Tracey Lien on Polygon’s Friends List podcast:

If all the games you’re playing exclude women and all the media you’re consuming excludes women, that’s going to chip away at your mind in some way. It’s going to shape your worldview in someway. I think that is potentially damaging to kids growing up playing these games but also to women who are playing them and feeling excluded. There’s really no reason for it.

In light of the recent Assassin’s Creed news, this short discussion between Lien and colleague Megan Farokhmanesh hammers at every nail in the Women in Games conversation. Lien is the writer of the No girls allowed, a must-read look back on early video game marketing and the creation of the “boys club” vacuum.

Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo America, as quoted by Polygon:

It’s one of the things I have to do with certain media, remind them, look, for us, the drive toward the holiday began a couple of weeks ago with Mario Kart 8, and that’s off to a fantastic start. For us, on a global basis, and certainly here in the United States, it’s driving hardware, which is great to see.

Sounds like I was on the right track.

Austin Wintory, Grammy-nominated composer for Journey:

It’s not a silver bullet, but any sign of progress I think can be cause for optimism. But I’m an idealist.

Wintory’s protest of the AFM Videogame Agreement here.

Naoki Yoshida, Director and Producer of Final Fantasy 14, as quoted by Polygon:

People within Eorzea will be able to pledge their eternal love and or friendship in a ceremony of eternal bonding. And this will be open to people regardless of race, creed, and gender. Two players…if they want to be together, in Eorzea, they can-through this eternal bonding ceremony.

We discussed it and we realized: within Eorzea, why should there be restrictions on who pledges their love or friendship to each other? And so we decided to go this way.

Keith Stuart, The Guardian:

A big announcement at Sony’s press conference was that the PlayStation 4 would be able to easily handle free-to-play games and that dozens are already in development. You could almost see the tumbleweed blowing across the stage. Core gamers don’t want to hear that. Core gamers, weirdly, cry for innovation then cheer loudest for old stuff they recognise. You know, when games were games and you paid once and they were yours forever.

Stuart continues:

It is no wonder Sony and Microsoft are crawling over each other to sign the indies. No wonder they’re looking at the procedurally generated space game No Man’s Sky and Capy Games’ adventure Below with awe and wonder. These are innovations they understand - they’re not about business models, they’re not about new audiences who are hard to predict, they’re about new ideas within the scope of traditional games. Indie developers are nostalgic but they have the freedom to take the mechanics forward and play with them, just as Tim schafer played with the idea of point-and-click adventures in the 1990s.