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games culture

From "Fez": Gomez, the main character, has on sunglasses and a gold dollar sign around his neck, and leaps from a pixelated, grassy ground towards dollar signs in starry sky.
Issue 36 by Veve Jaffa on April 27th, 2016
The high visibility of indie success stories creates the illusion that commercial success is accessible and achievable by all, disregarding the challenges most indie developers face.
An image from REDDER, in sunset tones. The character is shown standing on a ledge. An energy cell, which the character must collect, is on a long ledge above where they stand.
Issue 33 by Veve Jaffa & Anna Anthropy on February 23rd, 2016
"I don't know if I believe in passion. Passion is the thing that lets us overlook how badly we're hurting."
A whale pictured, jumping in the sky as someone looks up at it from the end of a dock over water.
Issue 30 by Eira A. Ekre on November 24th, 2015
Game studios are now purposefully designing bad systems and mechanics, hoping that people will be willing to pay to get past the poorly-made parts of the service: when microtransactions are the sole source of income, we start to build our entire product around that model.
Logo that reads "Gaming For Everyone" with icons of a planet, rocket ship, and alien.
Issue 30 by Veve Jaffa on November 23rd, 2015
Marginalized developers suffer from an industry-wide epidemic that withholds basic income from hard-working artists for the dubious privilege of exposure. But despite popular belief, we are not in dire need of exposure, petty consolations, or a tent on the outskirts of a major industry event.
In-game screenshot; a character looks at the camera, wearing a vest and bowtie, leaning against a graphical case of bottles.
Issue 29 by Veve Jaffa on November 4th, 2015
Organizations run by primarily white, cis, straight founders train the majority of their focus on alleviating alienation for white cis women in cis male-centric spaces, but do little to dig deeper into other marginalized identities and access needs.
Characters from Splatoon, customized with the skin tone feature.
Issue 26 by Jose Cardoso on September 2nd, 2015
In a video games climate that has been decrying the prevalence of rehashed themes and narratives, perhaps the matter of racial inclusion can serve as one catalyst for greater change.
Characters fight a large dragon in Guild Wars 2.
Issue 24 by Melissa King on July 21st, 2015
Simply telling people to use the ignore function is not going to curtail decades-long problems in video games communities.