Why I’m launching a feminist video video games web site in 2026

[ad_1] W hether you’re studying concerning the impending AI bubble bursting or concerning the online game business’s mass layoffs and cancelled tasks, 2026 doesn't really feel like a hopeful time for gaming. What’s extra, video games journalists – in addition to all different kinds of journalists – have been dropping their jobs at alarming charges, making it tough to adequately cowl these crises. Donald Trump’s White Home, in the meantime, is utilizing online game memes as ICE recruitment instruments, and recreation studios are backing away from range and inclusion initiatives in response to the broader world’s slide to the best.

The manosphere is again, and we’ve misplaced mainstream feminist web sites equivalent to Teen Vogue; bigots in every single place are celebrating what they see because the demise of “woke”. Put all of it collectively and we have now a dismal stew of doom for somebody like me, a queer girl and a feminist who’s been a video games journalist and critic since 2007.

The whole lot I simply listed off in that paragraph speaks to an pressing want for one thing totally different. For this reason I’m launching a gender and identity-focused gaming publication known as Mothership. It’s impartial and worker-owned; it'll depend on subscribers’ assist to exist. Mothership will concentrate on reporting on the nice and dangerous of modern-day game-making – alongside investigations, evaluations, criticism, and historic deep dives into video games and builders who paved the best way to now. It is going to be a web site for individuals who learn the information with dread, together with gaming information, and fear that Gamergaters bought what they at all times wished. And will probably be a spot for readers who want there was one thing like a Teen Vogue, however for video games (and and not using a company proprietor to kneecap it).

In spite of everything, the final 20 years have seen a variety of precise, useful change, and trendy video games are proof of that. We exist, now, in a gaming world with extra feminine characters, extra non-binary characters, extra queer characters, and extra characters who don’t fall into rigidly outlined gender stereotypes. The GDC State of the Sport Trade survey for 2025 discovered that 66% of surveyed recreation builders had been male, in contrast with 75% in 2020, and 94% in 2009.

Extra individuals than ever can now see themselves mirrored in recreation characters, and extra numerous growth groups are creating them. However change has not come simple – and we’ve seen a variety of backlash to this progress. Few web sites nonetheless in existence are in a position to cowl this backlash whereas additionally maintaining their reporters secure and motivated to proceed.

I've dreamed of founding a web site like this for a very long time; it’s not as if readers haven’t wished it prior to now. The issue I noticed with the thought was not that individuals wouldn’t need it, however reasonably that I didn’t see a great way to pay for it. Journalism has been going through a monetisation disaster for the reason that creation of the web. It’s arduous to persuade readers to pay for one thing they're used to getting free of charge.

However I do know the readers are there. Within the mid-2010s, I labored for a small “geek lady” feminist web site known as the Mary Sue, and it was a novel pleasure to put in writing very particular articles for a really particular viewers. The Mary Sue relied on promoting earnings, which meant that every one of us needed to write as much as six articles each weekday; there wasn’t time to spend on investigative reporting, for instance, or long-form crucial essays. I’m nonetheless happy with what we achieved, regardless of the depth of these working circumstances, to not point out the quantity of harassment we confronted only for present. However I at all times dreamed of working for a spot that had the identical editorial remit with out the cruel working circumstances and quotas.

Later, I left the Mary Sue and went on to work for Kotaku after which Polygon, each big video games web sites the place I used to be writing for broader audiences, reasonably than the hyper-specific one we catered to on the Mary Sue. As I watched many smaller video games web sites crumble over the course of the 2010s and 20s, I figured this was the one sort of video games web site that was going to outlive. The concept of working for a small, feminist video games web site – my dream – more and more appeared like an unattainable speck of starlight in a far-off galaxy.

The brand for Mothership, a newly launched feminist video games web site. {Photograph}: Mothership Media LLC However then, in the summertime of 2025, my then-employer Polygon underwent a mass layoff and acquisition. We went from a employees of 42 individuals to simply eight. After a very disheartening video name with our web site’s new house owners, I realised I used to be going to should give up. Each piece of the dream felt effectively and actually useless. I had not bought into journalism to be taken benefit of by individuals who noticed me and my colleagues as so simply replaceable as to be barely human.

One other considered one of my colleagues at Polygon – Zoe Hannah, video games editor – give up as effectively, for related causes. She hit me up with an concept she had for a feminist video games web site. “You must do it,” I advised her. After which I sat there for a second and thought of it. No, we should always do it! This was what I had wished to do, earlier than the business had reworked me into somebody so gnarled and jaded that I not believed it was even attainable.

Six months on, after many DMs with former colleagues from Polygon, the Mary Sue and Kotaku, plus different notable writers who’ve coated gender and id in video games – Zoe and I are launching Mothership collectively, in the present day. Now we have had the advantage of recommendation and inspiration from many different impartial, worker-owned retailers which have come earlier than us, equivalent to Defector, the Flytrap, and Aftermath. Already, we’ve surpassed 1,200 paid subscribers. (I knew the readers had been there.) And we don’t want tens of millions of them. Mothership is a publication for a really particular viewers: the individuals who don’t match the mould of the masculine, hardcore gamer picture that advertising and popular culture have been dispensing for the reason that 90s. We wish to serve this viewers effectively.

I consider our web site is a necessity in our present political local weather. It ought to have existed earlier than, once I and tens of millions of different ladies who grew up enjoying video games had been made to really feel misplaced by media and promoting that was laser-focused on teenage boys. But it surely’s not too late for me to ensure it exists now.