in its RPG elements though that’s all they really are: elements. You can select from over 60 characters (1) from various FF games and assemble the party you use to partake in the music stages. The characters even possess stats, gain experience, and level up as you play. While there are advantages to using certain characters (for example, a character high in “luck” might not take as much damage if you miss notes), they only marginally influence the outcome of a stage so I found myself really ignoring that aspect altogether. That’s the thing about the rewards in this game; they are so numerous and feel so disproportionate. For everything I attempted I felt I was being bombarded with fifty unique mentions of having unlocked this crystal, that crystal. Red crystal, blue crystal. It’s obvious that a lot of thought was put into making CC as replayable as possible, but there are so many things to do and because of it I found it hard to relate what I was doing to what I was getting as the result. I get the impression that it would take some serious FAQ-studying to try and unlock the things I’m most interested in but the completionist in me is tired. There is, however, a “Museum” feature in the game where you can view your stats and overall completion, and if you think you’ve made significant progress you’re probably poorly mistaken.

If you’re looking for the perfect game to play while commuting, look no further as I can safely surmise that you will be able to play Curtain Call for forever. If you’re an avid fan of video game music, chances are you have some appreciation for the music of the Final Fantasy series, but don’t let the cult appeal scare you off if you’re not. There’s plenty to offer here for any rhythm game aficionado, but the personal connection I have to the songs in this game is the reason I’ll be more inclined to pick up and play Theatrhythm this fall over Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA or even good old Elite Beat Agents. Consider it a supplement to your usual finger-tapping habits next time you’re listening to music on the bus. The amount of choice I had in developing my own style of playing and having so many modes of play to choose from is a major contributor to the kind of experience that I think Theatrhythm is: a personal, nostalgia-filled finger-tapping trip that anybody can dive right into. Kupo!

1. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Theatrhythm_Final_Fantasy:_Curtain_Call
2. http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Rhythmia