Women in Gaming

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

This is a PSA for all badass gamer girls: House Party is officially out of Early Access today! The full launch featuring a playable female character is available now.

In honor of our new female playable character, let’s talk video gaming…stats. More specifically, let’s talk Women in Gaming. Contrary to popular opinion, gamer girls are on the rise and have continued to crush stereotypes and break barriers. That’s right, boys – we’re coming for ya! 

 

Women Taking the Lead in Gaming:

We’re busy taking over the market AND the number of gamers (Anderton, 2019) –  it’s safe to say we’re here to stay. Worldwide, the number of gamer girls is increasing exponentially, from France to Taiwan and back to the U.S. This is despite the male-dominated and male-centric field that video gaming has evolved into – but what else is new? So who exactly are these women? Well, they may be the ones that raised you – that’s right, they’re not like a regular mom; they’re a cool mom. Yeah, you heard us right the first time. Women between the ages of 50-65 are playing more video games than the average man at that age (Anderton, 2019).  

And the best part? They raised kickass daughters leading the charge in redefining a woman’s place in the video game industry, especially concerning sponsorships and Esports competitions. The OG sisters to break ground in the gaming industry are none other than Brady and Dalton, AKA the badass PMS Clan or Pandora’s Might Soldiers. The group gained traction after building relationships with other women over Xbox, which they describe as “Pure Awesomeness!” We couldn’t agree more. The two have recently received the ESports Lifetime Achievement Award (Ong, 2021). 

 

Female Representation in Gaming:

Twitch has long been a boys club, but they’re in for a rude awakening! The women of Twitch are here to tell you that the amount of clothing does not define the “realness” of a gamer. We’re all gamers, no matter how we look, so shouldn’t our playable female characters represent that?! Emma Pearl on Twitch says we need to change the perception of what women should do online (Strapagiel, 2021). 

Often, women are underrepresented as characters and protagonists in video games. Feminist Frequency advocates for online representation crunched the numbers for 126 games featured at the 2019 E3 conference. Out of the 126, only six centered exclusively on female protagonists, and 28 centered on men…yeah, 6 (Sarkeesian and Petit, 2019). 

 

Play with Us!

Here at Eek! Games, we’re proud to say that our ladies of House Party have the beauty to turn your head and the brains to keep you in check. Say hello to Amy, Ashley, Brittney, Katherine, Leah, Lety, Madison, Rachael, Stephanie, and Vickie Vixen. Eek! Games believes female representation in video games, especially concerning playable characters, is essential. We’re proud to say that House Party is now included in the rising percentage of video games with a playable female protagonist. 

 

Why is this important? Progress starts by making noise, and those equipped with the loudest voices (i.e., video game development companies) are responsible for changing the visual narrative gamers are exposed to daily. At our House Party, you can play the way you want to, however you want to – and maybe f*ck around while you’re at it. 

 

 

 

Sources:

Yokoi, T. Female Gamers Are On the Rise. Can the Gaming Industry Keep Up?. Forbes. (March 4, 2021). Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomokoyokoi/2021/03/04/female-gamers-are-on-the-rise-can-the-gaming-industry-catch-up/?sh=3e7ca877f9fe

Anderton, K. Women Over 50 Are Playing More Video Games Than Men. Forbes. (January 29, 2019). Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2019/01/29/women-over-50-are-playing-more-video-games-than-men-infographic/?sh=7e6d383c1093

Ong, A. The PMS Clan Blazed a Trail for Women in Competitive Gaming. PC Gamer. (November 13, 2021). Retrieved June 29, 2022, from  https://www.pcgamer.com/remembering-the-origins-of-the-trailblazing-pms-clan/

Strapagiel, L. No One Wins When Women Are Pitted Against Each Other. BuzzfeedNews. (June 10, 2021). Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/women-on-twitch-are-done-with-being-stereotyped

Sarkeesian, A. and Carolyn P. Female Representation in Videogames Isn’t Getting Any Better. Wired. (June 14, 2019). Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.wired.com/story/e3-2019-female-representation-videogames/

 

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House Party 0.22.0 Stable Release

Controller Support, UI and QOL Improvements…and the First Look at House Party’s Female Player!

The female player’s first look is here, doods!

Since adding her is a huge task, and because we want as much feedback as possible, this update will be a little different than what we’ve done in the past. Here is how we’re doing that:

 

On Patreon: this will be released as a Stable update, with all its features. In order to get as much feedback from our Patrons as possible, and because we’ve been super busy and might’ve dropped the ball on delivering certain perks to them ( <3 !! ), this update will be made available to all Beta-tier Patrons and up.

