Tracey Lien, Polygon:

[Takashi] Tezuka told Polygon the people on the tools team typically don’t design video game courses — they only build the tools for Nintendo’s game designers to use. In this particular instance, the tools team was working on a Mario course editing tool when they decided to pitch it to Tezuka as a standalone game.

The Wii U GamePad + TV is effectively a gigantic Nintendo DS. Nintendo found success in the interactive second screen experience of the DS. Mario Maker seems like a great way to push the GamePad. Rather than pushing a passive off-screen experience, taking a note from the DS is a fantastic idea.

Aside from unboxing my Wii U, I had completely glossed over the GamePad stylus.

Scott Benson, animator of Night in the Woods, as quoted by Polygon:

I think working with animal characters, which is something I’ve done in animation work for years, you can identify with it a bit better. If we had made Mae a really specific person with a specific ethnicity and weight, and all this different stuff…

I think a lot of people can see themselves in Mae. If we were hyper-specific with our humanoid characters, it becomes more and more exclusive. There is something really inclusive about more abstracted humans.

When people draw fan art of Mae, everyone makes her look different. They make her look like themselves. That’s exactly what we want.

I had a lot of trouble writing Splatoon. I’m still not sure it delivers the intended message, or is any good for that matter.

I started with the nugget that games can simply be games, ignoring the fact that the slight variance in asexual character design could be implied as male or female. This thought led me down a rabbit hole. If gender can be construed, what about skin tone, ethnicity, sexuality, political ideals, spirituality? Where does it stop?Humanoid character design, however slight, is a delicate thing.

Elisa Melendez writing for Polygon:

When I look at Ubisoft’s recent remarks, I can’t even feel anger anymore, just dismay and disappointment. I hoped I could enjoy those same feelings of seeing a version of my gender identity, in co-op, with my husband, a French Lilith and Roland of sorts, overthrowing the monarchy one hidden blade at a time. Knowing just how close they came, and the women they had before them, including in their multiplayer outings, is no salve to the wound. It’s salt.

But, then, I remember Nisha and Athena, Val and Maggie, Fiona, Yvette, and Sasha, and the hunter and speeder. I will still probably play Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and I will more than likely love it. But maybe not as much as I know I could. That doesn’t take away from the fact I spent an entire day at E3 playing different kinds of video games as women characters, and in some cases women of color.

Great perspective on a side of E3 we unfortunately aren’t hearing more about.

Photo via Polygon.

This is why I write.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L54s2m1dPs

Paul Tassi, excerpt from Fanboy Wars:

But as the industry matured, game makers started creating characters players cared about. Plots were contrived that could actually hold gamers’ attention. Players openly wept when Cloud’s beloved Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII. They gasped in disbelief during the finale of Star Wars: The Old Republic when it was revealed that the character they controlled was a villain the whole time.

Much of this was accomplished with rudimentary pixels and polygons, without anything approaching realistic graphics, the often purely text-based dialogue echoing the silent films of the ‘20s. Over the last decade, an explosion in gaming technology has allowed games to become almost photorealistic. Characters are sharply drawn, with professional voice actors inhabiting the speaking roles. Scripts take years to write, and stories can take a decade or more to be told over a series of games with three or more installments.

When the developers pull off these feats, games can become a transformative storytelling experience. Games actively put the player in the main character’s shoes, rather than forcing him or her to exist as a passive observer with no control over the protagonist’s actions.

E3 presented a stark difference between the photorealistic, mature titles presented by Microsoft and Sony contrasted against Nintendo’s doubling-down of a vibrant, cartoony atheistic. After listening to Jeff Cannata, Jeff Mattas and Matthew Burnside damn near wax-poetic about Splatoon on the latest episode of DLC (along with the success of Mario Kart 8), I am reminded that playful, non-narrative experiences are just as important as photorealistic, “transformative storytelling experiences.”

Splatoon as a playful territory shooter comes off as a hyper-realization of the Super Soaker wars I had growing up. Though the characters appear to be asexual, some inference can be made by stereotypically established gender attributes. This comes off as clever, well-thought art direction, allowing those who want to attribute gender to do so while others can be indifferent. Either way, the impact for children (likely the target audience) is immeasurable. The no-brainer act of allowing a child to conquer a map in the gender or appearance that best represents them is a simple way to reinforce a positive message about misguided gender dominance. Regardless of the chosen gender, everyone is on equal footing and contributing to a common goal. Only by allowing gender choice can that message be sent.

Online multiplayer carries a message that opposing virtual characters are exactly representative of the person on the other side. In reality, for all intents and purposes, gender is a near inescapable implication we carry with us, from simple Super Soaker wars to political war rooms. In virtual worlds (especially online), our gender is implied by the avatar we choose. Without choice, we all become the same (likely male) individual.