Last weekend’s Kiev Major crowned OG as a four-time Majors winner and celebrated the CIS region’s Dota 2 history. After the closing ceremony, however, the last thing viewers saw was an unexplained montage of women simply watching the matches. Since then, that footage has been critiqued by some of the community for…
With the release of Overwatch’s holiday comic, gamers saw the game’s first openly gay character: Tracer. Many of us here at Kotaku, an Overwatch fansite, took time to sit down and reflect on how Blizzard has treated the topic of diversity in our favorite team based shooter.
The tech industry doesn’t just have a diversity problem. It has a results problem. Major tech companies pour millions of dollars into recruiting, but there remain significant, quantifiable discrepancies—in workforce diversity, in gender equity among people of color, and in representation among top leadership. Even the…
Black girls are often forgotten by the gaming industry, and Pokémon Go is no different.
According to video games, the only thing I'm interested in—when I'm not being lazy—is sunshine, fun and carefree living. In the world of video games, this is the stereotypical Caribbean person.
Not just one old person. A few of them. Not just one shade of brown person but lighter and darker tones. Not just able-bodied people. People in wheelchairs, too.
If anyone can make indie games, then where are the Black and Latino people? Developer Shawn Allen—one of the relative few people of color independently spearheading the creation of their own games—gave a talk at New York University's Game Center that looks at the dearth of diversity in the video game creator talent…
Ubiquitous webcomic Penny Arcade's taken some rather poor stances on diversity in the past, leading some people (myself included) to avoid PAX altogether for the time being. However, PA is at least attempting to clean up its act, starting with a "Diversity Lounge" that debuted at PAX East. But did it help? Or did it…
PAX is a behemoth. A monolith. It's nearly outgrown the ubiquitous webcomic that spawned it. It's an incredibly popular event, where tens of thousands of video game fans come together to celebrate their favorite pastime. But I think the convention still has a lot more growing to do, and in some ways is growing in the…
Recently there has been a lot of discussions about the need for diversity in video games. There has been a lot of attention given to the call for inclusion of more female characters, of more gay and lesbian characters, and more characters of racial minorities. Today I'm here to talk about another group that is often…
The organisers of the Penny Arcade Expos will next year be introducing "Diversity Hubs" in an attempt to be more inclusive to attendees.
When SpyParty creator Chris Hecker says he wants his tense, psychological espionage simulation to be the most diverse game ever, he's talking triple-decker diversity.
When I traded correspondence with writer David Brothers last week, I made the argument that video games needs its equivalent to Blazing Saddles. This time, I'm saying that it could use its own version of Milestone Media, the groundbreaking comics company started by a crew of black professionals.
It's Black History Month, that time of year when people look at exceptional achievements and moments having to do with African Americans and black culture. What does that have to do with video games? Sadly, not a whole lot. There's such a paucity of black characters and creators in video games that it's difficult to…
This eloquent Kill Screen piece ruminates on why diversity should be important to the future of video games.
There are two kinds of accessibility that come up in gaming discussions. One is that understanding how a game works, or how to master it, can often be impenetrable to the newbie. But the other is that no matter how experienced a gamer is, if he or she has certain disabilities, the games can be literally almost…
Boston is my birthplace and always my home, but I haven't lived there since late 2005. So for three years and counting, when the time for PAX East comes I find myself sitting in an airport, abuzz with energy.
The advocacy publication for disabled video game enthusiasts has named Star Wars: The Old Republic its Mainstream Game of the Year, meaning it is the most widely released title that also is most accommodating of gamers who have different needs to enjoy full-featured gameplay.
Can an egg-laying dinosaur without sex organs be gay? IGN's Jack DeVries makes the case that Mario's green dinosaur steed with the prehensile tongue is "dating"-in the strange, largely irrelevant backstory that frames the series-Birdo, the pink, bow-wearing dinosaur first seen in Super Mario Bros. 2.
While it's unlikely that the White House coordinated with the makers of Grand Theft Auto, the two parties managed to make May 26, 2009 a significant date for Latinos.
