poor little rich movie stars, NetFlix and ‘Variety’ sued, God as a film critic: leftover links

Wow. Thanks. That article on the lack of females in war video games (and its comments) was very enlightening.

The Wizard of Oz is always getting remade. Remember Tin Man from a year or so ago? I'd be surprised if there aren't at least a half dozen different Oz-inspired scripts working their way through Hollywood at any given time. The entertainment press just likes to draw lines from the latest blockbuster to any project that could remotely benefit from it.

I have played all kinds of war games for more than a decade and I literally have never thought about it. The tech reason the developer gives doesn't sound as bullshitty as I was expecting. I'm not sure how much it matters when I'm running around shooting people. Half the time their character models have helmets and other things, I'm just not paying attention. I think focusing on what country the "enemy" is from and how they've modeled that appearance would be just as interesting.

There are games that have women soldiers, like Mass Effect 2, where you can customize to either gender. I would say the less shoot'em up (multi-player focused) and more story driven (singleplayer focused) the game is, and you get more diverse characters.

Game developers could easily include women in other parts of the game without having to do the entire new skeletal animation thing. Or spend thousands of hours coding frivolous breast physics..

In one scene in Modern Warfare you are tasked with protecting a tank from ground troops and coordinating with the tank commander. A female tank commander would only require a different voice actor. Same goes for pilots that you don't physically see but play an important combat role.

There have been women soldiers in previous games, but by and large they are relegated to either medic or non-combat (giving you radio updates).