GYGO: IGDA Allegedly Mishandles Conduct Complaints

GYGO: IGDA Allegedly Mishandles Conduct Complaints

Content note: mentions of harassment and abuse, toxic workplace environments, queerphobia and transphobia.

Welcome back to Get Your Game On! My name is Zainabb and it’s been A Week. While I’m dealing with grief, mega-fatigue, and depression, this week’s gaming news almost feels lighthearted even though we’re still dealing with harassment and abuse in the industry, fuckin’ NFTs, and a reminder that our global queer fam continues to fight against oppression!

Please do at least one nice thing for yourself today and get some fresh air, even if it’s just by opening a window for five minutes. (more…)

GYGO: IGDA Allegedly Mishandles Conduct Complaints

GYGO: Support Queer, Trans, and Indigenous People This Pride Month

(Content warning: mentions of racism, queer- and transphobia, antisemitism, including one queerphobic slur in the Quantic Dream section and mention of queerphobic, racist violence in the Pride Month bundles section.)

Hello and welcome to Get Your Game On! My name is Zainabb and I will always laugh at David Cage’s tears. Check out the great bundles listed below to directly support queer, trans, and BIPOC creators this month, and keep that solidarity going all year round. Here’s this week’s gaming news.

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Greenlight This, You Cowards: Roll to Fall in Love with Dames and Dragons

Greenlight This, You Cowards: Roll to Fall in Love with Dames and Dragons

Fans of tabletop roleplaying games live in an exciting time. The TTRPG world is blossoming, and the popularity of shows like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone (TAZ) are encouraging a boom in tabletop media outside of traditional Twitch streams and podcasts. TAZ has already been adapted into a series of graphic novels drawn by the wonderful Carey Pietsch, and is now getting an animated series! At Sidequest, we’ve not been shy about our love for TTRPG podcasts, but the growing number of adaptations made us wonder how we’d like to see our favorites adapted. (more…)

June Roundtable: Pride Month

June Roundtable: Pride Month

Happy Pride Month! June is a time of celebration and contemplation, our two favorite activities here at Sidequest. This month, inspired by a tweet by Freyja Erlingsdótter, we sat down to talk about what queerness means in a gaming context. Can games be queer? What kinds of games can be queer? Find out within. (more…)

Customizable Player Characters Don’t Replace Diverse Leads

Customizable Player Characters Don’t Replace Diverse Leads

When I talk to people about the need for more female, NB, and trans playable characters in video games, I tend to get the same response: “Well, what about ‘x, y, z’ game? It lets you make your own character!” This is a complete non-answer to a very real problem, and a dismissal of my feelings and concerns. It’s saying that, because a handful of games allow me to create either a male or a female main character, I should be content that the default character on the box is the same cisgender white man in every game. It’s saying that representation doesn’t matter in games so long as I’m able to create it for myself.

This mentality shifts the responsibility from the developers to the players. Rather than encouraging game developers to expand their audience and create more diverse characters, it forgives them for their short-sightedness. “It’s okay that game developers never consider you the norm,” these respondents seem to say, “because at least they let you insert yourself.” But this ignores the fact that the game wasn’t made for me, that the world wasn’t designed with me in mind, and that every part of the game will reflect that, whether the developers intended it or not. (more…)