title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The main cast for the season includes Colter as Cage; Mahershala Ali as Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes; Simone Missick as Misty Knight; Theo Rossi as Hernan "Shades" Alvarez; Erik LaRay Harvey as Willis Stryker / Diamondback, whose involvement was not officially announced by Marvel prior to the season's release, as he agreed not to do any publicity for the show to not "ruin the twist" of Stryker being the season's main villain; Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple, reprising her role from "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones"; and Alfre Woodard as Mariah Dillard.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: In September 2015, Frank Whaley was cast as Rafael Scarfe. Sean Ringgold and Karen Pittman were revealed to be involved in the series in March 2016, playing Sugar and Priscilla Ridley, respectively. Also recurring throughout the season are Ron Cephas Jones as Bobby Fish, Jacob Vargas as Domingo Colon, Darius Kaleb as Lonnie Wilson, Jade Wu as Connie Lin, Deborah Ayorinde as Candace Miller, Justin Swain as Mark Bailey, Jaiden Kaine as Zip, Dawn-Lyen Gardner as Megan McLaren, Jeremiah Richard Craft as D.W. Griffith, Michael Kostroff as Noah Burstein, Tijuana Ricks as Thembi Wallace, and John Clarence Stewart as Alex Wesley.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Several other actors also reprise roles from other Marvel Netflix shows: Parisa Fitz-Henley returns as Cage's deceased wife Reva Connors from "Jessica Jones"; Rob Morgan reprises the role of Turk Barrett from "Daredevil"; Rachael Taylor provides the voice of Trish Walker, who she plays in "Jessica Jones", for a radio talk show; and Danny Johnson and Stephen Rider reprise their roles of Benjamin Donovan and Blake Tower from the second season of "Daredevil".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Costume designer Stephanie Maslansky returned from the same role on "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones". Like the main characters of those shows, Cage has his own wardrobe evolution throughout the season after his initial look of T-shirts, jeans, leather jackets or an army jacket was introduced in "Jessica Jones". The series opted to depict Cage in a Trayvon Martin-inspired hoodie, but introduces the character's classic costume for a brief flashback. Colter said that the costume, designed in the blacksploitation era, "is not made for serious moments", but the series was able to poke fun at it in the brief scene. In looking to pay homage to Cage's original costume with his updated clothing, Maslansky and Coker considered having him wear gold clothing, but thought that would be too on the nose and impractical for someone trying not to draw attention. Instead, Maslansky lined the insides of Cage's hoodies with yellow, so the color could frame the character's face in close ups. In contrast to Cage's hoodie, with jeans and T-shirts, many of the series' villains wear well-tailored suits. Stokes does this because he wants to present himself as "a wealthy, successful businessman", and wears a lot of suits from Dolce & Gabbana and Zegna. One of his suits for the show was custom made. To pay homage to the comics, Maslansky dressed Ali in a green suit for his introduction, using a subtle shade of green to avoid being flamboyant. The character subsequently is always wearing something green, like emerald earrings for one costume. The designer noted that many of these elements would not be noticed by the audience, but they made a difference to Ali when he was getting into character. For the character Shades, brands such as Hugo Boss, Helmut Lang, Prada, and Ferragamo were used "because he wasn't trying to hide who he was", while Misty Knight, in her final shot of the season, is shown wearing a version of her own iconic comic costume. That look includes leather pants and an "interesting cold-shoulder"-shaped top; a cream-colored top that fit that shape was found and dyed red for the scene.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The sets were designed and dressed to consist of strong colors that could be emphasized by the series' cinematography, to help differentiate the show from the noir look and tone of "Jessica Jones". The nightclub Harlem's Paradise was intended to invoke the real-life Harlem nightclubs the Cotton Club and the Lenox Lounge, with production designer Loren Weeks, also returning from that capacity on "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones", taking specific inspiration from The Apollo and Smalls Paradise. Because of the series' filming schedule and Coker's desire to film live musical performances in the club, it was decided that filming in an actual nightclub would be unrealistic. A set was built for the location, with Weeks using an Art Deco style to give the club "a very distinctive look, and giving it an historical anchor", and indicate that it had been a successful club around the 1920s and 1930s and was now being refurbished as part of Stokes and Dillard's "New Harlem Renaissance". Weeks felt the building could be a metaphor for the political undercurrents of the series. Set decorator Alison Froling, whom Weeks worked with on the other Marvel Netflix series, furbished the Harlem's Paradise set with contemporary furniture, finishes, and lighting fixtures to contrast the older architectural design. The lounge side of the club features two murals by Archibald J. Motley, an artist from the original Harlem Renaissance. Coker insisted that the set for Pop's Barbershop be at street level, to connect it "both visually and geographically" with the Harlem street. For budget reasons, dressing an actual location as the barbershop was not going to work, but building a set to be at street level was also problematic since they would not be able to show people or cars driving past the window that you would see on an actual street. It was decided that a real location be found that is below street level so that scenes could be filmed on the street there, but would not have to match inside scenes filmed on the set because of the obstructed view of the street. To emphasize this, the set was built even lower than the actual store and a fake wall was added to the location. Coker instructed the series' prop master to carefully choose a selection of books to appear in Cage's bedroom, including Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Marvel announced in February 2014 that the series would be filmed in New York City, with Quesada stating in April that the show would be filming on location in addition to sound stage work. In July 2015, Loeb stated that "Luke Cage" was prepping to begin filming, and by September 2015, production had begun under the working title "Tiara". Filming concluded in March 2016.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Filming took place in Harlem, including Lenox Avenue and areas where "American Gangster" was shot, the Mount Olivet Baptist Church, St. Nicholas Park, Jackie Robinson Park, Riverside Park, and the Riverside Drive viaduct; in Washington Heights, including at the United Palace; Cortlandt Alley in Chinatown; in areas of Queens for when Cage escapes Seagate Prison and puts on the classic Power Man costume; the Roosevelt Island steam plant and Queens Detention Facility for interiors of Seagate; the Music Hall of Williamsburg for the exterior of Harlem's Paradise; the former Fulton Correctional Facility in The Bronx for the Crispus Attucks Complex; and the Long Island City portion of Newtown Creek. It was important to Coker for the series to film in Harlem, "the only place in the city where you see those wide boulevards. We really wanted to capture the color, the rhythm of the streets". For example, the production had the opportunity to film at a barbershop in Greenwich Village, which would have been much easier for the production, but Coker said "the opportunity to film it in Harlem was irresistible. I didn't want us to talk about Harlem and then not film" there. Soundstage filming took place at Broadway Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For the church that Cage and Temple visit in Savannah, Georgia, an abandoned church in The Bronx was found that was being sold, and the production was able to "graffiti up and sort of ruin" it. They also had to spend two days carting snow from the site before filming, after a recent blizzard.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Manuel Billeter served as director of photography for the series, after doing the same for "Jessica Jones". He worked with director Paul McGuigan to establish the look of the show in the first two episodes, with Coker hiring McGuigan based on his direction of the "Sherlock" episode "A Scandal in Belgravia". Coker was delighted to learn how little CGI McGuigan used to craft the visuals of that episode, and wanted the same approach for "Luke Cage", "just old school camera stuff. He brought a very analogue perspective, analogue feel to the show." McGuigan, Coker explained, directed "every scene [as] long takes, from multiple takes over and over again. We would run an entire eight-page scene almost like a play, so when it comes together it's seamless." McGuigan was inspired by the works of photographers Gordon Parks, Tony Ray-Jones, and Jack Garofalo. Billeter looked to differentiate the look of "Luke Cage" from "Jessica Jones", using modified gels on lights, and saturating and warming colors in color correction to give Harlem a more glowing look. Coker noted that the series' has a color scheme of yellow, brown, amber, and gold, in contrast to the violet tint Billeter gave "Jessica Jones" to reflect that series' villain, the Purple Man. The series was shot on Netflix's standard 4K cameras, with Billeter pairing them with Panavision Primo lenses that were "custom treated with a reflective coating in between the glass elements in the interior of the lens, causing more flares and bringing down the contrast in addition to very slightly de-focusing them" in order to "add something magic, less controlled and more cinematic". Billeter filmed Colter with a lot of low angles to make him look "even more heroic", and kept the camera close to him with Harlem in the background so that Cage "is always the dominant force in his shots, but he also remains a part of the terrain. The shots aren't of him alone; they’re of him in his home."


