On the E3 show floor, the only women I see in skimpy outfits are fans who have decided to dress as characters - not models paid to attract men to a booth. Opening this show up to the general public, as they did for the first time last year, has made the clientele at E3 look a lot more like the gaming community in the US where women make up 45% of players.
Female leads are everywhere on the show floor this year - including the original female lead, Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, who has been far more realistically-proportioned of late. The new title is playable here, and as you load up the game, the developers display a short passage of text.
“Shadow of the Tomb Raider was created by a diverse and talented team comprised of multiple genders, backgrounds, ethnicities, religious beliefs, and personalities,” it reads. “No matter where you come from or who you are, allow us to be the first to say: Welcome to Shadow of the Tomb Raider.”
What’s of note here is that these games have moved beyond tokenism, with publishers instead taking the view that angering a small section of the gaming community is a price worth paying in order to better reflect the rest. Checking in with what’s left of the Gamergate movement these days finds little discussion about “ethics in games journalism”. As I leave Los Angeles, with another E3 behind us, it’s clear that the Gamergate way of thinking has lost. The industry has stepped up - and video games will be all the better for it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44504344
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