I also wanted to expand on a couple of things in the post. Firstly on Greenlight, I think it’s critical to talk a little about how independent developers don’t have publishers telling them how to modify their game to appeal to “gamers”, so you see a lot more gender-friendly titles made by indies. It cuts both ways, too – indies are free to let their prejudices run wild. Greenlight is interesting because it gives the community a voice in what gets sold on Steam, which means that conversations which educate the masses have a real, solid impact on actual games being made.

Secondly, TF2, since it kind of came up twice here – once that you played it, and once for Meet The Pyro. TF2 could have a post all by itself, but my summary is that it’s *spectacularly* awful for gender representation, with the devs flat-out refusing to consider even some female playable characters. I was almost willing to brush that off when they started branding everything in the game with “Mann”, which given the timing I can only assume was them trying to poke fun at themselves, but really feels much more like a Yorkie Bar (“It’s not for girls”). Which is a shame because the game is so damned good that people of all gender rock TF2, hard.