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Cage's fight style in the series was called "smack-fu" by Coker, referring to the way he tried not to punch anybody since that would probably kill them with his super strength. To film the effect of bullets bouncing off of Cage, remote controlled devices were attached to Colter and operated by somebody behind the cameras. The devices could burn his skin if not attached properly, and Colter almost lost hearing in one ear after forgetting to insert the required ear pieces. The third episode begins with a couch coming out of the window of the fictional Crispus Attucks complex in Harlem. This was a tease of a large fight scene, the series' version of the 'superhero hallway fight' made famous in "Daredevil." Filming for the fight was influenced by "Arnold Schwarzenegger’s invading the police station in "Terminator"", and was one of the toughest sequences for the crew to shoot; it took a 14-hour day, and Colter attributed the successful completion of the sequence, including the couch shot, to director Guillermo Navarro. Colter also called the fourth episode particularly difficult to film, taking around 12 or 13 days to shoot. The episode was written by executive producer Charles Murray, who looked to organically transition the character's origin story from the original comics into the modern world of the series for the episode. This involved flashbacks with Colter in makeup and different costumes.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Scenes shot at the United Palace theater created new challenges for the series' stunt team due to not being able to drill holes in the historic building for creating anchors for wire rigs and other complex stunts. The crew had to find other ways to weigh down the equipment to remain safe for the actors and stunt doubles. For the explosion at the restaurant "Genghis Connie's", a practical explosion was created in the storefront on location, which was extended with visual effects to show the destruction of the building. A set showing the inside of the rubble of the destroyed building was then created on a soundstage, while a lot was found that "feels" similar to the original location, where rubble could by piled and fire trucks could be brought to show the exterior. The lot was previously being used to store vehicles that had been seized as evidence, with the production having to negotiate with the NYPD to have the vehicles moved elsewhere. Looking back on the filming style of the season, and comparing it to the previous Marvel Netflix series, Weeks said that the crew members working on each of the shows wanted them all to feel like they are set in the same city, but also for the world of each character to be distinct, and for this series they embraced Harlem "for exactly what it is" to differentiate the "visual identity. Some of that is lighting, and of course, some of that is production design and location work ... the color, the life, the activity on the streets. There's so much character to the neighborhood… I think it was important to feel that these characters were rooted in the real place".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The series' production sound mixer Joshua Anderson, who worked on "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones" as well, worked to capture as much sound on set with boom mics over lavaliers to ground the unbelievable elements of the series in "naturalistic sound". He noted that Ali's Cottonmouth laugh and many of Colter's lines in particular sounded "incredible on the boom". Anderson also talked about "Luke Cage" adding a new layer of sound that the other series did not—music. The captured sound had to be clear to be properly mixed in with music later, and live performances in Harlem's Paradise had to be recorded for which Anderson and his team had experience after working on the musical series "Smash".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: FuseFX provided 867 visual effects shots for the season, with a team of 15 to 20 members under FuseFX New York's production head and senior visual effects supervisor Greg Anderson. Anderson explained that the series' challenging schedule was made easier by the company's catalog of previously used digital assets and effect elements that can be reused, or partially reused, where appropriate in new projects. Several effects shots were created to show Cage's abilities, including a slow motion shot of a thug's fist collapsing into a compound fracture while punching Cage in the face. A standout effects sequence for the season was when Stokes fires a missile at a building, which took FuseFX 130 days to complete. It involved creating a CG building and integrating it into footage of a real New York City block, matching up with different camera angles and sources of light throughout the sequence. The effects team then had to digitally destroy the building, and create "a complex array of fireballs and falling debris".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: In April 2016, Coker revealed that Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad were composing the series' score, describing it as "a confluence of multiple genres, a bit of ['90s] hip-hop, soul, psychedelic rock and classical". Younge and Muhammad composed the score as if they were creating 13 albums, one for each episode, with the music inspired by Wu-Tang Clan, Ennio Morricone, and Muhammad's group A Tribe Called Quest. The duo composed around twenty minutes of music for each episode, composing the entire season's score in nine months. Younge and Muhammad were encouraged to "push" the sound of the score as far as they could, and were allowed the use of a full, 30-piece orchestra for recording. They also arranged an original rap single, "Bulletproof Love", which features Method Man (who performs it in the show).


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Songs from Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, John Lee Hooker ("It Serves You Right to Suffer" and "I'm Bad Like Jesse James"), Dusty Springfield ("Son of a Preacher Man"), and Wu-Tang Clan ("Bring da Ruckus") are used in the season. It also features onscreen performances by various artists as the live performances in the Harlem's Paradise nightclub, which Coker wanted to use to help capture the vibe of the neighborhood. Coker wanted Prince to perform at the nightclub for the season finale, before his death in April 2016. The "swear jar" that appears in the season was designed by Coker in hopes of convincing the artist to make the cameo appearance, as he was known to have a "swear jar" himself since he was a devout Jehovah's Witness. The role was ultimately filled by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, which Coker said was "the better choice" because "that sequence is about Mariah being crowned." A soundtrack album for the season was released on October 7, digitally and pressed on yellow vinyl by Mondo.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Coker said that "one of the things that's really the cornerstone of '90s hip-hop is sampling, so we have a lot of influences that we wear openly", which he compared to the style of Quentin Tarantino. He continued, "I think what makes it feel new is the fact that we’re showing you can be both. We’re showing that you can do Ralph Ellison at the same times as you’re doing Chester Himes." Coker was as specific with his choices of music in the season as "Martin Scorsese is with the rock 'n' roll references like in "Casino" or in "Goodfellas"", rather than just adding hip-hop music for the sake of it. He highlighted the use of "I'm Bad Like Jesse James" in the seventh episode, which he had been trying to use in something for 20 years, that "builds up and coincides with the explosion that happens on screen and it's so subtle. That's the kind of stuff I geek out over."


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Part of the series takes place simultaneously with the events of the second season of "Daredevil". Throughout the season, the villains use Hammer Industries weapons to counter Cage's abilities. Justin Hammer and his company were introduced in "Iron Man 2" (2010), and Hammer was last seen incarcerated in Seagate Prison in the Marvel One-Shot "All Hail the King" (2014); Seagate is depicted in "Luke Cage", as the prison where Carl Lucas was sent and where there are rumored "millionaires hidden in the basement". The series references the events of "The Avengers" (2012) and members of that team, as well as the future Defenders and their own series. Specific mentions of the latter include Madame Gao's operations in "Daredevil", the widely known villains Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle, and a flier for Colleen Wing's martial arts class, to then be introduced in "Iron Fist".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The first trailer for the series debuted exclusively on Netflix, autoplaying after the final episode of the second season of "Daredevil". In July 2016, Colter, Woodard, Ali, Rossi, Missick, Whaley, and Coker appeared at San Diego Comic-Con to promote the series and debut footage. At the end of August, Netflix released the first part of the "Street Level Hero" digital social video series. The series looked to "blend fiction with history by taking audiences behind the curtain on the themes that give the show its street-level authenticity and cultural relevance." The first part was centered on the music of the series, with commentary from Coker, Colter, composers Younge and Muhammad, A$AP Ferg and Method Man. At the end of September, the second part of the "Street Level Hero" series was released, focusing on Harlem, with commentary from Coker, Colter, A$AP Ferg, Method Man, and Harlem style icon Dapper Dan. On September 28, 2016, a premiere for the series was held at the AMC Magic Johnson in Harlem.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The first season of "Luke Cage" was released on September 30, 2016, on the streaming service Netflix worldwide, in Ultra HD 4K. The season was enhanced to be available in high dynamic range after its initial release by post-production vendor Deluxe. The 13 hour-long episodes were released simultaneously, as opposed to a serialized format, to encourage binge-watching, a format which has been successful for other Netflix series.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The season, along with the additional "Luke Cage" season and the other Marvel Netflix series, was removed from Netflix on March 1, 2022, due to Netflix's license for the series ending and Disney regaining the rights. The season became available on Disney+ in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand on March 16, ahead of its debut in Disney+'s other markets by the end of 2022.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The season was released on DVD in Region 2 and Blu-ray in Region B on November 27, 2017, in Region 4 on December 6, 2017, and in Region 1 and Region A on December 12, 2017. In Region A, the season featured packaging designed by Quesada, and the bonus feature "Offstage at Harlem's Paradise", a roundtable discussion with Colter, Woodard, Rossi, and Missick discussing their time during filming on the season.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: As Netflix does not reveal subscriber viewership numbers for any of their original series, Symphony Technology Group compiled data for the season based on people using software on their phones that measures television viewing by detecting a program's sound. According to Symphony, "Luke Cage" opened stronger initially than the Netflix original series "Making a Murderer" and "Stranger Things", but its performance over its first month fell short of both, comparatively. Symphony estimated that 6.34% of viewers age 18–49 were watching "Luke Cage" in an average minute in the first 32 days following its release, with "Making a Murderer" and "Stranger Things" seeing 9.1% and 9.81% of viewers, respectively. Symphony also estimated that 3.388 million viewers age 18–49 were watching an episode of "Luke Cage" over the average minute in its first weekend of release. The marketing analytics firm Jumpshot determined the season was the fourth-most viewed Netflix season in the first 30 days after it premiered, garnering 27% of the viewers that the second season of "Daredevil" received, which was the most viewed season according to Jumpstart. Jumpshot, which "analyzes click-stream data from an online panel of more than 100 million consumers", looked at the viewing behavior and activity of the company's U.S. members, factoring in the relative number of U.S. Netflix viewers who watched at least one episode of the season.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 90% approval rating with an average rating of 8.00/10 based on 72 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "An immersive, socially conscious narrative and a confident, charismatic lead performance make "Marvel's Luke Cage" a stellar sampling of the new Marvel/Netflix universe." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 79 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Reviewing the first seven episodes of the season, Allison Keene of Collider awarded it 5 stars out of 5, describing the episodes as an "intimate" portrait of the Harlem culture, and noting that each character had distinct personalities and memorable moments. Keene specifically praised Colter. Mike Cecchini of Den of Geek spoke positively of the season, particularly the cast, atmosphere, and "willingness to go places that other Marvel Studios productions can't." He found Simone Missick to be the standout performer, praised the soundtrack which has "the most active role in a superhero production since "Guardians of the Galaxy"", and was equally impressed with the original score by Younge and Muhammad. However, Cecchini felt the season repeated some issues from previous Marvel Netflix series, such as the use of archetypes and monologues.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: "Deadline Hollywood" Dominic Patten called "Luke Cage" "one of the most socially relevant and smartest shows on the small screen you will see this year... the series reaches both back and forward into the culture of heroes and an America looking for a true game-changer." David Milner for Digital Spy was also positive about the season's exploration of African-American history, but felt Ali's Cottonmouth did not reach the heights of previous Marvel Netflix villains. Maureen Ryan of "Variety" felt the season "has a more than adequate supply of pleasures", with a strong cast that could overcome some of its issues including a "somewhat clunky pilot and a notable tendency to sprawl". Merrill Barr, writing for "Forbes", called the season "another winner for Marvel and Netflix that shouldn't be missed," praising its story, twists, and "the 70s stylings that shake things up real well."


