Archive For The “Ladygaming” Category

I Know You Have a Little Life in You Yet: Ending Mass Effect 3

By | March 26, 2012

I get a lot of comments about my writing making people cry. It used to happen here periodically, and it now happens on xoJane with an impressive regularity. I’m never sure how to respond. Though I can honestly say that I never set out with that purpose in mind, I take this as the highest […]

Read more »

Male games for male gamers: A case study

By | July 23, 2011

Several of you have emailed me about this today, so here you go. Some dudes are planning a LAN party in Austin, TX to coincide with the release of Battlefield 3. Pretty much every FPS gamer I know is super-psyched for this title, and honestly, the LAN party in question sounds pretty boss. Until you […]

Read more »

Probe away! Mining for queerness in Mass Effect 1 & 2

By | June 26, 2011

[Note: This is a long, long, long post that delves deeply into gender and sexuality as presented in the Mass Effect video games, derived from the stuff I cut out of my prior post on playing Shepard as a woman of color. I think I can safely say I am pretty much done writing about […]

Read more »

Shepard ain’t white: Playing with race and gender in Mass Effect

By | June 21, 2011

Back when I used to play the MMOs, the game characters I created always tended to look the same — pale-skinned, vibrant-haired, brightly-hued eyes. I am not sure why; I assume it was aspirational. However, when EverQuest 2 rolled around, I went a different way and impulsively created a heavy-set female-identifying character who was also […]

Read more »

You bitches are expensive! (Or, Brink has a lady problem)

By | May 9, 2011

So! Brink is a shooty video game coming out tomorrow. I only know this because my husband is quite excited about it, and obviously my vagina acts as a barrier to my enjoying shooty video games. At least, that’s what a surprising number of big-name video game developers seem to think. It’s true that I’m […]

Read more »

This one is for the LADIES: Bayonetta vs. School 26

By | April 25, 2011

Back in March, the disappointing (and at times enraging) PAX East panel on “female characters” started out by sinking itself hip-deep in the question of whether it’s “okay” for female characters to be “sexy”, and it only seemed to leave that mire a few times in order to discuss how annoying certain female characters are. […]

Read more »

Walking (very, very slowly) in Fatworld

By | March 17, 2011

Fatworld was released by Persuasive Games waaaaay back in 2007, and funded by the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting—better known to you and me as PBS. There was some brief conversation about it in the fat blogosphere at the time, so when I ran across it again recently, entirely by accident, it was not unfamiliar […]

Read more »

On taking space/making space (Or, Why I am going to PAX)

By | March 10, 2011

I know a great many people have chosen not to attend PAX East this year, owing to recent events (i.e. because dickwolves), for a number of personal reasons. Some feel as though the space will be unavoidably anxiety-inducing. Some feel as though the event is now complicit in upholding cultural forces that they abhor. For […]

Read more »

Real Live Hot Gamer Chix!: On female stereotyping in geek/gamer culture

By | February 15, 2011

This evening, I ran across an article on lady gamers that got me peroclating: Play girls: The life of a female gamer in Chicago. In the course of discussing a local gamer group, the author takes the popular route of trying to frame female geekery as an either/or situation — you can be in favor […]

Read more »

On dealing with dudes: An open letter to Penny Arcade

By | February 4, 2011

Gentlemen, I read your webcomic. I’ve attended PAXs both East and Prime. I admire Child’s Play, your excellent charity organization. Calling myself a “fan” would probably be an overstatement, but I generally enjoy your work and have had little reason for second thoughts until recently. I will not re-hash the series of events here — […]

Read more »