It should be obvious to anyone who watches the news that, at least in the US, when it comes to how the public at large handles depictions of gratuitous violence or gratuitous sex, reactions usually vary wildly. We're used to violence on movies and television shows, to say nothing of the perpetual sport we as gamers partake in through gunning down criminals and generic "bad guys" through the course of any FPS or action game. We're "desensitized" to this, at least when our impetus is killing enemies in the name of a greater good, and most people don't really balk unless said killing is exceptionally graphic and excessive.

After reading a review of The Void that accused the game of being sexist against women, I decided to dig further and explain why I feel such a comment is way off the mark. Any players drawn to the game by the promise of virtual characters would be disappointed in just how non-sexual the game actually is, and the realization that all the nudity has a point. Warning, there's a lot of NSFW content herein.

NaNoWriMo has been an event that has intrigued me for a few years now. I've often thought of doing it but never actually committed the "thinking" into "doing," despite seeing it crop up every year in my friends' status updates on various social networking services. I admit to a certain level of elitism preventing me from getting involved, as well: NaNoWriMo has always seemed like an interesting idea, but in practice I always come off feeling that it's the sort of deal bored housewives do to make themselves seem more interesting– "I'm a novelist," etc. No, dear, you watch Oprah.

Yesterday both Joystiq and Kotaku covered the release of a new academically-approved public survey soliciting opinions from LGBT and heterosexual gamers about what they look for in video games. The survey itself didn't impress me much, personally, but it's a good jumping-off point to examine the sort of outrage anything like this generates in heterosexual-dominated gaming circles.

Somewhere around the third or forth character I created in Champions Online I realized I just really didn't care about the Qularr invasion.
There I was bouncing about with super powers in a gorgeous environment, but although the landscape was visually engrossing, try as I might I couldn't get attached to the conflicts on any [...]

Kotaku has an extremely thought-provoking op-ed piece up about the representation of minorities in video games. While they don't mention LGBT characters (disappointingly) as well, the parallels they draw can easily be applied to our community too. There's a lot to be made about the lack of LGBT characters in video games, and when they [...]

September has seen the launch of two updates to the "rhythm game" genre: The Beatles: RockBand and Guitar Hero 5. While both have so far received high praise from reviewers, it's the latter title that's attracting controversy over the inclusion of late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain as a playable character. While The Beatles [...]