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Giving the season 4.5 stars out of 5, Cinema Blend's Eric Eisenberg felt "Luke Cage" "has a unique flavor that could very well lead it to being called the best Netflix/Marvel series so far by the time its first season is over," a sentiment also shared by Helen O'Hara of "The Daily Telegraph". Eisenberg also praised the members of the supporting cast, including Missick, Whaley, Frankie Faison as Pop, and Rossi, as well as Ali and Woodard as the main villains. Despite "weak exposition delivery in the pilot, repetitive narrative structures, and individual arcs that are cut short too soon," Eisenberg concluded that "Luke Cage" presented an area of the MCU unlike any previous films or television series and had done so with "a compelling vision and atmosphere". David Betancourt, for "The Washington Post", concluded that "Luke Cage" is "Netflix's best Marvel show to date. When given the chance to bring to life one of the most well-known heroes of color around, Marvel and Netflix produced something that is undeniably and unapologetically black and beautiful." "TV Guide"s Alexander Zalban called the season one of 2016's "most vital, important" and "timely" television series, saying it had "incredibly layered and iconic performances" from the cast.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Matt Webb Mitovich of TVLine, who gave the season a "B", felt Harlem was "a wonderfully utilized character" in the season and a welcome change from the Hell's Kitchen setting of the previous Marvel Netflix shows. He also praised the strong performances from Colter (bringing "a needed intensity") and Ali ("compelling and threatening"), but felt some of its "talkier moments" and pacing were issues. "Entertainment Weekly"s Jeff Jensen awarded the season a "B−", calling it a "meaningful attempt at developing a new-model black hero. As entertaining drama, it's trapped in a not-so-Marvelous trapped cage". He criticized the season as "one more piece of Marvel pop that expresses its ballyhooed shared-world premise so poorly, it's jarring when it even happens," and also took issue with elements of the season's logic, pacing, and "thinly stretched plot". Reviewing the entire season, Terri Schwartz of IGN awarded it an 8.4 out of 10, saying, ""Marvel's Luke Cage" doesn't reach the heights of "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones", and its flawed second half ends up diminishing what was otherwise a fantastic season. But with something important to say and interesting new characters, "Luke Cage" is another win for Marvel's Netflix shows."


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Keene highlighted the use of race in the season, and how it did not just study crime but also "the beleaguered police, sleazy politicians, and the young people in the community who see guns and drugs as an easy way to make money." Zalban felt that, just like "Jessica Jones" "sucked fans in by being a superhero detective story set in the Marvel Universe, while actually being one of the most powerful and thorough explorations of sexual assault ever committed to film," so too would "Luke Cage" with the racial aspects it covered.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Lorraine Ali at the "Los Angeles Times" praised the season for giving an alternative perspective on "black America" to that provided by Donald Trump, depicting a "nuanced black and Latino community of professionals and working class people, trees and cityscapes, complex conversations and shorthand street slang." Ali felt that Cage's focus on teaching others about the culture of Harlem rather than always using his abilities made him one of the more interesting and relevant modern superheroes, but also noted that he could be old-fashioned in his earnestness at times, such as in his sensitivity towards the use of the word "nigger". Reed Ramsey highlighted the nods to the Black Lives Matter movement in the season for "Odyssey", especially the depiction of police brutality against black civilians and the use of hoodies covered in bullet holes as a symbol for standing up against the system. Ramsey also praised the fact that all the main characters in the season were not white, and that the characters in positions of power were women. Writing for "Study Breaks", Aliyah Thomas found some of the season's symbolism to be "hackneyed", but still felt it was "one of the most promising narratives I have yet to come across on the black experience" and "unapologetically black". Thomas highlighted the humanity of Cage, as well as the use of music to evoke the blaxploitation era of films in which the comics were originally written which she felt accurately encompassed both the culture of Harlem and the exploitation that Cage and other black Americans have endured in the past.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Commenting on the overall response to the season for ScreenPrism, Elyce Rae Helford claimed that the season is "both progressive and regressive in its race politics", with Coker actively trying to avoid the stereotypes of the blaxploitation era by featuring an anti-gun hero, strong black female characters, and other characters from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. However, the season was unable to completely avoid this because it also embraces music that was made famous to general audiences through blaxploitation films, and because it features a significant amount of crime and violence. Helford found a generally positive response to the show's use of the word "nigger" and Cage's dislike of it, but also detailed criticisms that some had regarding Cage's conservative personality and the fact that his political ideologies did not make him a true representation of past civil rights leaders as some may have expected. For "The Daily Fandom", Rachel A. questioned why Cage was the right character to be the first black headliner of an MCU project, finding contrasting interpretations of his abilities: Cage could represent the fantasy of African-Americans "who face the very real prospect of that harm, and find escapism in imagining a state of immunity from it"; or he could represent the stereotype of African-Americans having "a body that can endure endless abuse and exploitation and still produce economic value". She also felt that Cage's apparent inability to be killed absolved Marvel from certain political issues, saying white audiences did not have to question whether Cage's life "mattered", as in "Black Lives Matter", because they would know that he is safe from harm.


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: Tomi Obaro specifically highlighted the season's women of color for BuzzFeed, finding the season to be a rare example of nuanced women of color who were not the main character. Obaro gave especial praise to the complex depictions of Dillard, Knight, and Temple, but noted that even the minor female characters were given exposition to add depth to their portrayals, and found many of these characters to be even more interesting than Cage and the other leading men of the season, feeling that Cage was boring and most of the male characters fit into simple archetypes. Veronica Hillsbring of "Essence" and Charles Pulliam-Moore of Splinter News agreed, with the latter calling the season's portrayal of women its "real strength" and praising it for "expanding the scope" of the MCU to include black women as both major heroes and villains. In response to these comments, Coker said, "Black women are the most passionate commentators, and even as black female geeks and nerds, they are rarely acknowledged. So this show is kind of a love letter to them." Contrasting some of these opinions, Noah Berlatsky of "Quartz" discussed some of the complexities of the male characters in the season, and how it questions the "toxic black male stereotypes" of masculinity and criminality, using the examples of Cage's intelligence and vulnerability, Pop's philosophy of peace and deescalation, and Stokes' love of music and unwillingness to become a criminal. However, Berlatsky felt the season failed to follow through with these questions, as "from the moment [Pop] first appears on screen, it's clear the ideology he represents is going to be discarded. "Luke Cage" recognizes young Cornell's gentleness and vulnerability. But it still has to turn him into Cottonmouth."


title: Luke Cage (season 1)

text: "Luke Cage" was included on multiple Best/Top TV Shows of 2016 lists, ranking on the African-American Film Critics Association's (5th), NPR's (6th), and Hidden Remote's (7th). It was also included on un-ranked lists from "The Huffington Post", "The Plain Dealer", TheWrap, and Yahoo! Comic Book Resources named "Just to Get a Rep" as the 9th best episode in 2016 among comic book-related television series. Additionally, "Luke Cage" was the third most trending television series search on Google for 2016, and the second highest rated science-fiction/fantasy/horror series on Rotten Tomatoes for the year.


title: ABP News

text: ABP News is an Indian Hindi-language free-to-air television news channel owned by ABP Group. The news channel was launched in 1998 originally as STAR News before being acquired by ABP Group. It won the Best Hindi News Channel award in the 21st edition of the Indian Television Academy Awards in 2022.


title: ABP News

text: The channel has been accused by protestors for being partial and supporting the ideology of the ruling government.


title: ABP News

text: ABP News was launched as STAR News on 18 February 1998 by satellite television provider Star India (Disney Star) in partnership with the NDTV media company, with the latter producing the channel's programming. Initially, a bilingual channel broadcasting in both English and Hindi, its programming turned Hindi-only since 2003, when Star's deal with NDTV expired.


title: ABP News

text: In that same year, the Indian government introduced a guideline limiting foreign equity in the national news business to 26%. As Star India was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based company Satellite Television Asia Region Ltd. (Star TV), it entered into a joint venture with the Ananda Bazar Patrika group (ABP) to form a new company, Media Content and Communications Services Pvt. Ltd. (MCCS), which took control of Star News's operations. ABP held a 74% majority stake while Star India reduced its participation with the remaining 26%.


