But then the games featured more women and that became an issue somehow

Sometimes it's the same people who complain along the lines of 'Triple A games are all the same' who then mod out or get mad about the tiniest change from the perceived status quo or norm too. Like I remember call of duty being made fun of for always having a game cover that was just Guy With Gun

Diablo 2 without a doubt.

Entirely possible some outlets do just blame games directly. Not gonna pretend to have read everything that mentions them

I've seen other articles and most of them just seem to be reporting things he was doing. Like him being a developer on Civilization was something I saw plenty people talk about, an article writing about the thing people found isn't really blaming the thing I think

Riiight outside of this cropped screenshot is the reveal that someone who knew him brought it up specifically because he found it ironic. The title of the article also quotes the ironic statement. It's a hook, it's clickbaity, it's a 'look at what his friends said' title, but it doesn't blame games

The other titles didn't know whether they were action or narrative focused, harming one of the two, action often being bad or bland, but still overpresent. This game chooses to focus action more. It loses a bit of depth (especially wrt factions) for it, I suppose. I'm okay with that personally.

As someone who has played the whole series, I can understand the criticisms Veilguard has received in comparison to those, though I don't mind the changes myself. It comes together well, and is probably the first dragon age game to feel entirely focused to me.

Sounds interesting! My specialization was into historical game studies; how games (re)present the past and what that could mean. Consumer engagement is part of that! Currently applying to PhDs while working outside of academia, so removed from research, but we can talk more about this at some point!

Congrats on the PhD! While I did a master in English Literature, I'm not familiar with the field this PhD thesis is in at all, having moved more towards game studies myself. So I am very curious to learn more about the topic and to see you post more about it in the future :)