A variety of games with female protagonists are slated for release in 2017 - here are some worth looking forward to.
2017 promises to be a very interesting year in gaming, with releases varying from highly anticipated games such as Mass Effect: Andromeda and Yooka-Laylee to a whole new console with the Nintendo Switch. But what about games that will focus squarely on female characters? Here are 7 worth looking forward to:
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hellblade is not only unusual in that it presents a female character as central in a game that focuses on “brutal” combat and is inspired by history (specifically Celtic mythology) but its protagonist, Senua, is also neuroatypical, experiencing psychosis.
According to the developers, this is specifically intended to address the taboo of hearing voices and the game has received input from a number of specialists including those with direct experience of similar psychosis to that featured in the game.
The best games this year, chosen by the women who write for remeshed
2016 might have been a bad year in the real world, but there were a lot of great games released this year.
To narrow down to the best, I queried more than a dozen of the women who’ve written for remeshed and asked them to give me their first and second choice for Game of the Year. Below are the five that received the most mentions–plus some that earned honorable mention.
5. Stardew Valley (Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4)
This indie game took everyone by surprise when it was released in February, drawing much critical acclaim–and astonishment, because it was created by a single developer. “At first, I brushed aside Stardew Valley as a Harvest Moon clone,” explains Nicole Tanner. “But it turned out Stardew Valley is Harvest Moon x 10. There are so many things to do in this game, it’s almost mind-boggling. But the simple tasks of farming, fishing, and figuring out the mysteries of the town you live in are satisfying and relaxing. I love this game for the fantastic escape it provides.”
For Jay Castello, Stardew Valley is “a charming game that took me by absolute surprise and introduced me to a wonderfully calm world filled with a lovable cast of characters.”
The holidays can be a tough time, but these games will get you through it AND help you share the fun with your family.
The holidays are upon us and for many of us, that means lots of family meals and other communal events. For lots of these get-togethers you’ll be away from home and thus away from your computer and/or console. What’s a gamer to do? Enter mobile games.
Whether you’ve got great friends and family you love to spend time with or it’s more of a chore you’d rather avoid, I’ve got some games that will help you get through this time of year. And because I’m Jewish and cranky and everything is about Christmas, this will be a list of 8 games, one for every night of Hanukkah. Deal with it.
Monument Valley (iOS, Android & Windows Phone)
Monument Valley is a beloved classic for a reason. Its hauntingly beautiful Escher-inspired levels are truly works of art and the relative ease of the puzzles makes it a great fit for every sort of gamer. It’s relaxing too and we could all use come peace and calm this time of year. You do each level at your own pace and the game doesn’t penalize you for mistakes; anything you do can be undone.
If you’ve played the game already, play it again. I’ve done so six or seven times and I never tire of it. Buy the Forgotten Shores expansion too and experience even more gorgeous monuments, labyrinths, and new mechanics. Fall in love all over again with Ida’s faithful companion, The Totem.
It’s also a great game to play with kids or have them play and help with puzzles if they need it. Fire it up on an iPad for maximum shareability.
The alt-right is now subjecting the world to the hate and tactics they first used in GamerGate's online harassment campaigns against women
In February 2016, the Washington Post published an article by Caitlin Dewey entitled, “In the battle of Internet mobs vs. the law, Internet mobs have won.” In December of 2016 as we ask whether fake news generated for profit in places like cash-strapped Macedonia and other Balkan nations influenced a US election because of viral sharing, work out how internet conspiracy theories led a man to fire an assault rifle in a pizza place full of families, and worry over the rise of racial hate speech directed at journalists, that headline feels infinitely extendable.
In the battle of internet mobs vs. humanity, internet mobs have won.
But that article wasn’t about the “alt-right” (a loose collection of racist and misogynist conservative hate groups) or hate speech. It was about Zoe Quinn, whose horrific harassment at the hands of online abusers because of supposed ethical misdeeds sparked the GamerGate controversy beginning in August 2014.
Quinn was subjected to threats of rape and death, had her private information, including her home address, publicly revealed, and was viciously harassed.
Yet in many circumstances, as Dewey notes, the First Amendment protects even the targeted and potentially harmful speech that Quinn was subjected to. And social media platforms, especially Twitter where GamerGate principally played out, have been slow to respond to the problems of harassment that they have enabled.
Before its release, I critiqued Final Fantasy XV for being sexist--have I changed my mind after playing it?
When I wrote about Final Fantasy XV before its release, I knew I was going in as a pessimist. The blatant erasure of women in favor of telling a story about bro friendship didn’t sit well with me, especially when one of the two women we saw in promo was scantily clad to the point of ridiculousness. The company’s attitude didn’t assuage that pessimism, either.
