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The question was brought up recently in the Mother Jones article “Why It Sucks to Be a Woman in the Video Game Industry” by Interactive Editor Tasneem Raja.

Raja's article examines the sexism women deal with in the gaming industry from sexual harassment and disparity in the compensation structure to having female developers go unacknowledged for their accomplishments. 

One could just brush all that off as some liberal publication trying to preach about feminist ideology. Unfortunately, Raja is not the first writer to bring up the misogynistic aspect of video game culture.

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Many questions that children ask can leave parents feeling dumbfounded, embarrassed, and awkward as they attempt to provide an appropriate explanation for mature or complex topics. Equally so, a child of the 80's and 90's asking “Where do games come from?” would have most parents scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how the mystical cartridges actually come about.

As an adult with a far better understanding of the process of creating video games, I've taken it upon myself to discover the true origins of the key titles that defined my youth. This doesn't simply mean creating a list of development studios and teams, I want to learn about the individual people and individual minds from which these important pieces of my own personal history were born, as well as what they went on to do, and where they are today.

Although such a task would have been nearly impossible for my parents in the days before the internet, my access to modern online social media and networking makes it ridiculously easy. However, a minority of bitter gamers who take the ability to interact directly with developers for granted may ruin it for us all.

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This creative short film has everything you'd want in a classic Legend of Zelda adventure, like sword fighting, traveling, a showdown with Ganon, and the rescue of a princess. The big difference is that this story forsakes pixel and polygons for simple, scanned drawings animated over multiple Apple product screens.

FinalCutKing, a group that focuses on creating tutorial videos for the Final Cut video editing software, is responsible for this fun short, which you can watch after the break.

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You could say I’m a bit perturbed. After watching one of the most recent videos from the team at Extra Credits (this one, which I wholly recommend watching), I’m beginning to worry to about the lack of preservation in our industry.

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For his keynote speech at Gamercamp in Toronto, game developer Shawn McGrath gave the floor to his Twitter followers, who overwhelmingly asked about the technology that went into his psychedelic abstract shooter Dyad for the PlayStation 3. But time ran out before he could circle back to the topic he really wanted to tackle: how storylines in video games are "a worthless endeavour."

That's an especially controversial thesis considering that many of the discussions at Gamercamp centered about elevating narratives in games.

I spoke with McGrath after his talk, and it became clear that his potentially controversial take was really an outright rebuttal. McGrath doesn't believe traditional narratives have any place in gaming.

Jonathan Ore: You mentioned that linear narratives aren’t exactly your thing. Could you talk about that?

Shawn McGrath: I think linear story and interactive anything are completely diametrically opposed. They make no sense together at all, and any attempt to put storylines in games in any traditional sense is completely idiotic.

Mass Effect attempted it, and people praise it. It’s horrible. It’s horrible because the choices that you make are so meaningless. People say, “Oh, but it’s getting to a point where the whole galaxy is going to change based on your decisions,” and I say, no, that’s impossible. That’s an NP-hard problem. That’s a computer science problem where the problem is not computable. So attempting that is a worthless endeavor. Games are really fucking awesome. We can tell stories through entirely interactive ways instead, with no text.

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Over the past few months, illustrator Laura Bifano has been running a side project through Tumblr in which Pokéfans describe their favorite pocket monster, and the artist will draw it based on what she may or may not remember. She claims not to have seen a Pokémon since she was 12, so the accuracy of the final piece depends entirely on her own recollection and the strength of the original description.

For example, you can see her take on Lickitung above, along with the official art by original artist Ken Sugimori. The fan request read:

Would you mind illustrating the Pokemon, Lickitung for me, please? Lickitungs are chubby with a round shaped head w/ small black beady eyes and rounded shaped belly w/ yellow semicircular markings and has stubby arms. It has a thick, tail - that’s about the same size of it’s body mass. But the most important feature of the Lickitung, is it’s long, large, tongue that’s always hanging out of it’s mouth and almost over it’s belly. It’s also bipedal. Thank you!

You can check out a couple more examples after the break, or you can head over to the Tumblr page to see the lot of them.

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For a lot of us, games supply the feeling and the emotion of conquering problems. Franchises like Grand Theft Auto and The Legend of Zelda have an explorative progression, providing escapism just like movies, books, art, vacations, and even cartoons.

So, what happens when a game or movie features the feeling of loneliness? Most titles that take this approach are more survival horror in nature, and that, for me, takes away from the notion of being truly on your own. Yes, you are by yourself, but somehow, you come into contact with other survivors. That brings more relief, which destroys the implied purpose.

See, loneliness isn’t about being solitary in an environment and looking for someone or something. It’s a mindset that can fill you with defeat. Knowing that, the stories we take our characters through in a game could force us into a state of loneliness.

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DJ Cutman pays homage to Nintendo’s latest console with his instrumental album Wii U Grooves. This self-described “lifelong fan” of the Big N samples various songs from the new console’s games and operating system and flips them into a bunch of different music styles. Regardless of what you think about the Wii U, I think we can all agree that these remixes are pretty chill. 

DJ Cutman put together some spacey hip hop, chillwave (more laid-back beats), bouncy 8-bit chiptunes, and even a couple of reggaeton tracks. I really appreciate all the cute titles -- my favorites being “Remain Calm & Adjust Your Settings” and “Ask Your Parents for Permission.” The actual melodies in the latter don’t sound anywhere near as mature as the name suggests. 

Some of the rhythms get a little repetitive, but I can’t really blame the producer since the source music is intended to play in the background while players explore the Wii U’s games and applications. If you dig Wii U Grooves, you can name your own price to download a copy from DJ Cutman’s Bandcamp profile.  

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Silent Hill: Revelation appears to have little understanding of what made its source material compelling enough to warrant a cinematic adaptation in the first place.

While the first film was far from perfect, it at least captured the forlorn isolation that pervades the best entries in the series. These games tormented players with haunting sights and, more effectively, sounds, to create locations steeped in atmosphere that were deeply unsettling. For a time.

The first two games are widely recognized as landmark titles -- both within the horror genre and video games as a medium. They both feature broken, guilt-ridden protagonists descending through a hell of their own design, populated by antagonistic manifestations of their deepest fears.

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Mega Man is one of my favorite gaming series, but even I didn't know all of the obscure facts presented in Did You Know Gaming's newest, trivia-filled episode. I certainly didn't know that Capcom was originally going to call the game The Battle Rainbow Rock Man. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Anyway, you can discover all of the interesting Blue Bomber trivia for yourself by watching the video after the break.

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In the video games industry, like any other, few dominant factors always draw in the masses and dictate popular opinion. But for every hit, an unappreciated gem flies under our radars.

It’s a shame, really, because many of these games are true masterpieces. They do not deserve to go unnoticed. So how do these games fail to acheive such acclaim?

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