title: ABP News

text: On 16 April 2012, ABP Group and Star India announced that they would discontinue the brand agreement that allowed MCCS to operate as "Star News". Thus, Star India would quit the news business in order to focus on entertainment. In addition, the company sold its minority stake in MCCS to ABP Group, which in turn renamed the channel to ABP News. The change was also replicated on other regional news channels operated by MCCS such as Bengali-language Star Ananda and Marathi-language Star Majha, which were renamed as ABP Ananda and ABP Majha, respectively. A Punjabi-language channel, ABP Sanjha was granted licence approval in 2014 and launched in that year. A Gujarati-language channel, ABP Asmita, was launched on 1 January 2016.


title: ABP News

text: All of ABP's channels, including ABP News, were gradually revamped throughout the second half of 2020, beginning with the renaming of parent-subsidiary ABP News Network to ABP Network in July 2020. A further rebranding, which affected the channels themselves, took place in the morning of 16 December 2020, with the launch of simpler, more modern logos and a new graphics package developed by Saffron Brand Consultants for all of ABP's channels. Additionally, ABP News acquired new equipment able to record content at 1080p and launched its own HD feed; the channel's SD feed turned into a downscaled, widescreen version of the HD feed. Prior to the HD feed launch, ABP News had launched a test HD feed in February of that same year, exclusively on satellite provider Hotstar and on ABP's online platforms, which was basically an upscaled version of the SD channel airing content stretched to fill the 16:9 screen. Although ABP Network's regional language channels were also rebranded, they remained airing at 4:3 standard definition.


title: ABP News

text: In 2018, former host Punya Prasun Bajpai stated that when he criticized the performance of one of prime minister Narendra Modi's projects directed towards poor farmers in his television show "Masterstroke", ABP News' satellite broadcasting was disrupted each time the program was aired. Former employees reported that the channel owners had pressured the host, Punya Prasun Bajpai, to quit the company. After his resignation, these technical issues immediately stopped. Another host, Abhisar Sharma, who challenged Modi's public safety strategies on ABP News, was fired that same day. He also said he was under pressure to leave.


title: ABP News

text: In April 2020, Newslaundry found that ABP News had published fake news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The case involved ABP News citing non-existent research to praise the strict lock-down imposed on the country by PM Narendra Modi.


The 2022 United States state legislative elections were held on November 8, 2022 for 88 state legislative chambers in 46 states. Across the fifty states, approximately 56 percent of all upper house seats and 92 percent of all lower house seats were up for election. These midterm elections coincided with other state and local elections, including gubernatorial elections in multiple states.


title: 2022 United States state legislative elections

text: Prior to the elections, Democrats hold 14 trifectas (control of the governor's office and legislative chambers), Republicans hold 23 trifectas, and 13 states have a divided government. These were the first elections affected by the 2020 redistricting cycle, which reapportioned state legislatures based on data from the 2020 United States census.


text: This is the first midterm election since 1934 in which the party of the incumbent president did not lose any state legislative chambers to the opposition.


text: The Democrats flipped the Minnesota Senate, Michigan Senate, Michigan House of Representatives, and Pennsylvania House of Representatives from Republican control, and established a coalition government in the Alaska Senate. Partisan control of the Alaska House of Representatives remains unknown as of , pending the organization of a majority caucus.


text: Several sites and individuals publish predictions of competitive chambers. These predictions look at factors such as the strength of the party, the strength of the candidates, and the partisan leanings of the state (reflected in part by the state's Cook Partisan Voting Index rating). The predictions assign ratings to each chambers, with the rating indicating the predicted advantage that a party has in winning that election.


text: All of the seats of the Alabama Senate and the Alabama House of Representatives are up for election to four-year terms in 2022. Republicans currently control both chambers.


text: Nineteen of the twenty seats of the Alaska Senate and all of the seats of the Alaska House of Representatives are up for election in 2022. The upper house is controlled by Republicans, while the lower house is controlled by a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents.


text: All of the seats of the Arizona Senate and the Arizona House of Representatives are up for election in 2022. Republicans currently control both chambers.


title: Government of West Bengal

text: The Government of West Bengal also known as the West Bengal Government, is the subnational government of the Indian state of West Bengal , created by the National Constitution as the state's legislative, executive and judicial authority. The State Governor acts as the head of state and is the highest nominal authority of the state power, however, it is the Chief Minister who is the chief executive authority and head of government.


title: Government of West Bengal

text: The Chief Minister is the head of government and is vested with most of the executive powers. Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, houses the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The temporary secretariat is located in the Nabanna building in the district of Howrah, adjacent to the state capital. The Calcutta High Court is located in Kolkata, which has jurisdiction over the whole of West Bengal and the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.


title: Government of West Bengal

text: The present Legislative Assembly of West Bengal is unicameral, consisting of 294 Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) including one nominated from the Anglo-Indian community. Its term is 5 years, unless sooner dissolved.


title: Government of West Bengal

text: The current chief minister is Mamata Banerjee, who assumed the office on 20 May 2011. She is the founder and leader of the All India Trinamool Congress party, which won 184 seats (out of 294) in the 2011 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election, 211 seats (out of 294) in the 2016 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election and 215 seats (out of 294) in the 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election.


title: Government of West Bengal

text: On 18 January 1862, under the Indian Councils Act of 1861, a 12-member Legislative Council for Bengal was founded by the Governor-General of India with the Lt Governor of Bengal and some nominated members. The strength of this council was gradually increased by subsequent acts. Under the Indian Councils Act of 1892, the maximum strength of the council was increased to 20 members out of which seven members were to be elected. After the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the number raised to 50 members.


The Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, sometimes referred to as the Irish border or British–Irish border, runs for from Lough Foyle in the north-west of Ireland to Carlingford Lough in the north-east, separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland.


title: Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border

text: Border markings are inconspicuous, in common with many inter-state borders in the European Union. As the two states share a Common Travel Area and () Northern Ireland (the only exception within the UK and only in some respects) and the Republic of Ireland are participants in the European Single Market, the border is essentially an open one, allowing free passage of people since 1923 and of goods since 1993. There are circa 270 public roads that cross the border. Following the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, this border is also the frontier between the EU and a non-member country. The Brexit withdrawal agreement commits all involved parties to maintaining an open border in Ireland, so that (in many respects) the "de facto" frontier is the Irish Sea between the two islands.


text: Originally intended as an internal boundary within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the border was created in 1921 under the United Kingdom Parliament's Government of Ireland Act 1920. Prior to this, a separatist Irish parliament had been established in Dublin, which did not recognise the Government of Ireland Act, and was actively engaged in the Irish War of Independence. The Act was intended to deliver Home Rule in Ireland, with separate parliaments for Southern Ireland (which included three of the nine counties of Ulster) and Northern Ireland. Six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland were assigned to Northern Ireland, and the rest of Ireland comprising 26 counties to Southern Ireland.


text: The conclusion of the Irish War of Independence, and the subsequent signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, led to the creation of the Irish Free State – a dominion established for the whole island of Ireland on 6 December 1922. The border became an international frontier after the Parliament of Northern Ireland exercised its right to opt out of the Free State on 7 December 1922. The partition of 1921 created only a provisional boundary; a Boundary Commission met in 1924–25 to fix a permanent border between the two jurisdictions "in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions". The manner in which the Boundary Commission clause was drafted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty was only explicit in its ambiguity. Amongst politicians in Southern Ireland, there was remarkably little attention paid to the clause during the debates on the Treaty. The Republican activist Seán MacEntee was a "lone voice" in warning that the commission would involve an exercise "in transferring from the jurisdiction of the Government of Northern Ireland certain people and certain districts which that Government cannot govern; and by giving instead to Northern Ireland, certain other districts—unionist districts of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal, so that not only under this Treaty are we going to partition Ireland, not only are we going to partition Ulster, but we are going to partition even the counties of Ulster."


text: The commission recommended parcels of land be transferred in both directions, primarily "in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants". The data was partially leaked to the press in 1925. Westminster urged the commissioners to suppress the rest of the document, and so no exchanges of land ultimately took place. The full report was not published until 1969- which did eventually confirm the accuracy of the earlier leak. The interim boundary was formalised in December 1925 by an inter-government agreement that was ratified by the three parliaments in London, Dublin and Belfast, without changes from the 1920 demarcation lines. The border agreement was then lodged with the League of Nations on 8 February 1926, making it a matter of international law.


text: The Irish Free State was renamed "Ireland" () by the 1937 constitution, and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 formally declared that the state was a republic with the official description "Republic of Ireland" while not changing its name, which remains "Ireland".


text: Customs controls were introduced on the frontier on 1 April 1923, shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State. These controls were maintained, with varying degrees of severity, until 1 January 1993, when systematic customs checks were abolished between European Community member states as part of the single market. There are no longer any operational customs posts along either side of the border. Except during a brief period during World War II, it has never been necessary for Irish or British citizens to produce a passport to cross the border. However during the 1970s troubles, security forces regularly asked travellers for identification.


text: During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, there were British military checkpoints on main border crossings and UK security forces made the remaining crossings impassable. By about 2005, in phase with implementation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the last remaining controls were definitively removed.