But I’ve been a longtime fan of the Final Fantasy series, and in the past I’ve overlooked egregious elements and still enjoyed a game (see: Grand Theft Auto V). And there were elements of XV that looked genuinely intriguing: a new game engine; a primarily open-world landscape; new battle mechanics; and above all there is a legacy of engaging games that came before it. I could handle erasure if the storyline was good enough, or the gaming experience was immersive enough to distract me.
And who knew—maybe I’d fall in love with the characters despite my reservations?
Then I started playing, my expectations cautiously low, and XV let me know right out the gate that I was in for a bumpy (and monotonous) ride.
Warning: some gameplay spoilers for Final Fantasy XV (but no story spoilers)
Players may prefer multiplayer over single, or vice versa, but for the best experience and best value, they should try both.
The single-player campaign in Titanfall 2 breaks away from the precedent set by the first game, which was multiplayer only. While I enjoyed the first Titanfall, the addition of a story mode made Titanfall 2 more appealing to folks like me, who prefer the narrative structure of single player—and a good amount of mechanical practice before delving into the high stakes of multiplayer.
The Highlights of Single Player
The tutorial mode in single-player was one of the best I’ve ever experienced. The graphics are crisp and beautiful, the course engaging, and the skills themselves fun. You get a feel for maneuvering, how the controls work, and can familiarize yourself with the game’s arsenal of weapons. The momentum physics—especially the wall gliding, which involves a careful consideration of where momentum will lead you as you navigate terrain—reminded me distantly of the Portal games, which is never a bad comparison in my book. If I can parkour my way through a game, I’m happy.
The star of single-player is definitely your Titan, BT, who I felt an almost immediate kinship with.
As the protagonist, Jack Cooper, you’re dropped into combat as a rookie pilot and passed the mantle of piloting BT after its pilot, your superior, dies. Jack is thrown into the thick of things, so it’s a good thing we spent time in the tutorial mode. I enjoyed the out-of-Titan play enough to deal with annoying fetch quests that dominate the earliest missions, but once we got into BT, I went from mild enjoyment to full-blown excitement.
As the symbiotic relationship with BT grows, so does your—as Jack—sense of BT’s personality and quirks. When you’re separated (and thrust into some cool puzzle levels that harken back to my love of Portal, and more out-of-Titan combat), it shakes things up and raises the stakes as you quest to get BT back.
Even the best characters demonstrate some of the underlying problems with the current state of representation in video games
When researching for this article about what makes “good” representation in games, I asked survey respondents for characters that they considered positive examples of such video game representation. Unsurprisingly, the response was enthusiastic and varied, with over 400 total characters mentioned. Nonetheless, some trends raised further issues with the overall state of representation in games and the ways that fans respond began to show.
[This article contains spoilers for Life is Strange and The Walking Dead: Season One]
Firstly, popularly cited characters often had more than one marginalised identity, such as the gay man of colour Dorian from Dragon Age: Inquisition or the queer women Max and Chloe from Life is Strange. This is notable because it demonstrates again how intersectionality is key to creating believable and relatable characters, and for allowing characters’ identities to be realistically nuanced and varied.
However, some kinds of representation were conspicuously absent from the commendations, such as disabled characters and non-binary characters. This is not particularly surprising, due to their sparseness in games in general, but nonetheless disappointing as it means that large groups of people are essentially being left out entirely.
Additionally, there were far more men of colour than women of colour listed (despite there being more women mentioned overall), demonstrating one of the ways in which the aforementioned intersectionality is not nearly universal enough.
In The Trail, you play as an explorer in a new world of beautiful vistas, where you live peacefully with others, collect goods, and play mini-games
I awoke with a start at 3am on the morning of November 9th.
I already knew; I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I had cried myself to sleep when things didn’t look good at around 10 or 11pm and now I knew. Donald Trump was going to be the next President of the United States.
As it has for many people, this election has awakened within me a primal fear and intense anxiety I’ve never experienced before. This is not an exaggeration. As it turns out, there is a scientific explanation for the way myself and countless others have been feeling.
For many people, this presidential election is triggering a visceral fear response hard to put into words. Here are the words you might have been looking for: We are born to fear predators.
During the campaign, therapists warned of the Trump effect. Following the election, suicide hotlines were flooded with calls. The Canadian immigration website crashed. This was all only the beginning. After just one week, the incidence of hate crimes was worse than after 9/11. The Southern Poverty Law Center continues to compile the reported crimes here.
