Posts Tagged Pathfinder

A song of faith and sexual fire: How roleplaying game religions work as moral tools

When one grows up in a traditionalist household, which only ever admitted spirituality of the most reactionary and narrow sort, it is easy to see faith as a rusted chain keeping your head forcibly turned to the leaping shadows of Plato’s cave. My resentment at my Roman Catholic upbringing boiled over into unchecked rage against any and all people of faith, who I blamed for various and sundry ills—like Richard Dawkins, I saw in religion the “root of all evil.” For 18-year-old me, newly flush with age-of-majority status, I celebrated my newfound freedom by ditching the faith of my upbringing and ruthlessly scorning any people of faith as “ignorant” and “backward” people barring the way to true freedom.

People ...

When one grows up in a traditionalist household, which only ever admitted spirituality of the most reactionary and narrow sort, it is easy to see faith as a rusted chain keeping your head forcibly turned to the ...

Not buying sexism: How inclusive games show hope for gaming culture

The tiresome canard about how “sex(ism) sells” has been dealt with in a number of ways. Empirical studies demonstrate no correlation between a film or video game’s sexist/sexual content and its marketplace success, and we have evidence that suggests that among game industry doyens, this notion may simply be a classic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Industry analysis tells us that video games led by female characters receive a paltry 40% of the marketing budgets of male-led games; when such games fail to sell as well as their more lavishly supported competitors, the results are then used as empirical proof of the subjective view that saw them underfunded in the first place.

Circular reasoning par ...

The tiresome canard about how “sex(ism) sells” has been dealt with in a number of ways. Empirical studies demonstrate no correlation between a film or video game’s sexist/sexual content and its marketplace ...