Vanessa Thorpe, The Guardian:

[Björk’s] initiative, funded by the Nordic Council, is designed to be non-academic and has already been used in an informal way in Iceland. In an interview with the Observer magazine to be published next week , she said the programme had been “really popular with kids who have ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] or dyslexia” because it gets away from the classroom-bound, traditional nature of the Icelandic curriculum. “Unfortunately, it means we have to sit down and write a curriculum, and that’s a contradiction.”

Biophilia was such a brave and ambitious project ( I expect nothing less of Björk). Stellar news.

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.