In the days and weeks after, I felt lost, rudderless. Nothing seemed real and there was nowhere to hide from the terror that I felt. Not even in my most beloved refuge: games.
For years now, I had been turning to games in times of stress and anxiety. This positive effect of games has, in fact, been studiedand many people can attest to its power.
Women in most of Uncharted’s adventures conform to stereotypes, but the latest game in the series champions some modern gender concepts
Uncharted’s inspirations are about as classic as they come. Epic set pieces, exotic locations and witty banter; these are all ingredients in a recipe that we know well. Nathan Drake’s globe-trotting escapades owe a lot to the classics of the adventure genre; everything from Treasure Island, to King Kong and, most obviously, Indiana Jones.
These inspirations are what give Uncharted its undeniable charm; they’re a set of games that take you on a rousing adventure, before tucking you safely into bed at the end. I’ve greatly enjoyed playing them over the last few months (via the Uncharted Collection on PS4).
**warning: spoilers for all games in the Uncharted series**
However, there was something niggling in the back of my mind the entire time; something seemingly inconsequential, but constant nevertheless. It wasn’t until I played Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, that I realised what that niggling was; the Uncharted series doesn’t treat its female characters very well.
The first three games (and you’ll find out why it’s only the first three later on) have a habit of slipping whatever female characters they had into neat little roles, something that classic adventure stories have been doing for a long, long time.
Uncharted has never aspired to being anything revolutionary; it’s a franchise that has rarely strayed from the comfortable narrative paths that other adventure stories have walked many times before. And this works, for the most part. But at the same time, having to experience age-old gender stereotypes being played out again, and again, was frustrating to me.
In their first article, Cora and Amanda broke down the romantic appeal of Overwatch’s female characters. In this second installment, they deliberate how the rest of the roster breaks down in terms of dateability.
Yes, even the cool science gorilla. Buckle up, folks.
Genji
Amanda: It’s time to start with the cherry on top of this beautiful sundae of boys: Genji.
Cora: Cyborg ninja!
Amanda: He gives me vibes of Snake Eyes from the GI Joe movie, which is not necessarily what you want.
Cora: How do I feel about Genji?
Amanda: He got a cute butt.
Cora: He’s got a very good butt. I dig his relationship with Hanzo, but unfortunately I’m full of up Brother Feelings until 2017.
Amanda: Yeah, that ‘brothers torn apart by ideology’ thing has been done to death.
But there’s some disability meta happening with Genji. And some transhuman meta. He had to come to terms with his body being augmented, and different, and that is very much a disability narrative.
Whether it’s a good disability narrative isn’t for me to say.
Cora: I hugely appreciate how much Genji has been through, and I want to learn more about the circumstances of why Mercy treated him with the technology she did. It’s ambiguous in canon whether he consented to that, and I would love some confirmation one way or another. I like that he’s coded as the “good” brother, or at least the one associated with the Overwatch organization. When this seemingly noble-looking archer shows up in the Dragons short, there’s this expectation that the slight-looking cyborg dude with green lights is the Bad One. I feel like his character is subversive in that way.
Amanda: I wonder if you were gonna spoon him if he would be cold or warm? And he doesn’t seem to have too many sharp edges.
I like imagining that at the end of the day he wraps himself up in a soft slanket and just chills. I want him to take whatever steps he needs in order to be comfortable. I would happily join him in his slanket and watch some Parks & Recreation.
Genji should be your boyfriend if: You want someone who can beat your high score in Fruit Ninja.
Unlike most Otome games, Rose of Winter gives its main character the opportunity to pursue a great career, as well as romance.
I’m a strong and reasonably confident woman. I don’t need a romantic partner, but that doesn’t stop me wanting one sometimes. An increasing trend in many games, as well as movies, is that it’s ‘all or nothing’. It’s a trend I see within my own social circle too. To ‘admit’ you’d like to meet someone sounds like that’s all you’re interested in, when often that’s rarely the case. Life being all about balance means you can effectively juggle the two if that’s what you want.
Otome games, typically aimed at the female market, rarely manage to achieve this balance. Focused on following the story of a developing romantic relationship between a heterosexual female character and a male character, they all too often eschew the need for the person to have other things going in their life. There could be an argument that this is because most Otome games are quite brief and focused on just one concept, but Rose of Winter defies that expectation. It packs quite a lot into a brief tale.
Unlike most Otome games, Rose of Winter gives its main character the opportunity to pursue a career, as well as romance. It might lack some diversity, sticking to heterosexual relationships, but its protagonist Rosemary is a strong and capable young woman.
