The presence of women within videogames has progressed to a state where narratives about the empowerment of women are becoming popular; however, such games still invite a number of gendered stereotypes. Housed in the genre of adventure games, The Walking Dead: Season Two and Life Is Strange appear to follow in the spirit of this emerging women's revolution but inevitably reestablish traditional presentations of sexism in the treatment of their endings. In particular, the presentation of the infamous Trolley Problem and its inherent utilitarian framework is an incendiary moment wherein these games mark rebellious women as necessary sacrifices for the greater good and the continuation of the community. This article explores these two specific moments of sacrifice at the conclusions of Life Is Strange and The Walking Dead: Season Two and engages with tensions between the status quo and the resistances that challenges these norms.

This article examines which bodies have access to participate in Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) events, and to DiGRA as an organization. It is based on a survey (N=174), among subscribers to the DiGRA 'Gamesnetwork' mailing list. The survey included questions on age, gender, location and career level to gain insight into who is included in the DiGRA community, with further questions on problems and challenges faced by those who have had trouble accessing DiGRA. This paper does not proceed solely by statistical methodology, but draws on feminist theories of embodiment and qualitative methods. Through this diverse methodological approach, the paper analyzes which bodies have difficulties accessing DiGRA�s academic communities and conferences, which practices cause these difficulties, and which policies might be introduced to address these. The survey indicates that young, early-career and women�s bodies are in particularly precarious positions. This situation is perpetuated through various practices of economic and social inaccessibility. Upon reflection, the paper proposes a set of policies to address these practices. We conclude that this survey and its analysis are only a first step to making DiGRA a more diversely inclusive organization.

This article builds on Games of Empire by centering the experiences of diversity workers in Game Studies of Empire. Our data were gathered through qualitative mixed methods of in-depth surveys and semi-structured interviews. Participants self-identified to be included in the study, all thinking critically through the definitions of “diversity,” “diversity work(er),” and “game studies.” Thus, this study reports on a tapestry of knowledge and experiences from the various educators and advocates of diversity across academia and the games industry. Diversity workers in Game Studies of Empire are often exploited by their affective attachment to diversity and perform significant unrecognized and uncompensated affective labor. Empire uses diversity workers to produce a quantifiable and tokenizable product of bodies and lived experiences that can be used to further profits for companies, universities, and other institutions. Diversity work(ers) against Game Studies of Empire unite! We will have nothing to lose when we become unchained.

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The gaming community has been contoured by divisive issues around the exacerbation of sexism, racism, and harassment. These tensions culminated in 2014 in the shape of #gamergate: a decentralised online harassment campaign against women and feminism in gaming. Gamergate continues to intensify a heightened climate of hostility especially felt by women and minorities.This ongoing feminist ethnography has emerged from an imperative to create interventions into the increasing normalisation of online and offline harassment. In it, this research analyses the affective labour of how people navigate and ‘cope’ with discrimination in gaming cultures. This paper will present vignettes of the larger research project of how online harassment has coloured people’s lived experiences, through thick-descriptions of in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 7 women who play videogames with their romantic partners. These interviews gesture towards a rich complexity of affective relationships at the nexus of gaming, romantic relationships, and the everyday lived experiences of women. To avoid bringing attention to their gender, harassment, and unwanted confrontations, women are hypervigilant. In similar ways to self-defence tactics, women constantly avoid using headsets to communicate with other players, keep clear of conversations about playing videogames, and minimise the performance of their femininity in public gaming spaces.This paper critically examines the dynamics of how the increasing normalisation and public gamification of online harassment impacts women’s engagement with gaming, as well as how ‘online’ harassment may invade into their intimate relationships and domestic ‘private’ spheres.