text: In October 2007, details began to emerge of a British Government plan that might end the Common Travel Area encompassing the United Kingdom and Ireland (and also the Isle of Man and Channel Islands) in 2009, possibly creating an anomalous position for Northern Ireland in the process. In a statement to Dáil Éireann, the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern assured the House that "British authorities have no plans whatsoever to introduce any controls on the land border between North and South. I want to make that clear. All they are looking at is increased cross-border cooperation, targeting illegal immigrants." This immediately raised concerns north of the border. Jim Allister, a former member of the Democratic Unionist Party and then a Member of the European Parliament, told "The Times" that it would be "intolerable and preposterous if citizens of the UK had to present a passport to enter another part of the UK".


text: In July 2008, the UK and Irish governments announced their intent to resume controls over their common border and the Common Travel Area in general. Each proposed to introduce detailed passport control over travellers from the other state, where travel is by air or sea. However, the land border will be 'lightly controlled'. In a joint statement, Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, and Dermot Ahern, the Irish Justice Minister, said:


text: "The Times" reported that another consultation paper was to be published in the autumn of 2008 on whether people travelling between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom should be subject to further checks.


text: One proposal is expected to suggest extending the electronic borders scheme, requiring travellers from Northern Ireland to provide their personal details in advance. This would mean residents of one part of the UK being treated differently from others when travelling within the country, something to which Unionists would object.


text: 2011 marked the first public agreement between the UK and Irish governments concerning the maintenance of the Common Travel Area. Officially entitled the "Joint Statement Regarding Co-Operation on Measures to Secure the External Common Travel Area Border", it was signed in Dublin on 20 December 2011 by the UK's immigration minister, Damian Green and Ireland's Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter.


text: The border is linked with 268 (often approximated as "up to 275") border crossing points. Every month approximately 177,000 lorries, 208,000 vans, and 1,850,000 cars cross the border. Around 30,000 people cross the border daily to commute.


text: The Troubles in Northern Ireland required that attempts were made from the early 1970s until the late 1990s to enforce border controls. Many smaller cross-border roads were cratered or blockaded by the British Army with the intention of making them impassable to regular traffic. Bridges were also destroyed to prevent access at unauthorised border crossings (known officially as "unapproved roads"). In particular, the border area in south County Armagh was dominated by British Army surveillance posts. Derry, the second-largest city in Northern Ireland, is close to the border with County Donegal. This meant that there was a heavy security presence around the city, often impeding traffic and general movement between Derry City and County Donegal. Despite these measures, the border was simply too long and had too many minor access roads to enable control of all cross-border movements. In any case, authorised crossing-points on the border remained open to civilian traffic in both directions at all times although vehicles and their occupants were subject to detailed searches while some crossing points were closed to vehicle traffic at night when customs posts were unstaffed.


text: Difficulty in patrolling parts of the border and large taxation/currency differences (particularly during the 1980s) led to widespread smuggling. However, greater European integration led to roughly similar tax rates on most items and easing of restrictions on cross-border trade. Smuggling nowadays is mostly limited to fuel, livestock and a seasonal trade in illegal fireworks, which are strictly regulated in Ireland – in both countries there are restrictions on the types which can be used and a licence is required to possess or use fireworks, but in Ireland such licences are seldom issued to private individuals.


text: While it still exists "de jure", the border presents no impediments to traffic in either direction. The Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland, EU integration and the demilitarisation of the border following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement resulted in an open border by default. Following the Northern Ireland peace process, military electronic surveillance and permanent vehicle checkpoints have been replaced by routine PSNI patrols.


text: The UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum on 23 June 2016. Their withdrawal made the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border an external EU border. The Irish government, the UK government and EU representatives, all stated that they did not wish for a hard border in Ireland due to the sensitive nature of the border.


text: In order to forestall this, and to prevent a backdoor into the European Single Market, the UK proposed a backstop agreement within the Withdrawal Agreement that would put Northern Ireland under a range of EU rules in order to forestall the need for border checks. This was opposed by the subsequent British government as producing an effective border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In late October 2019, the UK and EU reached a Brexit withdrawal agreement which contains a revised Northern Ireland Protocol that commits the UK to maintaining an open border in Ireland, so that (in many respects), the "de facto" border is the Irish Sea.


text: As well as immigration and trade, a range of other issues of cross border cooperation, such as on health, were raised.


text: The border is extremely irregular. Its irregularities were inherited from well-established county boundaries.


text: The border is not explicitly described in statute but only implicitly inferred from the territorial definition of Northern


text: Ireland as contained in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It states that "Northern Ireland shall consist of the parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry, and Southern Ireland shall consist of so much of Ireland as is not comprised within the said parliamentary counties and boroughs."


text: The border has some distinctive features. Firstly, how irregular it is: the border is about four times the straight-line distance between Lough Foyle and Carlingford Lough. Second, County Donegal is only connected to the rest of the Republic of Ireland by a territorial isthmus wide, making it more convenient for some journeys from Donegal to other parts of the Republic of Ireland to pass through Northern Ireland. Third, for only two relatively short sections of the border does it align with the provincial boundary of nine county Ulster between Fermanagh-Leitrim and Armagh-Louth. And lastly, as the border skirts Tyrone to the west and again to the south east, it encompasses Co. Fermanagh on three sides.


text: As a remnant of 17th-century county limits, the border's physical profile indicates that it follows many watercourses but only in the highlands of the Cavan-Fermanagh section could the border be said to accord with any significant physical impediments to movement. There are around 270 road border crossings, with some roads traversing the border several times. Similarly, before its closure in 1957, a section of one railway line between Clones and Cavan crossed the border six times in , initially with customs checks at each crossing. Further railways including Great Northern Railway crossed the border several times.


text: Between 270 and 300 roads cross the border, with some roads crossing the border more than once. While some roads cross the border twice or three times, the N54/A3 road crosses the border four times within .


text: The larger and busier border crossings include national primary (N) roads in the Republic of Ireland which connect to primary route (A) roads in Northern Ireland. As of 2007, the busiest such roads were the N1/A1 route (Dundalk/Newry), N13/A2 route (Letterkenny/Derry) and N15/A38 route (Lifford/Strabane).


text: A 1988 treaty demarcates the boundary of the exclusive economic zones across the continental shelf from the south Irish Sea southwest to the Celtic Sea.


text: The exact division of territorial waters between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland ('Southern Ireland' being coterminous with the territory of the modern-day Irish state) was a matter of some controversy from the outset. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 did not explicitly address the position of territorial waters although Section 11(4) provided that neither Southern Ireland nor Northern Ireland would have any competence to make laws in respect of "Lighthouses, buoys, or beacons (except so far as they can consistently with any general Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom be constructed or maintained by a local harbour authority)".


text: When the territory that initially was Southern Ireland ultimately became a separate self-governing dominion outside the United Kingdom known as the Irish Free State, the status of the territorial waters naturally took on a significance it had not had before. Northern Ireland's Unionists were conscious of this matter from an early stage. They were keen to put it beyond doubt that the territorial waters around Northern Ireland would not belong to the Irish Free State. In this regard, James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland put the following question in the British House of Commons on 27 November 1922 (the month before the establishment of the Irish Free State):


text: In response the Attorney General, Sir Douglas Hogg, said that "I have considered the question, and I have given an opinion that that is so [i.e. the territorial waters do go with the counties]".


text: However, this interpretation that the territorial waters went with the counties was later disputed by Irish governments. A good summary of the Irish position was given by the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, during a Dáil debate on 29 February 1972:


text: A particular dispute arose between the Government of the Irish Free State of the one part and the Northern Ireland and UK governments of the other part over territorial waters in Lough Foyle. Lough Foyle lies between County Londonderry in Northern Ireland and County Donegal in the then Irish Free State. A court case in the Free State in 1923 relating to fishing rights in Lough Foyle held that the Free State's territorial waters ran right up to the shore of County Londonderry. In 1927, illegal fishing on Lough Foyle had become so grave that Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig entered into correspondence with his Free State counterpart, W. T. Cosgrave. Craig indicated to Cosgrave that he proposed to introduce a bill giving the Royal Ulster Constabulary powers to stop and search vessels on Lough Foyle. Cosgrave asserted all of Lough Foyle was Free State territory and that as such a bill of that nature would be rejected by the Free State and its introduction would create "a very serious situation". Cosgrave then raised the matter with the British government. Claims by The Honourable The Irish Society that its fishing rights in the Foyle were being violated by poachers from the Donegal side led to the 1952 creation of the Foyle Fisheries Commission under the joint authority of the Dublin and Belfast governments, which solved problems of jurisdiction without addressing the sovereignty question. The commission was superseded by the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission established after the Good Friday Agreement under the remit of the North/South Ministerial Council.


text: For as long as both states remain members of the EU (and thus the Common Fisheries Policy), the territorial waters are not disputed in practice between the two states. Their respective exclusive economic zoness (EEZs) begin beyond their territorial waters and the boundary between them was agreed in 2014. but the precise maritime boundary between Ireland and the United Kingdom concerning Lough Foyle (and similarly Carlingford Lough) remains disputed in principle. As recently as 2005, when asked to list those areas of EU member states where border definition is in dispute, a British Government minister responding for the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs stated:


text: During Dáil debates on the Carlingford Fisheries Bill, a contributor to the debate stated that he welcomed "the Bill's aim of defining the area of jurisdiction over the Foyle". However, the Irish Foyle and Carlingford Fisheries Act 2007 does not mention this issue; neither does the virtually identical British "Foyle and Carlingford Fisheries (Northern Ireland) Order 2007": each merely refers to "the Commission's waters".


