Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

212 - GTS News! 19k Games in 2024 & Marvel Rivals Boob Physics

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Episode Summary:
Welcome back to Gaming The System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists explore the gaming world through a critical lens. In today’s episode, Alex, Jem, and Matt dive into the sheer volume of games released in 2024, discussing the staggering 19,000 titles on Steam alone. With so many games out there, is there really a need for the gaming industry to cling to outdated and problematic tropes?

We also take a closer look at Marvel Rivals and its baffling use of boob physics, questioning why this continues to be a thing in modern gaming. Plus, we discuss Elon Musk’s gaming controversy—how the world’s richest man got caught out cheating in Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4.

Expect passionate discussions, sharp critiques, and a good dose of humor as we navigate gaming news, representation, and industry trends.

🔹 Topics Discussed in This Episode:
✅ The sheer number of games released in 2024 – is it overwhelming or a sign of a thriving industry?
✅ The persistence of problematic character design – Marvel Rivals and the infamous boob physics debate.
✅ Gaming escapism vs. activism – balancing engagement with self-care.
✅ Elon Musk’s gaming scandal – why pay to win when you’re already a billionaire?
✅ The ongoing issues of representation and misogyny in gaming culture.

💬 Join the Discussion!
What are your thoughts on Marvel Rivals’ character designs? Should gaming companies move past outdated tropes? Have you ever experienced gamer guilt? Let us know on BlueSky (@gamingthesystem.bsky.social), Instagram (@gamingthesystempodcast) or in the comments on YouTube!

or in the comments on YouTube!

🎙 Gaming The System releases new episodes every Thursday – stay tuned for our upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 deep dive!

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Let us know on BlueSky (@gamingthesystem.bsky.social), Instagram (@gamingthesystempodcast) or in the comments on YouTube!


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🎙 Gaming The System releases new episodes every Thursday

Thanks for listening, and remember – there’s always another game to play that isn’t full of nonsense. 🎮✨

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Alex:

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Gaming the System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens. Today, I'm your host, Alex, and I'm joined by my friends, Gem and Matt. Before we get started, if you want to support us, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon. Com forward slash gaming the system for some exclusive content. Or you can send us a one off donation via PayPal to our email address. We are gaming the system at gmail. com. we all have a voice. And we can all use our voices no matter how little they are. As you said, Gem, we can all come together. Is there anything we can do to maybe help to mitigate that impact or to at least be aware of that impact a little bit more?

Matt:

I'm just trying to think of something that isn't as bleak as just there's nothing to do.

Alex:

Yeah. this podcast is a good way. Because we get to talk about these sorts of things all the time on the pod. Like we've had so many topics that relate to this in lots of, small ways, big ways, lots of different ways. They all tie back into power and control and who's running things and, the power that people have, different sections of society have, and how that's reflected in the media that we can do. So, yeah, this podcast is definitely

Jem:

I do think that we've seen a shift in the people that are gaming, and we've talked a lot about that. And I think that they're not going to necessarily, want a more, misogynistic gaming experience. we know how well games that have diversity are doing out there. So we know that that sells. And so that means that people are enjoying them. And that isn't going to change, I think. So I hope that will encourage the games companies to continue to put games. that are mindful of those things. And I'm also hoping that it will sort of, up some of the organizations who are actively fighting against discrimination, who are actively trying to get more women and more minority groups into game design who are organizations that we've talked about before, who are looking at, sensitivity checking in games and things like that. And I really hope that. What this will do is galvanize those people and people like us who are looking around for what can we do, how can we make a little bit of difference, might get engaged with those organizations, with those groups, we might be mindful of the game choices that we make, necessity is the mother of invention and I feel that, we might be in that time now.

Alex:

And a point to add on that, we're not advocating for there to be one specific type of game that has to be the most inclusive type of game and therefore that's the only one that should exist. Absolutely. You shared a stat with us earlier in the day, Jim, about how many games there were that were made, was it all of last year? Oh my gosh, it was crazy. Yeah,

Jem:

it was last year.

Matt:

19, 000.

