X-2 has been highlighted as a game featuring female protagonists but I may actually prefer the standard erasure of women to seeing these women protags. It's possible that Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball or BMXXX may be preferable to X-2, even as a gift to a niece.

If you're looking for a good game with an intriguing (or even mildly interesting) plot, interesting battle system, or strong female characters, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for an RPG with vocals that make you wish your eardrums would burst, painful battle mechanics or a plot as ludicrous as it is riddled with inconsistencies, then look no further.

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Stockholm is an interactive DVD in which you play a sadistic and creepy (even though it's first person) kidnapper. The point, as the name may suggest, is to get your victim to fall in love with you. This goal is to be accomplished through fear using torture, rape, forced nudity, suffocation, gassing, etc. Charming.

Billed as "The Controversial Masterpiece that was Banned from Amazon", Stockholm doesn't just trump other games featuring the domination of women in content alone. There are some things which challenge my beliefs. I don't believe in capital punishment, but Ted Bundy is a man I believe wholly deserving of that and more. I don't believe in torture, an eye for an eye, but I believe that the creator of Stockholm may deserve it.

However, the Georgia based site originally hosting the game, Uzinagaz, just removed the game and issued this statement: "Our games are not politically correct. They're aimed at teenagers (12-18) and it's true that they're of a juvenile humour. I realise now that this one in particularly could be found shocking, but I believe that you should be able to make this kind of joke in the name of freedom of speech. Incidentally, not everyone in the gay community was supportive of banning the game."

Not much of an apology...I'm still all for free speech, but when it strips a group or person of their agency and incites violence against them, I don't think it should be protected. If you want to have a game called, "find the Bible passage admonishing homosexuals", that's great. And actually...

Biblical Tip of the Day: There are only 6 passages in the big, bad Bible that supposedly reprimand homosexuals but around 362 reprimanding heterosexuals. But rest easy, heterosexuals, God does not hate you (or homosexuals, for that matter). God apparently just has much more to say about how much you're likely to piss him off. Apparently, homosexuals can only piss him off 6 ways...instead of 362.

Anyway, a group called Gay Armenia is the one that pressured the site into removing the game. Not the UN, not GLAAD, or the HRC. Nope. It's cool though. The game has only been around since, what, 2002? So it's understandable. Besides, it only took Gay Armenia and I'm guessing countless strongly words emails 7 years to get it pulled. I mean, where would the dramatic tension be if any of the aforementioned groups had actually cared and stepped in?

So props to Gay Armenia for standing up and actually doing something to not only stop more affirmations of anti-gay violence, but for making the gaming world a little less sucky. That's one small step...oh wait...it's just one small step. But it is a step.

And as different as those mediums can be, there is one element that they all have in common. The very element that allows all of those things to be successful: suspension of disbelief. And as far as that goes, I think that as gamers/nerds/whatever, our imagination is probably very developed. If our imagination could be toned, it would probably look like one of those unnaturally large bodybuilders. And if we can't suspend our disbelief for something, then it probably really sucks.

"Queering the Game: Video Games, Queer Nerds, and Activism"
Presented at Queertopia! organized by Northwestern University's Queer Pride Graduate Student Association

The stereotypical gamer, that paste-white and pimple-ridden boy, unkempt and immature, can no longer serve to represent the gaming community as a whole. More and more, the gaming industry is discovering that this boy does not constitute the only demographic to market to. Time and again, articles in popular gaming, marketing, electronics, and communication magazines proclaim that, against all apparent odds, despite an industry which ignored them, women play games too. This industry has turned its eyes toward the female gamer, that elusive creature who defies the conventions of the 'standard' gamer. Academia had turned in that direction long ago but the market lagged far behind. With even more lag, the white skin of that prototype gamer is changing as well thanks again, in part, to game studies. One striking absence, however, largely remains both in academia and the gaming industry: Where are the queer nerds?

Over the past decade in particular, popular cultural LGBTQ representation has increased in television and film. The substantial discourse surrounding queer visibility in shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, or The L Word, however, has not made its way as prolifically into the video game genre of pop culture. Nor has that visibility transferred as noticeably to this medium. Queer nerds have begun to receive increased attention over the past decade, but not nearly with as much visibility as in other visual media forms. Whereas Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Brokeback Mountain, or Ellen have become household names, video games with queer content do not enjoy the same proliferation of visibility. Outside of the geek community, titles with queer content such as Fable, Fallout, or The Temple of Elemental Evil are not frequently dropped in everyday conversation. As it were, there is no “Fab 5” of the gaming world. While the positivity of queer representation in other media is disputed, queer representation in video games remains a largely unremarked upon phenomenon. Aside from this, the games I mentioned merely give the option of queer activity. Queer as a predefined, predetermined, or central aspect of gameplay, or presented as a definite in the overall plot, has yet to present itself in any salient way. Generally speaking, the presence of queer in video games is subtle and take the form of the ability to make “queer” choices.