The definition of good representation can be nebulous, but there are some clear ways to improve on diversity and inclusion in games
Representation matters. Seeing ourselves and others in media shapes our self perception and how we see the world at large.
This is becoming a widely accepted reality, yet attempts at improving representation often fall flat. In games especially, problems such as homogeneity, tokenism, and stereotyping make it difficult for players to find a variety of believable, meaningful characters that reflect themselves.
But the definition of what actually constitutes “good” representation can be nebulous. So I set out to question those to whom it matters, asking what they considered good representation to be and for examples that they personally considered positive depictions of marginalised people.
It is worth noting that one of the key messages from survey respondents was that representation is only effective in aggregate. We need a wider variety of people represented in games, of various genders, sexualities, races, ages, abilities, appearances, and more, and they need to be present often. Until this is achieved, other issues that were raised, such as stereotypes and tokenism, will be exacerbated, since any one character from a marginalised group cannot demonstrate the variety found within every one of these groups in reality.
The solution here is simple; create worlds with a wide spectrum of characters, ensuring intersections between marginalised identities. Inspiration for this is all around us–it’s how real life society is, after all. Yet games often present a far more monotonous image of the world, relegating diverse characters to minor roles, if they are present at all.
This can come in many forms. Damseling female characters so that they aren’t present for much of the game has a long history stretching back to the original Mario and The Legend of Zelda games and beyond; as does having female playable characters outnumbered by male ones, such as in Borderlands, Mario Party, and Left 4 Dead.
Last year, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate were praised for including trans characters, but both Krem and Ned were given minor roles rather than being prominent companions.
Dishonored 2 has several prominent female characters, but casts them in the all-too-familiar role of victims and villains
I knew right away that my first playthrough of Dishonored 2 was going to be as Emily rather than her father Corvo, the fan-favorite protagonist of the first Dishonored. For a deeper view of the story, it’s best to do at least two playthroughs, one as each potential protagonist, but for me, I knew Emily was going to be my preferred experience.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Dishonored 2 are two recent AAA releases that feature a female playable protagonist, and I hope the success of both games proves that female characters are compelling—and profitable.
Emily is a great character: skilled and deadly, with a devoted father, a heaping of responsibility in her role as empress, and with past tragedy that informs her present. If you’ve played Dishonored, it’s a gratifying paradigm shift to go from seeing Emily as a child and a moral gauge to an adult with agency and depth. She is very much a whole person.
Throughout the game, you have the choice to take down targets nonlethally—and taking the lethal option increases chaos. If you’re a player who finds the assassination/murdery aspects of stealth games distasteful, or you want to give yourself (a lot) more of a challenge, the game does not increase its chaos level for nonlethal takedowns.
Chaos destabilizes the world and has a discernible effect on dialog options, and ultimately the ending. I’m just not patient enough to play nonlethally. I made my choices and lived with them, but Emily does take on a darker cast if she’s murdering people left and right, not to mention the game’s outcome if one plays with high chaos (hint: it’s not great).
Still, she’s fighting for good things—taking back her throne from a dangerous usurper, finding a serial killer, rescuing her imprisoned father and others—and I never felt as though I were being asked to relate to a perspective that I found especially distasteful. Emily’s protecting her own, and most people find that noble.
Especially on mobile, we need games to be playtested by people who aren’t gamers.
Recently, Brie Code, a 14-year veteran of the gaming industry, issued a clarion call to game developers and gamers everywhere.
In her tour de force piece, she posited that all video games are boring and asked: what if everything developers know is wrong?
It’s a compelling question and one worthy of further thought and analysis. In short, Code wrote that because games are made by a mostly homogenous group of people in terms of race, gender and, critically, their own status as longtime gamers, what ends up being created is unappealing to most people who have never played games or aren’t currently interested in them.
To wit:
“When my friends talk about why they don’t like video games, they are talking about three things. The most important thing is that they think video games lack depth. They say things like, “Unlike books/films/podcasts, with video games I don’t learn anything or change as a person”. Secondly, on a surface level, they are also often just flat out repulsed by video games. Few women, for example, are going to play a video game with terrible portrayals of women. They say things like “they insult me/my demographic.” And thirdly, they don’t find their own cultural references or interests in video games. They say things like “they ignore me”, and “I’m failing at things I didn’t care about in the first place.”
Other things they just really don’t care about: Realistic graphics. Action.
This last one in particular is something we have talked about a lot on Unconsoleable. Because we are primarily mobile gamers, the obsession with photorealistic graphics is genuinely foreign to us. Having grown up during the NES era, we truly don’t grok why people need fancy graphics.