Alex:

19, 000 games were released via digital distribution platform Steam, so that's only on Steam. This means you could have played 52 new games each day of the year and still have had some left over. So you take that into account when we think about all the different perspectives that everyone has on the world and the types of games they want to play because there are some very loud people within the gaming community that want to ban all of the woke games. There's plenty of games for you. Yeah. You can play those. We can all play the games we want and we can exist together. The two do not cancel each other out. No. It's not

Jem:

a zero sum game.

Matt:

I just want to go, you're not in secondary school anymore. Thank god. And not everyone, people, well, this is another of my theories, that a lot of people when they hear something that they perceive as triggering or negative from someone, they hear it as if it's coming from their, one of their parents. And saying, oh, someone said, oh, you've cut your grass and your lawn a bit low, and think, oh that might, not be good when there's not much rain, so it's a friendly person going, oh this, and then someone hears their dad saying, you've done a shit job on your lawn, you useless little prick, and then they react, to er, they project that shit onto other people, and you're going, no one else is your mum and your dad, you're not in secondary school anymore, it's ok, it's gonna be ok, it can be ok. It's ok./You guys know what net neutrality is?

Alex:

I feel like I should say yes, but really the truthful answer is no.

Matt:

Yeah, basically it's like Internet providers, have to treat all internet traffic equally. Okay. So without net neutrality, companies like Facebook can go, Oh, you're, you're loading something from, you want to watch game in the system. They can, they can fuck with the download rates of things. And basically that is dead in America. They succeeded in killing that. He said at the start like it was lucky that we're To be over here in the UK and they're like the rest of these things are impacting America and less so the rest of the world And Elon Musk did a tweet that said we've had MAGA now for MEGA She's make Europe great again then, like, someone wrote back going, oh, Europe's already great, we've got, we've got free healthcare, we've got good free education, we've got all these awesome things about European stuff. And I just go. But we're not in Europe anymore, are we? And all these things are going out the window and the only reason that the right wing of our country wanted to leave Europe is so that we could have the deregulation that allows all these corporations to come in. and so we're on the road to America. Unfortunately. And at the minute, Keir Starmer is our Joe Biden. If he didn't have the most wildly car crash, ridiculous off the rails predecessor, then Kingstarmer wouldn't have won. He just needed an empty seat and just about managed to win. Whereas if, I bet, I bet, I would bet money that Boris Johnson could run again in the next election and win. But yes, this is where it comes to, it's okay to not use Twitter. It's okay to completely check out of the news and just focus on yourself. Look after yourself. Look after yourself first, because if you're in a mess, you're not going to be able to help anyone else. No, absolutely. Which is where the picking your battles And making sure you put yourself first is, if you go on a march every day for three months and then you're completely fucked and you can't do anything for a long time, that's no use to anyone.

Jem:

Absolutely. Now I agree with you 100%. And I think also, you know, if you're here listening to our podcast, then you've got like a perfect thing to go and do to escape from it all, dip into one of your worlds. I've certainly played quite a lot of Dragon Age, Inquisition over the last week. So, you know, I think, yeah, escape.

Matt:

And there are lots of terrible things, but there are also lots of wonderful things.

Alex:

There are, yes, and it is

Matt:

okay to focus as much as you can on the wonderful things. Yes. It's okay. You don't have to feel guilty. Very well said, Matt.

Alex:

I'd like to ask you, Matt, what's your fluff? What have you brought?

Matt:

So, are either of you familiar with Marvel Rivals? Yes. Yes. So, brand new, wildly popular, sort of Fortnite esque game set in the, Marvel's universe. And it's one of those ones which is hey, it's successful, which means people are really liking it, but it is also just a microtransactions, frothing frenzy. So I wasn't really bothered about it, it's not really the thing that I'm interested in, I can't get my head around why anyone would play anything like Fortnite. And it's just like with the anti work brigade thing, where you just go, How I can't put myself in these people's shoes. I can empathise, I can put myself in people's shoes for lots of things. But then when it comes to that kind of thing, it just

Jem:

The Far Right and Fortnite players,

Matt:

I choose to ignore that big bubble because I'm so grateful that I'm not inside it.

Jem:

you're lucky. I mean, my daughter doesn't play Fortnite anymore, but she does play Overwatch, which is equally bonkers.

