After death threats and accusations, women are returning to video games – and the games themselves are changing

The Bloody Baron has a mission for you: he wants you to find his wife and daughter. open image in gallery Protagonist character Geralt on one of the many side-quests in ‘The Witcher 3’ Families in the local area are being tricked into believing that if they can’t afford to feed another child, they should send it into the forest following a “trail of treats” to the witches’ house, where, rumour has it, they’ll never go hungry again. Likewise, other games which I tried for the purposes of this feature – Assassin’s Creed, a game set in an impressively accurate depiction of 1860s London but which ultimately positions you as a goodie killing baddies in a variety of creative ways; and Far Cry 5, which challenges you to hunt down and destroy members of a murderous evangelical cult running riot in a visually stunning rendition of rural Montana – felt a bit too much like high-res excuses for the same old shooting-bad-guys scenes. In 2013, Paul Tassi wrote that “we don’t need a video game Oscars, yet”, but the industry has moved on since then; indeed, he predicted that it would, writing in the same article: “We’re approaching a day when video games are populated by actors, not just voice actors, and more and more film and TV celebrities will likely cross over.” open image in gallery ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’: where humour co-exists with serious commentary on the nature of civilisation At that point, he thought, the quality will have become high enough to invite games developers into the awards shows and dedicate them trophies of their own. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Perhaps, out of the violent threats, the misogyny, the “swatting” deaths and the finger-pointing that accompanies every real-life school shooting, something much more interesting will emerge: something that doesn’t demand to know whether you’re a goodie or a baddie but demands to know what a world that has been shaped by you looks like when you’re allowed to act with moral impunity; something that doesn’t just act as a cipher for the anger and prejudice you can’t express in the real world but actively challenges your core assumptions and your personal beliefs in an environment which allows for self-examination.