text: It is estimated that there are 300 major and minor crossings along the border. The border is marked only by a small number of "Welcome To Northern Ireland" road signs on the UK side, placed there by the Northern Ireland Roads Service. This can make identifying the border difficult for those unfamiliar with landmarks known to locals as the crossing point. At some crossings, there are signs welcoming visitors to the relevant local government authority district or, occasionally, reminding motorists of the need to ensure that their insurance is valid in the relevant jurisdiction.


text: Generally, signposts in Ireland which indicate distances to destinations are bilingual (in Irish and English) and give distances in kilometres while such signposts in Northern Ireland are only in English and give distances in miles. On larger roads, the approximate location of the border can be determined by signs reminding the driver of the change in units. In Northern Ireland, place-name and street/road-name signs are usually (but not always) English-only and street/road-name signs are more standardised and extensively used.


text: There are other immediate indicators when crossing the border: differences in the design of road signage and a change in road markings. The hard shoulder on non-motorway roads in Ireland is marked with a yellow, usually broken, line. The same marking in Northern Ireland is white and usually continuous. In Northern Ireland, roads use A (major) and B (minor) route prefixes, whereas Ireland's route prefixes are M (motorway) N (major, standing for "national") and R (minor, standing for "regional"). Road signs in both the Republic and those in Northern Ireland are mainly black/white/red triangles or circles (the same as the rest of the European Union). Signs have subtle differences in colouring and fonts. One notable exception to this is that hazard warning signs in the Republic are amber diamonds.


text: Since the adoption by Ireland of metric speed limits, warning signs have been placed on either side of the border to alert motorists to the change to or from miles or kilometres per hour. As the United Kingdom does not use the euro, advertised prices for service stations and shops will change currency on crossing, although many places along the border will accept cross-border currency informally (albeit usually at a rate favourable to the trader). Other typical signs of crossing a European border are also noticeable. These include subtle differences in the paving materials of road surfaces and pavements, sometimes with visible differences in colour between materials across the border, changes to street lighting when crossing the border, (though these also vary across inter-county borders), and changes in the colour of postboxes (green in Ireland, red in Northern Ireland).


text: By rail, there is no immediate sign of crossing the border, but the trackside mileage markers change from Irish-style markers at the post (from Dublin Connolly railway station) to black-on-yellow markers, common to the United Kingdom, at the post, between Dundalk and Newry stations.


text: As in most places, radio signals from the cellular networks on both sides of the border often travel several kilometres (a few miles) across it. This was a source of annoyance to those resident in border areas when roaming charges were incurred with most service providers if the phone connects to the "wrong" network when making or even receiving a call. Inter-member mobile phone roaming charges were abolished in the European Union from 15 June 2017. , it remains to be seen whether this arrangement will continue after Brexit.


text: "Puckoon" is a comic novel by Spike Milligan, first published in 1963. It is set in 1924 and details the troubles brought to the fictional Irish village of Puckoon by the Partition of Ireland when the new border passes directly through the village. It was later made into a film in 2002.


text: Irish touring cyclist and author of adventure travel books Dervla Murphy travelled by bicycle from Lismore, County Waterford to Northern Ireland during the height of The Troubles and wrote of the experience in her 1978 book "A Place Apart", including encounters along the border.


text: In the 1980s, Colm Tóibín walked the length of the border, later releasing a travel book entitled "".


text: Following the Brexit vote in 2016, a mockumentary about a fictional post-Brexit border patrol named the "Soft Border Patrol" was produced by the BBC. In 2018, an anonymous Twitter account called @BorderIrish gained notability tweeting as the Irish border in the first person, and the implications that Brexit would have for it.


text: The work of Irish folk-punk singer Jinx Lennon sometimes draws inspiration from his upbringing along the border as well as societal issues which affect the people living there. His 2020 album ""Border Schizo FFFolk Songs For The Fuc**d"", self-described as a "psychedelic punk-folk concept album journey through the hinterlands of the Irish Border", explored such themes as cocaine dependence, pride in rural Ireland and the 2014 Garda whistleblower scandal. His 2021 follow-up album, ""Liferafts for Latchicos"", was described by Lennon as a "solid border album", including a song named "Border Lad".


text: The following cities, towns and villages are located on the border or not far from it (listed from Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough):


title: Women and video games

text: The relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic and media attention. Since the 1990s, female gamers have commonly been regarded as a minority. However, industry surveys have shown that over time, the gender ratio has become closer to equal. Beginning mainly in the 2010s, women have been found to make up around half of all gamers. The gender ratio differs significantly between game genres, and women are highly underrepresented in genres such as first-person shooters and grand strategy games. Sexism in video gaming, including sexual harassment, as well as underrepresentation of women as characters in games, is an increasing topic of discussion in video game culture.


title: Women and video games

text: Advocates for increasing the number of female gamers stress the problems attending disenfranchisement of women from one of the fastest-growing cultural realms as well as the largely untapped nature of the female gamer market. Efforts to include greater female participation in the medium have addressed the problems of gendered advertising, social stereotyping, and the lack of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). The terms "girl gamer" or "gamer girl" have been used as a reappropriated term for female players to describe themselves, but it has also been criticized as counterproductive or offensive.


title: Women and video games

text: Female participation in gaming is increasing. According to an Entertainment Software Association survey, women players in the United States increased from 40% in 2010 to 48% in 2014. Today, despite the dominant perception that most gamers are men, the ratio of female to male gamers is rather balanced, mirroring the population at large.


title: Women and video games

text: In 2008, a Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that among teens, 65% of men and 35% of women describe themselves as daily gamers. This trend was found to be stronger the younger the age group. The study found that while adult men are significantly more likely to play console games than adult women, on other platforms they are equally likely to play. But even in this area, the numbers are moving towards equality: in 2012, Nintendo reported that half of its users were women, and in 2015 another Pew study found that more American women (42%) than men (37%) owned video game consoles. In 2013, "Variety" reported that female participation increased with age (61% of women and 57% of men aged 45 to 64 played games).


title: Women and video games

text: In North America, national demographic surveys have been conducted yearly by the U.S. Entertainment Software Association (ESA) since at least 1997, and the Canadian Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) since 2006. Other organizations including the Australian/New-Zealander Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) since 2005 collect and publish demographic data on their constituent populations on a semi-regular basis. In Europe, the regional Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) and numerous smaller national groups like the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA), the Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld- en geluidsdragers (NVPI), and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) have also begun to collect data on female video gamers since 2012. One-off market research studies and culture surveys have been produced by a wide variety of other sources including some segments of the gaming press and other culture writers since the 1980s as well.


title: Women and video games

text: Not only has the general female gaming population been tracked, but the spread of this population has been tracked over many facets of gaming. For more than 10 years, groups like the ESA and ESAC have gathered data on the gender of video game purchasers, the percentage of women gamers within certain age brackets, and the average number of years women gamers have been gaming. The ESAC in particular has gone into great depth reporting age-related segmentation of the market between both male and female gamers. Other statistics have been collected from time to time on a wide variety of facets influencing the video game market.


title: Women and video games

text: While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers as of 2015. This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group. Half of female PC gamers in the U.S. consider themselves to be core or hardcore gamers. In 2012, an EEDAR survey found that nearly 60% of mobile gamers were women and that 63% of these female mobile gamers played online multiplayer mobile games.


title: Women and video games

text: Connotations of "gamer" with sexism on the fringe of gaming culture has caused women to be less willing to adopt the label. "Girl gamers" or "gamer girls" is a label for women who regularly play games. While some critics have advocated use of the label as a reappropriated term, others have described the term as unhelpful, offensive, and even harmful or misleading. The word "girl", for example, has been seen as an inherently age-linked term that glosses over the difference between women over 30 and younger women. The term "girl gamer" rather than simply "gamer" has also been described as perpetuating the minority position of female gamers. For many critics uncomfortable with the term "girl gamer", its over-embracement may lead to the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of female gamers as oversexualized, casual, and sometimes defiant or confrontational. This in turn can result in poor game design. These critics submit that there is no single definition of a female gamer, and that women gamers are as diverse as any other group of people.


title: Women and video games

text: A lack of role models for female gamers contributes to a feeling that they should edit their femininity to maintain credibility as a gamer, and that they must fit into the caricatured role of the "girl gamer" to be accepted. Negative stereotyping of female video game players as "girl gamers often comes from male gamers who have been negatively stereotyped by the broader society. Social stigma against games has influenced some women to distance themselves from the term "gamer", even though they may play regularly. Parental influence has been theorized to perpetuate some of the stereotypes that female gamers face as boys are bought gifts like an Xbox while girls are bought girl-focused games like "Barbie" or educational games.


title: Women and video games

text: Controversially, some critics such as Simon Parkin have suggested that the term "gamer" is endemic to the stereotypical male audience and has become outmoded by the industry's changing demographics.