Okay. That isn’t entirely true. We do get it, but the obsession with graphics and other similar things is one we simply don’t relate to. And why? Because so many more issues are of greater importance to us. Gameplay. Accessibility. Not being brutally punished for not doing well. And yes, representation of marginalized groups like women and people of color. These are the the things that matter to us and they are what matter to all the “non-gamer” friends and family members Code talked about in her piece.
Amanda Jean and Cora Walker discuss why every female character in Overwatch is a terrifying and beautiful snowflake.
From the reams of Overwatch fan fiction and art created–not to mention the unofficial Overwatch dating sim in development–it’s clear that players are more than a little obsessed with the characters in Blizzard’s popular first-person shooter.
To explore this phenomenon, two of remeshed’s resident bisexual contributors, Cora Walker and Amanda Jean, set out to explore the appeal of Overwatch’s characters, starting with the women–who are all scientifically confirmed to be 100% girlfriend material. They discuss the characters wildly different personalities, strengths, and varieties of hotness, from Mei’s cute glasses to Mercy’s moral complexity to Symmetra’s ribbon dance.
Not convinced of a particular character’s romantic appeal? Let them persuade you.
Pharah
Amanda: The one thing I know for sure about Pharah is that she takes her job seriously. You have McCree the LARPing cowboy and Tracer having a grand time, and meanwhile there’s Pharah, who’s like “I will nuke you from orbit”. Whenever I hear “Justice rains from above”, I pee a little. Her face is great, but she’s more terrifying than beautiful to me.
Cora: I really dig Pharah. I have a lot of feelings about how much I want to see her in a suit. I also think she walks the line between butch and femme in a really interesting way.
Amanda: They have five women of color, and I’m like, “Please don’t put them all in fetishy outfits and in the Support class”, and Pharah’s Offense in impenetrable armor.
Cora: She’s literally a fighter jet. Not just a fighter pilot, but a fighter jet. A sexy fighter jet.
I think the other thing that’s really cool to me about Pharah personality-wise is her commitment to her duty, to her command. I hope to see more of her relationship with Ana, because I think there’s a lot of great potential there.
Pharah should be your girlfriend if: You’re a little too into Transformers or being stepped on.
As the date of Donald J. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 as President of the United States, many people are feeling helpless, afraid and despondent. They fear for their rights and for the future of America, including the potentially devastating possibility that President-elect Trump and his future Vice President Mike Pence will go after the funding of Planned Parenthood, which offers high-quality, affordable healthcare to so many men and women.
One gamer, Lindsey Latiolais, is attempting to do her part to try to counter that by organizing a 24-hour live-stream charity event for inauguration weekend. All of the money raised will be donated directly to Planned Parenthood.
I talked with her a bit about her motivations for organizing the live-stream.
“The primary purpose of the event is to keep the momentum going. I don’t want to lose the energy and the drive for change we’ve got going now. I also want to be able to channel some of that energy into specific action, especially for people who can’t give money directly or, like me, who feel that giving money isn’t enough.”
Classic RPGs like Hyperlight Drifter, Ember, and Song of the Deep extract pure pleasure from the retro game formula.
If I were trying to explain to an outsider the particular genius and downfall of the video game industry, the best metaphor might well be the mind of a four-year-old. Sometimes that fertile little brain will exercise combinatorial creativity to soar imaginatively, making proud parents coo in wonder and delight.
And sometimes it will demand to rewatch the same Doc McStuffins episode twenty times a day.
In the AAA realm, there are not many genuinely new releases each year, but rather franchises that continue to iterate. This year we’ve seen Uncharted 4, Dark Souls 3, Civilization VI, Gears of War 4, more Doom…
And indie developers often aren’t doing much better.
Because for every Firewatch that reminds us of how games can be good play and good storytelling, there are ten management/strategy sims that are essentially the same games with different skins, fifteen new space strategy games, a score of zombie games, thirty adventure games about the apocalypse and/or its dystopic aftermath, a hundred survival games, and probably yet another hundred and fifty zombie apocalypse survival sims.
Given all the things it is possible to do in games, this sameness can feel both exhausting and bewildering. You had enough money to make a game and apocalypse survival really felt like the freshest thing you could do with it?
Kid, I don’t want to watch Doc McStuffins again.
That’s why retro-style games can feel so appealing, like putting on a pair of favorite slippers or popping in an old Katherine Hepburn movie. You know there’s nothing new here, that’s not even the point of it. The point is to escape out of the repetitive tics of our current moment back into a simpler time.
