Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist game critic made popular by Gamergate and her Tropes vs. Women in Games YouTube series, is now a playable video game character.
The very fun arena fighter, Towerfall Ascension, put out a blog post on its Tumblr page Tuesday detailing new character skins for the game. One of those skins is loosely based on Sarkeesian’s likeness, hoop earrings included.
Towerfall
Anita’s work has been an inspiration to the TowerFall team. Her “Tropes vs Women in Games” video series gave us a valuable new lens through which to assess our character designs. TowerFall is about bringing people together, so it’s vitally important that the cast of playable characters makes everyone feel invited to join in. Simply put, this wouldn’t have occurred to me if not for Anita, and feedback from players has reinforced how important it really is.
It might be a bit of a stretch considering Towerfall has always had playable female characters since its release back in 2013. Nevertheless, it’s still kind of odd that a socio-philosophical critic is being immortalized in this way, considering players can now shoot arrows at her. It definitely seems that Sarkeesian has struck a chord with developers though, regardless of what her critics might say.
Photo via Towerfall
