GDC 2013: BioWare's David Gaider asks, "How about we just decide how not to repel women?" Dragon Age Senior Writer David Gaider gave a talk at GDC yesterday titled "Sex in Video Games.
" It wasn't about "boobies and penises," as Gaider jokingly put it, but about how sex and gender are portrayed in games, and why the industry should take responsibility for the messages it sends. His conclusion is that the industry, at the very least, needs to stop actively repelling women and minorities, and is responsible for setting a tone which condones sexism. Gaider began by criticizing some of the early decisions he made while working on romance options—he started with Baldur's Gate II, so he's had a lot of experience. "We censored ourselves," said Gaider, chastising the studio for initial trepidation over the idea of including same-sex relationships. Since then, he says BioWare has learned how its choices impact players. "Are we still marketing our games primarily to that 18 to 25 [male] demographic?
" Pickup Artist. Girls and Videogames by =EleyonArt on deviantART. “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley — A Dribble of Ink. I’m going to tell you a story about llamas.
It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they eat their young if not raised properly; and how, at the end of their lives, they hurl themselves – lemming-like- over cliffs to drown in the surging sea. They are, at heart, sea creatures, birthed from the sea, married to it like the fishing people who make their livelihood there. Every story you hear about llamas is the same. You see it in books: the poor doomed baby llama getting chomped up by its intemperate parent. On television: the massive tide of scaly llamas falling in a great, majestic herd into the sea below. Because you’ve seen this story so many times, because you already know the nature and history of llamas, it sometimes shocks you, of course, to see a llama outside of these media spaces. Women Are Bitches. “Women are bitches,” says a young man as he sits down.
Apparently a woman at the bar wouldn’t give him her number. He’s talking to the man sitting on his left in spite of the fact that I am sitting two feet to his right and at the same table. I’ve spent the last couple months in the company of writers, mostly poets, mostly men. I am growing weary. The group I hang with is large and fluid—I’m not naming names, not pointing fingers, I like these people—and yet an issue I cannot ignore has begun to emerge: when it comes to many of the men in the company, mid-thirties and younger, making conversation, even with women present (older, younger, students, professionals, I’m a grandmother for Christ’s sake), the topics frequently revolve around who is sleeping with whom, which female is more fuckable, which poop or dog-cum reference is the funniest, and what is the latest text from “the Korean girlfriend.” My personal issues with some male colleagues have been slightly different. Double X Science - Science. It's the new black.
(and vulva, too!) By Jenny Morber Do you secretly suspect that your vagina is above average? It may be, but how would you know? Though ladies share a lot, one thing that we tend to keep to ourselves is the appearance of our female anatomy. (Which we hardly ever see anyway. Before we dig in, let’s take a minute to define some terms. Vulva denotes the external female genitals – the lady parts that you see when you stand naked in front of a mirror. So, are you normal? The Vagina In 1991 a group of three researchers published a paper that described a method for casting a mold of the vagina using material more commonly used to make dental impressions. And if you are thinking that maybe you really ARE above average because you have evidence that a seven inch penis can fit in yours, please remember that these studies are performed on women who are not sexually aroused. Of course, molds don’t always perfectly capture the likeness of the intended object.