I think this might be because I tend to approach characters somewhat differently than many writers do, although it’s hard to describe in what way. I guess partly it’s how I make personality the driving force behind all my character designs. A character’s backstory, personal goals, etc. don’t matter as much. The other major part is what kind of personalities I find interesting. For instance, a young female mad scientist has a certain humorous dissonance.

Sammie’s gender is important because both her place in society (a warrior) and many aspects of her personality (particularly her aggression) are typically masculine. Yet she does somehow retain a lot of femininity to balance it out, I think.

As for SatAM:TYL, I’m not sure how Sally’s femininity plays into it… in this case the gender may actually be a coincidence, particularly considering I obviously didn’t design the original versions of these characters. But female characters do tend to be a “voice of reason” in modern comedy (unless the female is a ditz), so Sally’s probably continuing that tradition in both the original SatAM and in SatAM:TYL (though in somewhat different ways, I think).

All this isn’t to say that I think gender roles (whether we follow or subvert the stereotypes) need to be a primary consideration in deciding whether to have a male or female character… but they’ll probably end up being an inextricable part of the character anyway. Suppose you have a male cat, but he has a coat pattern that could belong to either gender. After you’ve lived with that cat for some time, he’ll always just “look male” to you. (I certainly get this sort of thing with all my pets.) Yet if you didn’t already know he was male, you’d have no way of knowing unless you took a peek. Gender roles can — and probably will — shape how you perceive your cat, even though in reality they’re irrelevant!

If I were to make a war game, would I have a prominent female character? Probably. But it probably wouldn’t be because I felt the need to shoehorn a woman into a male cast; it’d probably be more because it wouldn’t really occur to me not to put in a female character. I mean, why wouldn’t I put one in? They’re too interesting.

- Kef

I haven’t played any of the other games you mentioned but I plan on at least trying Assassin’s Creed 2 when my friend gets it and as for L4D2 I’m not sure I’ll get into it. After playing the demo I feel like it’s too much like the first one that I’m not even going to bother buying it. From what I’ve seen and played it is pretty awesome but Left 4 Dead just doesn’t have the same ninche in my heart it used to.

That’s the case with pretty much everything Rogers has ever written. But pound for pound, I think he remains the most interesting writer about videogames today. Have you read his review of Super Mario Bros 3 over at action button dot net? It’s classic.

I find this particularly interesting considering that the concept of the phrase “I love you” — in the way that we usually use it — simply does not exist in Japanese. You will often see it translated as 愛している (aishite iru, often romanized as ‘aishiteiru’ without the space), which does quite literally mean “I love you”, but Japanese people just don’t say it to each other. The Japanese sentiment seems to be, “Don’t say it, show it.”

Strangely enough, when a Japanese person wants to ignore convention and say it anyway, they often choose to just say it in English.

- Kef