title: Women and video games

text: There are differences between the video game genres preferred, on average, by women and men. A 2017 report by the video game analytics company Quantic Foundry, based on surveys of about 270,000 gamers, found varying proportions of male and female players within different game genres. The study didn't attribute the cause of differences in percentages to gender alone, stating a correlation between games less played by women and features that discourage women, such as a lack of female protagonists, required communication with strangers online, or tendency to cause motion sickness. The study also mentioned that, within the same genre, some specific games show a noticeably higher or lower percentage of women than other similar titles. A content analysis report of 571 games released between 1983 and 2014 with playable female characters touches on one of the possible reasons behind a lack of women in certain video game genres; women may choose to avoid certain genres depicting female characters in a negative light, such as oversexualization, in order not to become part of a "self-perpetuating cycle".


title: Women and video games

text: The study reported the following proportions of male and female gamers with respect to specific genres:


title: Women and video games

text: While male audiences prefer fast-paced, explosive action and combat, women tend to prefer in-game communication and interpersonal relationships (character development and plot dynamics). Women have also been shown to prefer role-playing video games to first-person shooters, and Thomas W. Malone of Stanford University found that girls preferred to play a Hangman video game over a darts simulation that boys enjoyed.


title: Women and video games

text: In-game activities may also differ between the sexes in games with less linear plots such as the "Grand Theft Auto" series. Women are often characterized as preferring story-driven games or constructive games like "The Sims" or "Civilization", but this is not universally true. In 2013, "Variety" reported that 30% of women were playing more violent games. Of this 30%, 20% played "Call of Duty" and 15% played "Grand Theft Auto". There has been persistent female interest in action-adventure games and MMORPGs like "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life". Compared to men, female MMORPG players tend to place more emphasis on socialization relative to achievement-oriented play. This emphasis on socialization extends beyond just the game itself: In a study published in the "Journal of Communication" in 2009, researchers found that 61% of female MMORPG players played with a romantic partner, compared to 24% of men.


title: Women and video games

text: According to data collected by Quantic Foundry in 2016, the primary motivations why people play video games differ, on average, by gender. While men frequently want most to compete with others and destroy things, women often want most to complete challenges and immerse themselves in other worlds:


title: Women and video games

text: While video games and advertising were initially gender-neutral, advertising began to narrow its focus to young boys as a target market following the video game crash of 1983. Although commercial hits such as "Myst" and "The Sims" appealed to women, these were nonetheless seen by some as being outside the gaming mainstream. Critic Ian Bogost opined, "We're looking at where there isn't diversity and we're saying those games are the most valid games." Industry studies on the lack of women in gaming have also suffered at times from biases of interpretation. Kevin Kelly of Joystiq has suggested that a high degree of circular reasoning is evident when male developers use focus groups and research numbers to determine what kinds of games girls play. After making a bad game that targets those areas suggested by the marketing research, the game's lack of popularity among both genders is often attributed to the incorrect prejudice that "girls don't play games" rather than the true underlying problems such as poor quality and playability of the game. Whereas market data and research are important to reveal that markets exist, argues Kelly, they shouldn't be the guiding factor in how to make a game that appeals to girls. The argument has also been advanced that emphasis on market research is often skewed by the participants in the study. In studies on male gamers of the baby boomer generation, for example, players displayed a marked aversion to violence. The incorrect conclusion that could be drawn from this result—that men dislike violent games—may also be comparable to incorrect conclusions drawn from some female-oriented gaming studies. It has been suggested that developers can learn what girls want in a game by observing similarities in how different girl teams will react to and modify a game if given the opportunity.


title: Women and video games

text: In the past, "girl games" have frequently been created by adapting girl-oriented material in other media like "The Baby-sitters Club", "Barbie", and "Nancy Drew" while leaving male-targeted genres such as sport and driving simulators, role-playing games, and first-person shooters to the male audience. This has begun to change, however, with the expansion of entrepreneurial feminism and the concept of "games by girls for girls" that has been embraced by companies such as Her Interactive, Silicon Sisters and Purple Moon—all video gaming start ups that are female owned and largely female staffed. Creating games designed with regard to sociological, psychological, and cognitive research into girls' cultural interests, such companies hope to awaken a female-only market emphasizing fundamental differences between what girls want and what boys want in gaming. The movement to expand the existing market to include women through the development of gender-neutral games has also had a number of advocates. Critics have proposed that female gamers, especially older female gamers prefer gender-neutral games such as "Tetris", "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?", or the "King's Quest" games to "girl games".


title: Women and video games

text: In examining game play habits at Internet cafés, South Korea has seen a rise in female gamers publicly playing games such as "Lineage", while in other Asian countries this kind of public female gaming has remained rare; similarly, games such as "Tamagotchi" are seen as a gender neutral in Japan, but have been regarded as girls' games in the West. In other cases, female trends in one country may be indicators of associated changes in others, as in the case of a rising number of female "Lineage" players in Korea having led to increased number of female "Lineage" players in Taiwan. In Japan the rise of cute culture and its associated marketing has made gaming accessible for girls, and this trend has also carried over to Taiwan and recently China (both countries previously having focused mostly on MMOs and where parents usually place harsher restrictions on daughters than on sons).


title: Women and video games

text: An aspect of game design that has been identified as negatively impacting female interest is the degree of expertise with gaming conventions and familiarity with game controls required to play the game. In-game tutorials have been found to bring both sexes into games faster, and new controllers such as Nintendo's Wii Remote, Microsoft's Kinect, and the various rhythm game controllers have affected demographics by making games easier to pick up and provide a better level playing-field. This trend has continued through the efforts of Nintendo in its release of the Wii. Leigh Alexander argued that appealing to women does not necessarily entail reduced difficulty or complexity. In 2012, the developers of "Borderlands 2" were criticized for referring to a reduced difficulty option as "girlfriend mode". Yet, the perceived skill or performance gap between men and women may be fueled by other factors besides gender. In a 2016 study published in the "Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication," researchers found that, after controlling for confounds such as the amount of play time and guild membership, women players advance at least as fast as men do in two MMOs, the Western "EverQuest II" and the Chinese "".


title: Women and video games

text: A 2015 study found that lower-skilled male players of "Halo 3" were more hostile towards teammates with a female voice, but behaved more submissively to players with a male voice. Higher-skilled male players, on the other hand, behaved more positively towards female players. The authors argued the male hostility towards female gamers in terms of evolutionary psychology, writing, "female-initiated disruption of a male hierarchy incites hostile behaviour from poor performing males who stand to lose the most status". In another study, it was found that female gamers who score lower on the synthesis dimension of feminist identity hold internalized misogyny, while female gamers who score higher are more resistant against it. Though this study pertains only to popular console video games, the results gives a possible reason as to why certain female players may continue playing despite hostile male attitudes in online games.


title: Women and video games

text: The top female players in competitive gaming mainly get exposure in female-only tournaments, including such games as "Counter-Strike", "Dead or Alive 4", and "StarCraft II".


title: Women and video games

text: Women have been part of the video game industry since the 1960s. Mabel Addis of "The Sumerian Game" (1964) was the first writer of a video game and first female game designer. Carol Shaw is recognized as the first woman to develop a commercially released game, "3-D Tic-Tac-Toe" for the Atari 2600 in 1978, though she would gain later fame with her title "River Raid" in 1983. Other early female pioneers in the field include Dona Bailey who programmed the 1981 arcade game "Centipede" and its home console versions, and Roberta Williams who cowrote with her husband Ken the adventure game "Mystery House" for personal computers in 1980, and would later co-found Sierra On-Line.


title: Women and video games

text: In 1989, according to "Variety", women constituted only 3% of the gaming industry. In 2013, Gary Carr (the creative director of Lionhead Studios) predicted that within the next 5 to 10 years, the games development workforce would be 50% female. According to Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game-designing women had the closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job. Women in game audio make approximately 90 cents for every dollar that men made, according to GameSoundCon's Audio Industry Survey for 2019, although women in general have 2.4 years less experience than men in audio. However accounting for the experience difference, "the cost of being female [in game audio] is 2.15 years of experience." Women and non-binary people make up approximately 14% of game audio professionals


title: Women and video games

text: The following table shows the proportion of women among game developers in several countries in 2005 to 2010.


title: Women and video games

text: WIGSIG is a special interest group of IDGA (International Game Developers Association). The group was formed in order to foster a positive impact on the game industry regarding gender balance in the workplace and/or marketplace. It provides a community, resources, and opportunities for people in the gaming industry. It also works to assess the numbers of the women in the games industry and tracks the changes of these numbers over time. Additionally, it works to recruit women into the games industry and make the field more attractive to women while providing them with the support and connections they need to be successful.


title: Women and video games

text: Founded in 2005, Women in Games International (WIGI), made up of both female and male professionals, works to promote the inclusion and advancement of women in the global games industry. WIGI promotes diversity in video game development, publishing, media, education, and workplaces, based on a fundamental belief that increased equality and camaraderie among genders can make global impacts for superior products, more consumer enjoyment, and a stronger gaming industry. Women In Games International stands as strong advocates for issues crucial to the success of women and men in the games industry, including a better work/life balance, healthy working conditions, increased opportunities for success, and resources for career support.


