Why the New Tomb Raider is Good For Women and GamingMarch 6, 2013 by

The new Tomb Raider is upon us. For 17 years Lara Croft has jumped, climbed, and crawled her way onto our televisions.  Now in 2013 as hot and sexy as ever, Lara is making her much needed and greatly anticipated reboot of the series. The journey for Crystal Dynamics has been a long one filled with controversy and media hype alike, and it has finally culminated into critical acclaim and fan enjoyment. Undoubtedly, Tomb Raider is a great game, but what does it do for women in gaming? Does Lara’s new body and adventure perpetuate the stereotypes of the industry or does it help fight against the stigma that 30 years of video game culture has developed?

Tomb Raider - Review

It is almost a guarantee that women in video games will forever be attractive. Even men fall to the same trap. Attractive people are simply more enjoyable to look at and more fun to play as, and this fact of the human psyche forces developers to create characters that will appeal to most consumers. But where women are often most mistreated in game culture is in their personalities. Games are not quite the sausage fests of old, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a game (or any piece of media for that matter) where a female character serves a larger role than eye candy, male character reward, helpless damsel in distress, or overly masculine brute who is so off-putting and extreme that she is completely un-relatable to any woman. Women in games like Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, or even Chloe in Uncharted all fall into the traps of one-dimensional, disproportionate babes, and they do nothing but hurt the fight for equality. Where women in games need to evolve is in their personalities.


In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft manages to go above her outwardly attractiveness and appeal to the player in a meaningful and thoughtful way. You learn to love her personality, her will to survive, and her incredible resourcefulness. You admire her loyalty and watch her move past her naivety and develop into the hard-hitting bad-ass that we know she is destined to be.  She is an independent and strong-willed woman forced to overcome extreme adversity. Who couldn’t relate to that? And most importantly, her final character development isn’t in the arms of some lucky guy soon to get lucky. She maintains her independence and never needs to “fall back” into the support of a man. Any young teenage girl gamer can lookup to Lara and find a role model worthy of her position (ignoring of course that Lara is a serial killer, but it’s a game. Maybe her and Nathan Drake can do a crossover where they wipe out a small island country in the name of gold treasure). She may be sexy, she may wear skintight clothes, but her personality is why you love Lara. If women in games can continue to have this level of development and personality as there male counterparts already possess, the sexism debate in games will end and we can chalk up a +1 to society.

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Dollars and CentsMarch 2, 2013 by

The following is an opinion piece in follow-up to Cliff Blezsinki's Blog Post, which you can find here

In Case you haven't already, please read Cliffy B's original Blog post. It is a wonderful read and poses some thoughts that gamers often overlook when they consider the "money-grubbing" publishers "destroying" their beloved Dead Space series. So I'll give you a minute to read that now....

My first thoughts after reading his post

But now for my two cents (pun totally intended). Cliff makes a fantastic point that most gamers overlook when they're worried that their wallet can't keep up with their hobby. As a gamer paying his own way through one of the best engineering schools in the country, I feel and bleed like all of you who are worried that micro-transactions and season passes are out to desecrate on your passion. However I want to explain to you how these changes are not only a certainty we won't be able to avoid, but that the future is looking GOOD for us gamers on a budget.

1. Next-gen games will be even cheaper than they currently are.

With Sony announcing that retail PS4 games will NOT cross the $60 threshold, Microsoft will assuredly follow suit, or they will be blown out of competition. Compounding this with the fact that inflation and the constant increase in game size and value will continue in the future, the per dollar value of the games we buy will be even higher. However, the true decrease in price game sales will come from Sony's and Microsoft's embracement of the digital platform. On current consoles, digital copies of Borderlands 2 sell for $60, yet if I were to walk into a Gamestop, I'd be able to buy a new copy for $39.99. Because not every retail game lands on the digital storefront, and it is even rarer for a game to launch digitally day and date as its physical release, Sony and Microsoft had no reason to adjust digital prices to outlet prices. But if in the future Sony and Microsoft launch all games digitally day and date, then publishers will be able to break out of the rigid $10, $15, or $60 pricing plans that the current gen developed. Minecraft has proven this with its 20 million sold units.

2. DLC saves you money in the long run.

Let's say you buy Borderlands 2 and play the hell out of it. You throw 100 hours into your level 50 character and have acquired all the best gear the bosses have to offer you. 5 years ago, that game was exhausted and you'd be on your way to pick up a new $60 game. However you bought the season pass for $30, extending the level cap, adding 4 DLC expansions and adding another 50 hours to your playtime. 5 years ago you may have picked up Turok and 100%-ed that game in 10-12 hours before moving onto another $60 game. But because instead you bought the season pass for a game you loved, you saved money not buying other games that wouldn't have held your attention as much as Borderlands 2.

Anyone else spend hours trying to get this weapon to drop?


3. Free to Play will be the future we need

When the world eventually adopts F2P completely, we as gamers will be able to play every game that ever remotely interests us and decide after a few hours if we want to fund that game. WIth this model, the better the game, the more money it'll make, the larger the fanbase it will develop, and the more updates it will receive during its life. Want to give Call of Duty $15 and quit after you reach the level cap? Do it. Spend $100 buying gun packs, skins, banners, dlc, and work your way through 15 prestiges? Do it. Maybe you just want to play a few matches with your friends every few weeks or so. In the near-future you will be able to do this without dropping a dime. Look at SW:TOR. Once it dropped to F2P, their playerbase spiked again, and they've had much more success maintaining the players that are willing to give them the most money. This brings me back to my first point, price parity.


4. Price Parity

In economics there is a business model called price discrimination. The basic idea is that each individual will value a product depending on their values and desires. I may be willing to buy an apple for $1.50, but someone else may only want that same apple if it costs no more than $0.99. For my friend trying to sell us apples, he would benefit the most if he sold his product to us at our maximum-willing price. But for obvious reasons, he can't do that or else I would be very annoyed to find that someone else was buying apples for only a dollar a piece. F2P, DLC, micro-transactions, and digital distribution enable publishers to employ a form of price discrimination. By allowing gamers to pay for a product as much as he or she is willing, the publisher will maximize potential profits and keep the consumer feeling perfectly satisfied. Instead of the parasitic and dangerous environment games are currently forced to live in, the gaming community will grow and adapt to the needs and desires of the individual, resulting in a win-win for both the businessmen and the gamers.


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