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In celebration of Bitmob's new overhaul (and the retrospective look back at my old catalog it made me do to update them all to work with the new site design) I have decided to compile my 3 articles on the subject that got me started here. Because more people should read them…because I'm awesome.
So here, in a particular order, are the articles I've written in an attempt to further the cause of girly-ness in games. In an attempt to combat the sexism inherent in a medium that sometimes seems to think it's only demographic is young to middle aged strait males. I hope gaming is ashamed of what it has done and will apologize soon.
The Curse of the Breasted Mcguffin
Gender Identity and Game Avatars
The Next Step for Gender Equality
As you may have guessed his subject has been a constant annoyance for me. In all seriousness I think these issues need more attention and action from the public at large and the modern day mentality of 'whatever sells' is undermining our development as a culture.
In order for these problems to be fixed we as gamers have to take action. Demand more of game makers and of our fellow players. "Good enough" is no longer good enough for issues of tolerance.
Game makers can't continue making the same safe things without reprimand from gamers and gamers can't keep making stupid assumptions and intolerant comments about who these games are being made for without consequences. If we are ever going to reach the point where everyone is respected as equals we can't just expect doing the same stupid things over and over again to fix the problem. This goes for other matters of demographics as well.
Regardless of if you feel like you understand a person or not, be it due to race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other form of difference that breeds intolerance, their differences are something to be taken into consideration. You are trying to make a product for a wide audience. Making it blandly safe to avoid offending immature people helps no one. You fail to attract and entertain different people and you fail to teach tolerance to the people you are attracting. Ignoring those differences is ignoring entire groups of people, and ignoring them is lessening the gaming medium as a whole.