title: Women and video games

text: WIGJ is a group that works to recruit, preserve, and provide support for the advancement of women in the games industry by positively and energetically endorsing female role models and providing encouragement and information to women interested in working in the gaming field. The group was incorporated under the UK's Companies Act 2006 on June 2, 2011, as a "not for profit" or Community Interest Company. Companies in the game development industry have, in recent years, been seeking to balance the gender ratios on development teams, and consoles like the Wii and Nintendo DS have seen increased numbers of female players. In addition to using this growing interest in women in the game-developing industry, WIGJ works to put more women in traditional game development with less stigma attached to them. WIGJ seeks to help women find their place within the growing and rewarding field of game development.


title: Women and video games

text: Women had generally always been a minority demographic of the video game development community and work in a male-dominated culture; as of 2021, while women make up at least half of all video game players, they represent only about 25% of all developers.


title: Women and video games

text: In the early days of video game history among the 1970s and 1980s, due to the more casual nature of relationships between genders due to the Sexual Revolution, many stories had emerged from companies like Atari, Inc. where female employees were treated more as sexual objects than fellow employees. Notable, Atari's founder Nolan Bushnell had been nominated for a Pioneer Award for the 2019 Game Developers Choice Awards, but several advocates came forward to denounce this, given the stories of the sexist atmosphere Bushnell had promoted at Atari. While Bushnell accepted to decline the award and apologized to anyone he may have offended in the past, other former female Atari employees stepped forward to defend Bushnell, stating that they all voluntarily participating in that workplace culture, though acknowledging its acceptability had long since passed.


title: Women and video games

text: The 2014 Gamergate controversy brought to light how a minority of gamers perceived female developers, with extended harassment and threats made against several female developers and those that supported them under the guise of "ethics in video games journalism". Coming near the onset of the larger Me Too movement in the 2010s, the Gamergate controversy was seen as a potential prelude to the industry experiencing its own Me Too moment as to come to recognize the hostility that women in the industry often faced. However, by 2018, as recognized by Keza MacDonald of "The Guardian", "The video games industry has not yet had its #MeToo moment."


title: Women and video games

text: While some individual stories of specific developers being accused of sexual misconduct against female coworkers occurred from 2014 to 2018, the industry saw its first major wide-scale incident occur later in 2018. Riot Games came under review after a "Kotaku" report that year, based on interviews with a few dozen current and former female employees, that there was a culture of sexism at the company. The investigation led to a class-action lawsuit filed by the employees against Riot, which was eventually settled out of court for . A separate investigation by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) found that there was more issues at Riot than previously disclosed, and challenged the settlement arguing that the employees were due a larger compensation for Riot's past behavior as much as . The class withdrew from the prior settlement and as of February 2021 are continuing to seek legal action against Riot.


title: Women and video games

text: The situation at Riot subsequently led to a scenario in August 2019 when several female and non-binary developers separately stepped forward to accuse coworkers and others in the industry of sexual misconduct. The number of accusations was considered a first major turning point of the industry having to deal with long-standing problems of how women were treated by the industry.


title: Women and video games

text: In early 2020, several Ubisoft employees accused numerous executives of sexual misconduct and that the company's human resources department did little to respond to internal complaints. Internal reviews of these complaints led to the dismissal of several executives and managing studio directors over 2020 and a commitment by the company to better heed these issues, though the company was still sued by a French labor union group in 2021 as they had found very little had changed within the company as a result of the complaints and subsequent changes.


title: Women and video games

text: Activision Blizzard also came under scrutiny by the California DFEH in July 2021, where they filed a legal complaint against the company based on a two-year investigation for maintaining a "frat boy" culture that promoted sexual misconduct against female employees within the company and discouraging promotions of women. Initial responses to the DFEH by current management appeared to dismiss the concerns of the lawsuit, leading to both employees within the company demanding that management treat the complaints as valid, as well as contempt by outside groups against Activision and Blizzard products.


title: Women and video games

text: Despite the incidents with Riot and Ubisoft, these had not yet had a larger effect on the industry as of 2021, and generally were dismissed by the larger media, in contrast to stories of sexual misconduct that occurred in film or television in earlier Me Too events. These companies had some turbulent months as these suits or incidents were brought forward but otherwise appeared to try to cover up the situation and return to the status quo as quickly as possible.


title: Women and video games

text: The relationship between women and video game live streaming has been a rocky one. As streaming services such as YouTube and Twitch became increasingly popular, female gamers began to jump on board. Research has found that 52% of the gaming world is made up of women, but most remain less visible in the context of the dominant culture, due to the stereotypes between masculinity and gaming.


title: Women and video games

text: Critics attribute the seeming lack of female interest in video games to the negative portrayal of women in video games and to misogynistic attitudes common among professional and hardcore gamers. A 2012 Twitter discussion among women working in games, collated under the hashtag "#1reasonwhy", argued that sexist practices such as the over-sexualization of female characters, disinterest in topics that matter to women, as well as workplace harassment and unequal pay for men and women were common in the games industry.


title: Women and video games

text: Regarding elements of game design, areas such as gameplay, mechanics, and similar features have been described as gender neutral; however, presentational aspects of games have been identified as strongly gender-linked. Specifically, gaming is often seen as fantasy and escapism in which empathy and identification with the character is much more easily achieved if the character shares the same gender as the player. Gamers of both genders tend to crave realism and the more realistic the gender of the character, the easier it is for a player to identify with the character. A 2009 academic study published in "New Media & Society", however, found that 85% of playable characters in video games are male. Erin Hamilton argues that part of the problem comes from the difficulty in "juxtaposing femininity and feminism in a good video game." When female characters do appear in video games, they are regarded by some as presenting unhealthy messages concerning unrealistic body images and provocative sexual and violent behaviors for players of both genders. Stereotypical female behaviors such as giggling or sighing are often presented non-ironically, and this might lead young children (especially girls who identify with the female character) to think that this is how girls are supposed to look and act. Furthermore, over-sexualized depictions of scantily clad female video game characters such as "Tomb Raider"'s Lara Croft are not appealing to some girls.


title: Women and video games

text: Although some of the population of male gamers have been the source of harassment towards female gamers and over-sexualization of the characters, many men in the gaming industry agree that there is a problem with female over-sexualization in gaming. There are also male gamers who argue that some of the sexualization of women in video games also applies to men in video games and that portraying a man or woman in a video game in a sexual way can be acceptable if done in the right context. Perceptions about stereotypes concerning gamers themselves also vary among genders, as well as playing frequency of game genres. A study in the "Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media" said that women who play a lot of video games disagree more with stereotypes concerning gender in gaming and are more strongly drawn towards specific gaming genres than men, regardless of the men's gaming frequency.


title: Women and video games

text: The concept that video games are a form of art has begun to gain force in the latter half of the 2000s, with the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts recognizing games as a form of art in May 2011, for example. In viewing video games as cultural artifacts and the industry as a cultural industry, the disenfranchisement of women from the medium is regarded as negatively impacting the female voice in the industry and the woman's capacity to take part in the cultural dialogue that gaming inspires. From an education perspective, certain gaming genres particularly lacking in female players such as the first-person shooter game have been shown to increase spatial skills thereby giving advantages to players of the games that are currently skewed along gender lines. Video games have also been determined to provide an easy lead-in to computer literacy for children, and correlations have been drawn between male video gaming and the predominance of male workers within the computer industry. With the increasing importance of tech jobs in the 21st century and the increased role of online networking, the lack of female video game players suggests a loss of future career opportunities for women.


title: Women and video games

text: Video games have also been used in academic settings to help develop the confidence of young girls in expressing their individual voices online and in their real lives. Video games that promote creative thinking and multiplayer interactions (e.g., Minecraft) have helped young girls to communicate sense of authority and confidence in their social and academic lives.


title: Women and video games

text: The majority of the people who work on game development teams are men. Researchers have identified that one of the best ways to increase the percentage of female players comes from the aspect of authorship (either in-game as with "Neopets" and "Whyville", or indirectly as with the "Harry Potter" series' inclusion of Hermione as a playable character subsequent to fan requests). The solution to the problem of societal pigeonholing of female gamers is often identified as interventionist work such as the insertion of women into the industry. Groups like WomenGamers.com and Sony's G.I.R.L. have sought to increase female gamer demographics by giving scholarships to girls considering getting into game development, and game developers like Check Six Games, Her Interactive, Silicon Sisters and Purple Moon have openly courted female coders and developers.


title: Women and video games

text: In addressing the future of the medium, many researchers have argued for the improvement of the gaming industry to appeal to a more general gender-neutral audience and others have suggested that the appeal should be directed to women in particular. One of the earliest attempts to broaden the market to include women could be seen in Sega's use of the increased number of female protagonists in fighting games. Other examples of this include games like "Mass Effect 3", "Remember Me", and "the Last of Us", which include a female option for the main character. The decision to use strong female characters in important roles, however, is often met with skepticism by marketers concerned with sales. Examination of IGN's "Big Games at E3 2012" and "Big Games at E3 2013" shows growth of the female protagonist in video games, rising 4% from 2012 to 2013. Other efforts outside of making games with female characters have also started to occur. One example is that Women in Games International has teamed up with the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles in order to create a video game patch, which the two organizations hope will encourage Girl Scouts to develop an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. Activism and specifically female-targeted LAN parties in Scandinavia have helped boost female game playing.