 

On Steam: We’ll be offering two versions of this update: First, a “live” or “no branch” version, which will offer many controller support improvements, UI tweaks, bug and quality of life fixes. Steam users who just want access to this version need to ensure that they do not have a beta branch selected in the game’s properties (“None”). The second version is identical to the first, but will also include the female character first look. To access this, Steam users will need to:

  1. Click the gear icon on the House Party game’s landing page (or right-click House Party in their Steam Library) and click “Properties”
  2. Navigate to the “BETAS” tab
  3. Use the “Select the beta” drop-down menu to select the “testing – Testing Branch” option
  4. Close the Properties window

On GOG: enter into the game’s Configuration menu (next to the Play button) in the GOG Galaxy client. Select “Manage Installation”. Then “Configure”. Then in the “Beta channels” dropdown, select “Change private channel password” and input the password ‘testing’ to opt into the testing version.

On itch.io: there will be two downloads available for the product you purchased. One will have no subtitle or special labeling. The other will be marked “(Testing Build – Female Player…)“. That one. Download that one.

 

On all Other Distribution Sites/Platforms: unfortunately, these do not support branch/version switching as conveniently, and therefore will only be getting the controller support, UI, bug, and QOL-improvement version for now. Eventually we will roll out the female player to all sites/platforms as soon as it is more fleshed out, so please be patient! It’s coming! She’s c…yeah!

 

So, why treat the female player first look all special-like? In short, she ain’t done yet. But we also wanted to show as many customers as possible our progress (as opposed to waiting and waiting the entire time we worked on her!), and give them ample time to provide us with feedback. While her Original Story content is not done, those with access to the female first look can choose to Start a New Game of the Original Story with her on the Main Menu. In terms of content, we’ve done a thorough first pass through the existing story lines and made a bunch of tone, pronoun, and wording tweaks to make you feel at home in the party as the female player! Unfortunately, we have not had the time to get voiced lines for much of this alternate content or fully convert all intimacy sequences, but bear with us! We’re working on it, and will continue to do so up until (and if needed, after) we exit Early Access!

Controller support is also fully functional, and we added some general House Party polish and UI improvements to this update. You can play the game without any major hang-ups on all supported controllers and the Steam Deck. We still plan on adding some quality of life features and fixes in the future to fine-tune how everything feels, but, as it is now, it’s completely playable.

If you’re curious about the polish we added, some notable changes are that we adjusted the colors for most of the interactable UI elements so they’re easier to see and fixed some cutscene issues that could cause them to get stuck. We also added a garage cutscene and a Frank mini oral scene in the yard.

Leading up to our release from Early Access later this year, we’ll be adding some quality of life features to controller support, polishing and bug fixing the hell out of the base game, and adding a lot more Original Story content, voice acting, and intimacy-specific tweaks and fixes for the female player.

Thanks for being the coolest partiers ever and staying patient as we worked through the hurdle of uncensoring Lety’s content in our last update. We’re sorry for the delay, and we hope you have fun playing as a female! We’re excited to add more of her story as we get closer to House Party’s exit from Early Access!

-Eek! Team

CHANGE LOG:

https://housepartygame.com/release-notes

Note: Updates labeled as “Testing”, “Beta”, and/or “First Look” contain unfinished and untested content. Placeholders may be present for dialogue and various assets. Older save files may no longer be compatible. Custom stories may no longer function as intended. Translations may also be incomplete. Controller support is nearly finished, but if you do run into issues, you may need to temporarily use your keyboard/mouse to restore normal functionality.

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House Party 0.21.2 Stable Release

Lety’s Original Textures Are Back In The 0.21.2 Mini Stable Release Maintenance Update!

What’s up, totally cool-muy bueno-fellow party persons? We just wrapped up House Party version 0.21.2, which is a fairly small but much-needed maintenance update that brings the party closer to our ultimate goal of being…dope sickness…on fleek…lit…

Alright, we’ll keep it together and give you a quick rundown: We’re making good progress toward getting full controller support and an initial version of the female player beta ready for you guys to check out in our next big stable release, so it won’t be much longer until you can officially play as House Party’s female protagonist! We know you’re stoked to test the waters of muy caliente girl-on-girl love gameplay, so we’re working hard to get her into the party as soon as possible!

Speaking of hotness at the party, you may have realized your favorite sultry Spanish teacher has been looking a little…well, covered in black bars for the last couple of updates. Unfortunately, Steam updated the rules policy regarding depicting real people in video games, which raised some concerns about Lety’s content. To stay on the safe side and not risk having the game or any major part of it completely removed, we were forced to censor her for a short time while we got everything figured out and learned more about the new rules.

If you’ve read House Party’s title screen or any of our interviews, you already know we’re not fans of censorship. We weren’t happy to censor Lety’s content all of the sudden on you guys, so we prioritized getting this fixed as soon as we could. Thankfully, we were able to discuss the content directly with Steam’s team and made adjustments to get Lety uncensored again! In this update, she’s no longer restricted by those ugly black bars so, as long as you own the Explicit Content DLC, you can now see her again in all of her sexy cool kid extraordinaire glory with this update!

