After nearly thirty years, the Pokemon franchise has created the single greatest Pokemon to ever exist. This is a Pokemon that has never seen defeat, that can only be wielded by the most dedicated trainers in existence. To even obtain this Pokemon requires a level of commitment that is completely alien to all but the most passionate, dedicated, and obsessed players in the world. I speak, of course, of the legendary Hatedisc.
Today we continue Women in Gaming Month with a brief discussion on the Queen of RPGs herself, Rieko Kodama!
What better way to kick off Women in Gaming Month than with the legacy of one of gaming's greats, Roberta Williams?
It's been three months since Lovestruck closed all operations forever, but while the loss still stings, it pays to look back at just a few examples of how well the app's stories represented LGBT+ people. This is a quick rundown of how well the app did LGBT+ Representation.
Few subjects are as touchy as the subject of defining masculinity. Societies all over the world have somewhat different ideas of what it means to be masculine, and yet they all share the same conclusion: it's shameful for a man to either lack it, or deviate from it. In gaming, few characters embody the dilemma of masculinity as much as Kanji, from Persona 4.
This month of June we're celebrating Pride with what I like to call Gayming Month, where we will take a good look at the highs and lows of LGBT+ representation in gaming! And we're kicking it with that infamous shooter series, Cho Aniki!
It's a story all too common these days: you're using an app on your phone, like TikTok for example, and suddenly you come across an ad for a mobile game. The game looks kind of good, you admit to yourself, if a little too easy. Let's say it's a puzzle game, and the ad shows a ridiculously easy puzzle, like matching shapes to their shadows. THEN the person playing the game in the ad keeps making mistake after mistake, like trying to match the X shape with the circular shadow. Why is this? Why not show off GOOD gameplay instead?
As I was browsing one of my favorite subreddits today (r/JRPG) I stumbled upon a thread discussing sexualization in JRPG's and how off-putting the content can be to some gamers, particularly female gamers as well as gamers who aren't attracted to women. Let's be completely honest; very many JRPG's are designed with a teenage male audience in mind, which means we're gonna be seeing a LOT of female characters in rather skimpy and impractical outfits that show off highly idealized figures. Is this a good or a bad thing?
We continue Black People in Gaming month with a brief appreciation post for Muriel Tramis, the first black female game developer! But to simply call her that is a disservice to what can only be called an extraordinary career for an extraordinary game developer...
The grind: every RPG aficionado is familiar with the term, and there's nary a single player who doesn't have a story related to grinding. For the two or three of you unfamiliar with the term, grinding is when you spend a long time gaining experience points and gold so you can be strong enough to pass through a certain part of the game. These days, it's rarer for Modern RPG's to force the plater to grind, but pop in an NES RPG and suddenly it's grindsville. Why is that?
Never in my life did I look forward to a game as much as I did the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. When I FINALLY got it, I was overjoyed. Then, a scant few weeks later, I was putting it down and never picking it back up again. What happened?
