If you missed it, Roc Upchurch was removed from the Image Comics family following domestic abuse charges against his wife. Kurtis Wiebe (writer for Rat Queens) announced shortly after the news broke that Rat Queens would continue and that they were looking for a new artist to take over for Roc. This morning, Image broke Read more…
We have hit a critical period in the online gaming community, which happens to overlap with a similar discussion going on within the internet community and even the world at large. That conversation is about the rights of female gamers and members of online communities to feel safe and comfortable with their fellow gamers. We have increasingly seen “battle lines” drawn, with videos such as the ones by Anita Sarkeesian calling for equal rights to be then viciously attacked online; with female celebrities accounts broken into and nude photos released; and finally with the Emma Watson United Nations address last week calling for men and women to stand up for equality. There has been no better time to examine where we are and where we would like to see our community go. There is a vocal minority of men online who are fighting these changes, and who are feeling attacked in turn, and we need to understand that we are in this together, regardless of sex, and together we can improve and grow this hobby.
“…if not now, then when?”, asked Emma Watson, in a speech she gave at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City last Saturday, where she was introducing a UN campaign called HeForShe - “A Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality.” Surely, the quote is one that many of us have heard in our lives, one that is meant to foster courage in the face of fear and uncertainty, to prompt a feeling of personal responsibility when presented with an imposing task. Watson, the UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador, introduced the quote near the end of her speech, when she admitted that she had been quite nervous prior to her speech.
And why shouldn’t she be nervous?
When news first broke of the massive amounts of celebrity nude photos leaked, a friend made an interesting point to me:
If this had happened even just a few years ago, all that would have happened is everyone would have brushed it off. Some would have snached up tabloids in line at the grocery store and really no one would have thought twice about it. Now we’re discussing violation of privacy and women’s rights.
What’s changed?
Recently, video games had a really, really tough week.
Who knew that throwing trees could save children?
But it can, in Spry Fox’s newest game The Road Not Taken.
The Road Not Taken is a game by the previously mentioned Seattle, WA game company – the same ones who made Triple Town. Although it has more of a story line, this game is very similar to Triple Town at it’s core in it’s match-3 style combination-based gameplay.
The story follows a mysterious traveller who comes through a town. The town’s livelihood is through berry picking and they do so with their children. However, their children are getting lost out in the woods, and it is my job as the mysterious traveler to venture into the woods and reunite them with their parents.
I was checking all my social media during my lunch today, ’cause that is what you do in 2014 and I came across this in my News Feed.
Why would we even be surprised anymore?
And I got mad. Not just irritated, or slightly perturbed, but enraged.
What’s up with Pinny Arcade Pins?
Not much – or at least I thought so, at first.
Let’s start at the beginning. Penny Arcade Pins are a collectable, tradable item concocted by the creators of PAX itself after Gabe (Mike Krahulik) discovered the joy of Disney Pin Trading. They’re mostly all done in a similar style-a small metallic pin with a border, sporting the artwork of a video game, person (Penny arcade staff members, developers), random charactertures or the Gabe and Tycho themselves in some sort of weird fashion (this year, 80’s Gabe and Tycho).
So what’s the big deal?
Well, this is embarrassing… it turns out that I and the majority of the web pegging YouTube/Google as the probable buyer of Twitch.tv were perhaps a tad premature. Instead, a surprise offer from Amazon came from out of the blue, and they have been officially confirmed by Emmet Shear, CEO of Twitch, as having purchased the company for a cool $970 million . Surprise!
Russ Frushtick, one of my favorite writers at Polygon, a gaming website, has recently announced he’s leaving. In honor of that, here is what you should be listening to today: The Besties.
The Besties is a podcast put on by the Polygon network – it stars Polygon editors Justin Mcelroy and Chris Plante, and writers Griffin Mcelroy and Russ Frushtick.
They are, as they put it in every show, 4 best friends who pit their favorite games against each other in a battle royal for the best game of the week, month, year (although the format has changed somewhat in the later episodes).