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.

So boss. We discovered this epic illustration by Kyle Latino after stumbling upon a fantastic new Tumblr – Real Girls Gaming. Now, what kind of characters do you think each lady would be playing? Would they play to type or go in the opposite direction? Also, I bet Wonder Woman is an unforgiving dungeon master.

(via Kyle Latino on DeviantArt)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

We have days for just about everything else so I don’t see why not. Seriously though, this sounds like a lot of fun and I’m sure more than a few of my friends will be putting events together. March 30 also happens to be the Doctor Who premiere date here in the U.S. so it’s just going to be one long day of geeky fun! Find out more at TabletopDay.com.

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Because it doesn’t have Arabic numerals on it. io9 hypothesizes that this die (and another in the same collection) that dates from the Ptolemaic Period (that’s roughly between 300 and 30 BC) is the oldest D20 in the world.

So you could role a circle with a little dash in it, or a capital H, P, N, E, B, U, K, I or even a triangle.

But not a 20.

Previously in Dice

The idea that playing video games is a waste of time is a pervasive one. It’s also one that game designer Jane McGonigal is working hard to fight against. She came up for the idea for the healing game SuperBetter while bedridden and suicidal following a severe concussion. Now, she’s bringing her love of games to the world as a tool to start talking about resilience. For instance, did you know that there have been clinical studies that showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression? She also promises to add seven minutes to your life. Her entire talk is pretty darn interesting. Give it a watch.

(via Real Girls Gaming)

Kathleen Hankel, a 68-year-old grandmother from New Jersey, set a new world record this week in gaming. Hankel, who played in Manhattan while a simultaneous effort was spearheaded by Laura Rich in London, set the record for “Longest Video Games Marathon Playing a Card Game.” So what game was she playing? Solitaire Blitz.

What this is is this: Nerdigurumi! And they make free geek-friendly crochet patterns, like this Portal set. Definitely go there, times a million. (via Boing Boing)

Like many folks, I first used Vent in conjunction with World of Warcraft (for those not in the know, Ventrilo is a VoIP client beloved by gamers). Before I even left Shadowglen, I ran across an article about one girl’s unfortunate experiences in Vent. I was simply going to reference it here, but my mad Google skills have turned up the actual article, which hearkens back from the year 2005:

I made the mistake of speaking one day, out of the blue…People got loud, people were talking on top of each other, the channel got laggy from all the chaos…I very suddenly got flooded with in game tells: “Was that you?” I didn’t reply to any, I just kept my mouth shut, very quickly realizing my mistake. A few people took it to the next level, making some extremely harsh comments about girls, and girls playing the game. I didn’t talk for the rest of the raid.

That was how I thought Vent was going to be: a never-ending misogynistic gauntlet of harassment and requests for pics. It sounded awful. See, at this point, I hadn’t made any gamer friends, and the only female gamers I knew of were strangers writing articles like the one above. I avoided Vent as long as I could, making up excuses about not having a mic. My interaction with other players was minimal. But by level twenty, my gear was pathetic, and it was clear that I was missing out on a lot of game content.

Quick, everyone call your favorite TV executive and make this happen. (at Global Geek News)

For all you math people out there, there is this. (At Diary of a Death Starlette)