Matt:

I'm gonna share the screen. This little clip I'm about to show you is from the end of the first, launch trailer for it. There's like the, buy this thing now, and there's sort of just this animated background going on. And this is what's going on in it. Can you guys see a little bit of something that we've talked about before? for those listening, we've got Sue Storm, the Fantastic Four are back. And as someone on Reddit put it, the invisible woman breasted Boobily in the wind as they sat on the hover car.

Alex:

It's very true. There is boob physics at play.

Matt:

Wild! Absolutely wild levels of boob figures. Because that's not how boobs work, I'm pretty sure. I don't have them. But I'm pretty sure that's not how they work. They don't

Alex:

move that way.

Jem:

Not by themselves, generally.

Matt:

That's the opposite. If they can be blown up and down in the wind, then your clothes aren't supporting them. In

Alex:

space it's a different thing, of course. If you're in space, they might move like that. But that's clearly not in space, is it?

Jem:

And in an outfit that's that tight, that wouldn't happen anyway,

Alex:

So was that, from within the game, or?

Matt:

just an animated image. But in the game, like, the If you watch the trailer, the first thing you see of Sue Storm is just her arse. And then, later on, her from the front. Lots of wind whipping around. He's sort of scratching his head going, Who's that for? And then I go, Oh, it's for me. And even then, that still upsets me.

Jem:

You can go and hang out with Zuckerberg and be upset about it. Everything's for me, it's so unfair.

Matt:

It's what they think I am.

Jem:

Yeah,

Matt:

it's embarrassing,

Jem:

It's insulting and embarrassing and also it's problematic because they know who the target audience is. The target audience is young men, young boys generally between the ages of 13 and probably early 20s Yeah. I mean these are the people we don't want to be. Embedding this kind rubbish in.

Alex:

A common cliché of the gaming world. I wonder if it will ever leave us. Boob physics.

Matt:

someone was saying like they'll, If anyone should have boob physics it should be Mr Fantastic. He should have some solidarity with his wife and have a drink.

Jem:

Yeah. But the good news is that there's 18, 999 other games that you can play. So, you know, if you don't like the boob physics there. You can Find somewhere else.

Matt:

Apparently Baldur's Gate 3 has jiggle physics for the masculine genitals but not for breasts.

Alex:

that's an interesting change of pace.

Jem:

I think the less we talk about that the better.

Alex:

We'll save that for our Baldur's Gate episode,

Matt:

I'll give you one other little bit about it. Is that I was looking at, new mods for Baldur's Gate recently, and one of them was called All Natural Withers.

Alex:

Oh

Jem:

yes, I've seen, Who looked at Withers and thought that's what I want to do with my time?

Matt:

there's a new skin for a character called Malice. And this is where they make all the money. selling skins of things. Would either of you like to describe what's on the screen?

Alex:

A very scantily clad lady.

Jem:

looking at her from below, aren't we?

Alex:

And it's a black and red outfit. Very tight, very close fitting. She's got basically upper thigh high boots and straps.

Jem:

Bikini bottoms, I guess.

Alex:

Yeah, bikini bottoms. I was going to say mankini for some reason, I don't even know. Yeah, it's like a reverse

Jem:

mankini, isn't it?

Alex:

Yeah, so there's a sort of diamond shape around the belly button where the skin is on show. Okay. And then some very tight straps around the edges of the boobs, coming round to the front. And very spiky shoulders, gloved hands, and a mask, and lots of spikes around the shoulders and things. So, yeah, I'd say that sums it up.

Matt:

It's a bit dominatrix y. One of those things where the female character's hips are twice as wide as their shoulders. So, that's what's going on in the Marvelverse at the moment.

Alex:

When you think about the comics, of course, that's standard fare

Matt:

I was googling this and came across this article and thought, Oh yeah, this looks a bit similar. I wonder if this is a character that's coming up soon and this is why this article's there. But it's more than ten years old! Yeah. we've made no progress. And this is just Jessica Drew was Spider Woman. And you can tell from the second picture, it's literally just, she's, it's like she's been painted red.

Alex:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've seen a male version of that. it's really interesting how normalized that kind of objectification is. And when you see it on a man, it just looks weird.

