Last week, the Penny Arcade Report interviewed Jean-Max Morris, creative director of the upcoming female-led game Remember Me. After going into the game’s cyberpunk roots, Morris discussed the publishers who wanted nothing to do with a female protagonist. “We don’t want to publish it because that’s not going to succeed,” he paraphrased. “You can’t have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that.”

As the article made the rounds, I couldn’t help but notice what gamers were getting excited about elsewhere. Tomb Raider had just slipped to number two in the UK sales charts, after two weeks at number one. StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm had already sold 1.1 million copies in its first two days. Indie developer Supergiant Games, the folks behind Bastion, announced their new action RPG, Transistor, which features a leading lady. Their booth enjoyed two hour lines at PAX all weekend. I’m told that the lines for Remember Me were comparable.

I don’t think it’s gamers who have a problem with female protagonists.

There was a poignant article on Kotaku this week about a suicidal teenage boy, who found the inspiration he needed to turn his life around through none other than the rebooted Lara Croft. What inspired him the most, he explained, was not just her heroism, but her ability to act in the face of fear.

When I [saw] her commit her first kill, I watched as she started crying. I had never seen that in a Tomb Raider before. I was shocked. But she picked herself up quickly, I loved that she had so much bravery especially when she was scared the most.

I praised that aspect of the game in my review last week, but it later occurred to me that her portrayal as a frightened, flawed human being does not exist in a vacuum. When I think of the other protagonists we’ve seen in recent years, it seems that we’re in the middle of a cultural shift. Slowly but surely, we’re expanding our definition of what it means to be a hero.

I love Star Trek. I don’t think there’s any franchise more central to my geek life. There’s a lot of unreal universes out there that I enjoy learning about, but I’m sure there’s none that I would more like to actually live in than the optimistic idea of our future that is Star Trek.

The ’60s-produced original series included a woman of color bridge officer who was cited as an inspiration by Mae Jemison (who became the first black woman in space) and Whoopi Goldberg (who ended up a Star Trek star herself). The more recent series’ increased speculative-science focus led Stephen Hawking, on a visit to the Next Generation set, to say “I’m working on that” when passing the warp core prop.

There’s so much to feel positive about in Star Trek, and over the decades it’s generally done a fine job of showing us how we could, and should, be. But there’s one particular area of social justice that the franchise has failed to live up to its standards on, and it remains a blight on the series in my estimation. I’m talking about the fact that there has never, despite years of promises and false starts, been an openly gay or lesbian character in the canon Star Trek universe.

But I have a proposal to change that. J.J. Abrams, if you’re listening, I think you should make Sulu gay.

Whenever I write about in-game harassment, I hear back from folks who cite that behavior as the reason why they’ve never tried multiplayer. Understandable? Absolutely. But those comments have made me think back on how initially hesitant I was to step beyond single-player and into the realm of online gaming. I, too, had been put off by stories of harassment and toxic behavior (this would’ve been almost ten years ago now, which is a little depressing). So today, I’d like to add a counterweight to this ongoing discussion, and offer a bit of encouragement to those who are thinking about taking the plunge.

I should start with the caveat that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for choosing to fly solo. If multiplayer wasn’t a good experience for you, or if you just aren’t interested in playing with others, that’s A-okay. I myself have games that I prefer to play alone. But to those who are curious about multiplayer but feel skittish about jumping in — gather ’round.

Verbal abuse is a pandemic in the online gaming community. And while it affects all sorts of gamers, there’s a select brand of vitriol reserved for women who venture into voice chat. This is an oft-discussed issue, and we still don’t have a good understanding of the root causes, or of what we can do to alleviate it. But some recent academic research provides a interesting (and sobering) look at how persistent the problem is.

Last week, Gamasutra featured a blog post by graduate student Wai Yen Tang, who discussed a study entitled “Communication in multiplayer gaming: Examining player responses to gender cues.” The study was published online in September of last year by Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff and Lindsey M. Rose, two PhDs from Ohio University’s School of Communication Studies. The study addressed two main questions: does player gender affect the types of comments received in-game, and is player skill a factor? 245 multiplayer matches and 1660 individual players later, they had some answers.

I was born and raised in Southern California, where we don’t have weather so much as a slight graying during the winter months. I was always fonder of the library than the beach, but even so, I grew up accustomed to being able to run around outside whenever I pleased. To this day, there are few things I enjoy more than the simple pleasures of fresh air, big trees, and interesting bugs.

But I don’t live there now. I live in Iceland, where the sun disappears and the sidewalks freeze over (on cue, as I write this, it has started snowing). Going outside in winter means layers of both fabric and fortitude, and hiking is out of the question. February here is a tough time for me. With seven hours of daylight and not a green leaf in sight, I am feeling woefully cooped up.

Or I was, until Proteus came along.

I had a disquieting thought while gaming the other night. I had started to play Secret of Mana, a Christmas gift from a friend determined to catch me up on old-school cartridge classics (I was a PC kid). Secret of Mana is not an easy game, but the story is kid-friendly fare, and the cutesy, cartoonish monsters wouldn’t be out of place in a Pokémon lineup. I was digging it — hard — but after I gleefully called to my partner that the game world used a cannon-based transportation system, the thought appeared. See, for months, I’ve been immersed in commentary on why games have yet to gain mainstream recognition as an important, culturally relevant, adult medium. Yet there I sat, bloodlessly whacking chubby yellow bunnies with my pixelated sword.

And I wondered: do I need to grow up?

The Oscar Nominations are out and the Golden Globes have come and gone. And while I should be delighted that Jennifer Lawrence took home the Globe for her stellar performance in Silver Linings Playbook, I can’t help but feel a sense of bitterness every time awards season gets underway. Why? Because geek movies are so consistently snubbed, it’s almost as if they’re cursed.

Ok, so they’re probably not cursed. After all, that would be ridiculous. (Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio.) History shows us that the Academy has little to no appreciation for geek-centric films. Here’s a list of notable Academy Award snubs for context:

A curious thing happened as I was completing Mark of the Ninja a few weeks back (and yes, there are significant spoilers ahead). While the game has an entertaining story, it’s there for context and flavor, rather than being the driving force. The star of the show is the deliciously stylish gameplay, which caters to puzzle-loving adults who grew up with Saturday morning cartoons and martial arts movies. I often take satisfaction in playing stealth games as non-lethally as possible, but the combat in this one was too good to pass up. Ambushing baddies from shadowy air vents never got old. But I stopped doing it anyway.

Shortly after James Gunn issued his sincere apology for an ambiguously satirical post on his blog that was rediscovered by fans in the wake of his appointment as the director of Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy, The Mary Sue received a letter in our inbox from a writer for another major entertainment blog. It contained what we thought were some very well put thoughts on the reaction against the reaction against Gunn’s post. We asked her if she would be comfortable publishing a form of the letter on the site, and she assented as long as she could make a few edits for the new format and she could obscure which specific site she worked for, which necessarily required the post to be published anonymously. Things were delayed a bit by the holidays and revisions, but without further ado, here’s her post.