Last week, in the chaos around the total meltdown of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developer 38 Studios, one line stood out.
The Nival-helmed strategy game Prime World will encourage you to stick with your own gender by giving discounts to men who buy male characters and women who buy female characters.
Apparently, it’s OK to make fun of sexual harassment in the fighting games community. That’s what happened last night, as one of the biggest fighting game streaming broadcasts mocked the controversy that followed an episode of Capcom’s “Cross Assault” web series.
Get some popcorn and/or a cup of tea. This is some good late night reading.
When is a game being sexist? When is a game not being sexist? They’re tricky topics to wade through with words.
The latest Call of Duty‘s out today and there’s going to be lots of trash talk and cuss words among the many fans who’ll be cutting class, calling in sick and otherwise shirking their duties to play the latest entry in Activision’s best -selling FPS series. But, as Jenny Haniver can attest, there’s a special kind of trash talk reserved for female players. It’s filled with casual sexism, vulgar slurs and an angry dismissiveness of any skills a woman playing an online game might show.