Alex:

Exactly. Yeah. And that's maybe A slightly problematic element of a lot of the media around Marvel, obviously, all comes from comics, and that's so normalised in comics, isn't it? And who were comics marketed towards? So it all ties around back again. It's all the same, just in lots of different formats. I think that will bring us to near enough a close for today's episode, unless either of you have anything else you'd like to share. Ooh,

Jem:

I really wanted to share this with you because this is a gaming story. So Elon Musk. Let's just remind ourselves he is the world's richest man. He is, you know, In charge of X. He's got something to do with Tesla. He's trying to get us to Mars. He's now also trying to reduce excess spending for the American government. he is a busy, busy guy. And yet he still has time. To get into a feud with gaming streamer Zach Hoyt, who some of you may know as Asmongold, who has accused Musk of cheating. at Path of Exile 2. Now this came off the back of a live stream that Mustard of himself playing Path of Exile 2. Viewers who know the game well was sort of feeling like he didn't seem to be playing the game as well as somebody with his apparent level and the amount of high level characters he has and the fact that he's been doing all these high level runs. I've not played the game myself, so I don't know very much about it other than the story. so they called him out on it, basically. Musk's character was like 97 on hardcore mode, which is probably really good, I don't know. it turns out there's a big list, you can find it on Reddit, if you just go and search it up, you can find there's a big list of all the times in the live stream where Musk demonstrates that he clearly does not know how to play the game to this standard. And, today, he has actually finally admitted that he has indeed paid people to level his character up and to get him these high level characters and to get them through the game at a certain point. After basically having this war of words and apparently he's even removed the blue tick on Twitter of this streamer. talk about abusing your position of power. Yeah. he's admitted, this is from PC Gamer, which was published 7 hours ago, he's admitted boosting his account, on that and Diablo 4, because there were other issues with characters on Diablo 4 as well, and he's like, deal with it, he's like, what would I be apologising for? How pathetic are you that you have to pay people to cheat for you, and then pass it off as your own work? The world isn't here to massage this man's ego. it's so embarrassing. I've known many gamers through my life, and I've known people who've wanted to cheat, there's a massive difference between that and passing off really hardcore gameplay as your own. When it just wasn't even, I mean it just, I mean they were like, the first point was sort of like, Well, he claims to have got these characters, three of these characters up to this high level and the game was only released eleven days ago. And it was just like, there's no way. I mean, either he's doing that or he's working.

Alex:

is he?

Matt:

As soon as the healthcare CEO was assassinated, and he put out that tweet of going, Oh actually this guy's the good guy, because he's doing what he's meant to be doing. And then all of a sudden he started having one of his kids, carrying one of his kids around with him. And going, I'm a really good father. And going, no you're not, you think people are less likely to shoot you if you're holding your child. And, the only good thing about Elon Musk compared to Bezos and Zuckerberg is he's saying all the behind the seeds quite a bit out loud that every other billionaire and corporate leader and ruling class people think. He's just going, his job is to maximise profits, that's what he's doing, why do you hate him for doing that? And then another thing he said was . We need to bring in foreign talent because Americans are stupid. And untalented, which is the exact opposite of what MAGA is meant to be the Americans, white people. White men. You are the master race. You are naturally at the top of the, the chain. In everything, just naturally, without having to do anything else. But then when you can't qualify that by saying, This scientist from Indonesia Is really good at this one thing, We're going to bring him over to do that. why can't Americans do it? Oh, because it's expensive training people. we want you to be stupid and poor! So we can keep on manipulating you. all bets are off now. Because Trump had some, he wasn't really sure what he could get away with in his first term. Now he knows he can do literally anything. And he's going to be, he has the tools within these people to make the country infinitely worse for everyone. And I wonder whether he'll be able to, keep on top of having enough people not care how bad the situation is, that they still love him.

Alex:

thank you both for bringing those stories to our attention and for your discussion. As always, it's been a wonderful episode and if you have liked, listening or watching, please do support us share our podcast with people who you think will also find it a very good listen or watch. And we'll be back next Thursday with another episode. As I said, we've got more Baldur's Gate content coming your way soon. But for now, we hope you've enjoyed our first look at the news for 2025 in the gaming world and adjacent news, and we'll see you again soon. Thank you. Goodbye.