FemHype

Personally, I remember it like it was yesterday, BECAUSE IT WAS. Heck I have a gripe about representation in gaming scheduled for 4:30 this afternoon. But I might cancel it because Raji: An Ancient Epic is on Kickstarter right now

“Raji An Ancient Epic is an action adventure game set in ancient India. Raji, a young girl is chosen by the gods to fight against the demonic invasion of the human realm. Her destiny is to rescue her younger brother and face the demon lord Mahabalasura”

Read that again if you need to, just soak that up. And look at how beautiful

“oh but that’s just concept art the real game won’t look that good” WRONG! Go and look at the [demo playthrough on Youtube], or play the free demo and see how beautiful for yourself, you can get it on [Steam] or [itch.io] or [indiedb] RIGHT NOW.

Can’t be bothered with that? Here’s some actual screencaps.

“I prefer PoC stories told by PoC themselves” well you’re in luck friend, that’s exactly what this is.

And you can get in on this for as little as £16 (around $20). Comparable AAA titles cost $60, and even comparable Indie titles cost $30-40. That’s a steal my friends, that’s a bargain.

Raji: An Ancient Epic is live on Kickstarter until December 12 2017 9:30 PM UTC. Check it out.

We’re very excited to tell you that Before the Storm’s bonus episode “Farewell” will be releasing in early 2018 and in even more exciting news; Hannah Telle and Ashly Burch will be returning to play Max and Chloe! As you are all aware, Ashly has been working with the writing team at Deck Nine and we’re ecstatic that she will be returning to play the role of young Chloe.

Rhianna DeVries has done a fantastic job for the voice and motion capture of 16 year old Chloe so far, bringing a little bit of herself to the role, just as Ashly had in the previous game. We are forever thankful to Rhianna for the work she has put into Before the Storm and she will continue to work with us for the motion capture of young Chloe in Farewell.

Diverse Stardew Valley by notsnufffie

Haley

Emily

Robin

Demetrius 

Maru

Sebastian

Harvey

These are just a few of the ungenerous reviews the new Baldur’s Gate expansion, Siege of Dragonspear, is getting on Steam. The game has generated this response entirely because Beamdog Entertainment included a trans character in their updated material.

All they did was INCLUDED a trans character. Baldur’s Gate occupies a place at the crossroads of video gaming, tabletop gaming, and gaming nostalgia. Obviously it’s attracted the worst elements from all of these communities. It’s also meant that a friend has faced days of harassment.

I’m not asking that you buy this game—though, that couldn’t hurt. Rather, please, lend Beamdog your support, your kind words, your appreciation for helping to make gaming more inclusive, and a reminder that adding LGBTQ content to a game wins more than public hate, harassment, and toxic reviews.

(Additionally, you should absolutely check out Kathrine Cross’s words on Virtue Signalling & Trans Characters in Baldur’s Gate.)

This company’s takeaway from this experience, in 2016, cannot be that including LGBTQ content in a video game is not worth the pain. 

Your support and positivity would mean a great deal right now.  

Steam page for Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear.

Beamdog’s forum for Siege of Dragonspear.

We’ve moved our Annual Fund Raiser to Go Fund Me since IndieGoGo wasn’t very helpful and takes a month to pay out funds raised. We’ve also reduced the goal because of a couple generous donations send directly via PayPal.

New Fundraising link: https://funds.gofundme.com/dashboard/indg-annual-fundraising-drive/

This is our annual campaign to help with costs, as the non-profit part of running a non-profit means that it’s a lean, sometimes operating on a string and a hope kind of operation.

Anything you can give is appreciated and help keeps us running! 

Thank you!

Stop using extreme violence to sell your game

It’s time to step back and recognize the connotation of imagery

Bones bludgeoned with hammers. A noose wrapped tightly around a struggling woman’s neck. The blade of a knife pressed into a vulnerable stomach. The gruesome imagery Naughty Dog manages to cram into a five-minute trailer for The Last of Us Part 2 is physically uncomfortable to sit through.

The victims of the vicious assault, two women, are unnamed. It’s not clear why we’re watching two people be tortured, but we’re asked to take in the extreme violence under the assumption that we’ll be rewarded with more information for doing so. That information never comes, however, and all we’re left with is residual nausea.

A trailer is a pitch to its audience of what to expect from the full game. In the past, Naughty Dog’s trailers have captured a particular mood or suggested a compelling relationship. But here, the promise is almost exclusively gore. There’s an argument to be made that the trailer raises an enticing question — Why are these women being attacked? — but that mystery is both too familiar and too broad.

Without any context, the trailer fails to introduce (or even really tease) the story players will embark on. That is its problem.

The violence is particularly upsetting as it features the assault of women. Violent attacks on women, many times for perfunctory purposes, isn’t new. The Killing Joke saw the Joker torture Barbara Gordon in a statement that reinforced the notion that gender influences violence. The volatile imagery used in the trailer to underline the heinous acts being committed are familiar scenes to us. We’ve seen this play out in other TV shows or movies before, and in real life. 35 percent of women have experienced violence at the hands of another person in their lifetime, according to 2017 report from the United Nations.

The fact that their antagonist is a woman herself does little to undercut what this trailer is on its most blunt level: an extended sequence of brutal and unexplained violence against women being used to thrill the viewer, and ultimately, sell a video game.

With a game like The Last of Us Part 2, in which presumably there are dozens of other scenes to showcase, why pick the scene where women are being sadistically brutalized? When Naughty Dog played a gameplay trailer during E3 in 2012, people called the five minutes Joel spent tracking down hunters and annihilating them gratuitous with its violence.

Wolfenstein: “Here’s a game about killing Nazis and we don’t give a shit who gets offended and whines about that.”

Fuckin nerds:

So I’ve seen gifs and talk of a YouTube series floating around lately called “Kirkwall Coffee.” Upon clicking on the vid that was shared, I thought the person playing Fenris looked awfully familiar. And that’s because that person is the same Dorian cosplayer in brownface from last year. Who apparently is still doing so. (Original post here, plus explaining why it’s wrong, which is apparently necessary since people sure jumped the fucking gun to defend him. Also because the original original post is gone.)

And before you say it’s just the lighting, (because I am well aware that lighting can play weird tricks on skin for cameras,) here is a photo where his makeup line is showing:

‘Parleproductions’ is the guy’s personal channel in which he uploaded the “Dorian Time” videos.

This guy paints his face a darker colour to play darker skinned characters. Stop supporting him.

We’ve got passes for @GaymerX East!

So, in addition to mod cypheroftyr working with GaymerX on diversity review, we’ve collaborated with them again to get ten passes to give away. Each pass will cover admission to the convention (a $45 USD value). So, here’s what you need to do: Write us at: [email protected] with “GaymerX East Pass” in the subject line Tell us briefly why you need assistance with getting a pass to GaymerX…