We also have some bonus good news on the anti-censorship side of things. Before this update, we had to censor everything body-wise, at all times, in the non-explicit version of the game. However, in this update, we’ll no longer have upper body mosaic censors on characters regardless of explicit DLC ownership or installation. This is a huge win for House Party!

We hope you’re looking forward to these changes and thanks for being patient while we fixed this, dudes. We know it was probably shocking and frustrating to have her content unexpectedly blacked out, and we weren’t expecting the rules to change on us like that. As a mature game we always have to tread carefully with our content, and as a small development team we appreciate you guys allowing us extra time to get it fixed.

Anyway, onward to the next update! We’re running a bit behind on our original timeline estimate, so we’ve gotta cruise. In the meantime, enjoy the maintenance changes and having your passionate times with Lety back to normal. Remember…no grabbing, guys, NO GRABBING!

Adiós for now, party animals.

– Eek! Team

CHANGE LOG:

https://housepartygame.com/release-notes/

Note: Older save files may no longer be compatible. Custom stories may no longer function as intended.
Note on Controller Support: Controller support is still not yet fully complete in its current state. If you run into significant trouble while using a controller, you may need to temporarily use your keyboard/mouse. Sorry for any inconveniences, doods!

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House Party 0.21.1 Stable Release

To become a Patron and get early access to new House Party versions click here.

You remember all those fixes we said we wanted to get done before we added the much-awaited female playable character? Well, they’re DONE, doods! January’s polish update is complete and Stable Release 0.21.1 is officially here, brahs!

We added several new cutscenes, a ton of polish, fixed a bunch of bugs, and laid out the preliminary framework for controller support. There isn’t a bunch of new story content, but we took care of quality of life changes and crucial fixes – particularly with the new input system.

With the framework in place, we’ve been able to expand controller support to a basic state that we should have fully functional by the time we release our female playthrough first look. Controllers that will work will be most XInput controllers (which includes Xbox), as well as the Logitech F301 and Playstation 4 (Dual Shock) controllers. Soon you guys can play one-handed if you want to, y’know…um, eat a burrito or something. Yeah…that.

Speaking of controllers, part of the reason why we are working so hard to implement controller support is because Valve’s Steam Deck will release this February. Not only have you brahs been asking for controller support a lot recently, but we know several of you are getting Steam Decks and we thought it’d be awesome for you to be able to enjoy the party as soon as you’ve got the Deck in your hands…er, hand.

You’re wondering about those new cutscenes, too, aren’t you? We added a cool new Original Story intro cutscene, cutscenes for Derek and Ashley’s finales, and an absolutely ludicrous Lety cutscene! Be sure to check them out the next time you explore the party.

Awesome! So…what’s coming next? Our update after this one will introduce character selection and the highly anticipated female player. She’ll have some exciting new story content for you to explore soon. Oh, yes. It’s time, doods. Onward to working on the female playable character!

– Eek! Team

CHANGE LOG:

https://housepartygame.com/release-notes/

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House Party 0.21.0 Released to Beta Testers

To become a Patron and get early access to new House Party versions click here.

Beta 0.21.0 is here, doods!

If you’ve kept an eye on our Early Access roadmap, you’ll know since Vickie’s content is fully complete, we’re now working on our December polish update before we add the female playable character to the game.

This update includes preliminary support for Valve’s Steam Deck that releases this coming February, so you guys can experience partying on the Deck as soon as it launches! It also adds a rough initial version of support for a variety of other controllers. XInput controllers (which includes Xbox), as well as the Logitech F301 and Playstation 4 (Dual Shock), have had recent development progress made in this update. We’re on our way to full controller support, doods!

Besides troubleshooting and laying the groundwork for the new controller input system, we spent our time this month going through and adding much-needed polish, performance optimizations, bug fixes, and quality of life updates. We want to make everything shiny before we add the new female character! 

We also added a New Game intro cutscene, cutscenes for Derek and Ashley’s finales and completed the Italian translation of Vickie’s ending. Enjoy partying in Italian and the new cutscenes!

We should probably also mention that this December update won’t follow our standard release cycle. The next update after this will be our polish update’s Stable Release. 

Get excited, brahs, because we’re super close to starting work on the female character!

Also… Happy New Year!

– Eek Team

Note: Placeholders may be present for dialogue and assets, and language translations may be incomplete. Older save files may also not be compatible and custom stories may no longer function as intended.

Note on Controller Support:

If you run into any significant trouble with the below, you may need to temporarily use your keyboard/mouse.

-Disclaimer screen may not respond to controller input

-Some UIs may not respond as expected with a controller, or may get “stuck” if using a controller

-You can’t rebind controller buttons/sticks in the Input Configuration menu

-A handful of keyboard/mouse buttons are still not properly configurable in the Input Configuration menu

-Some scrolbars are unresponsive to controller input

-Contrast and element selection issues make UI navigation awkward

-Chairs, beds, etc. can be hard to sit in with the controller

CHANGE LOG:

https://housepartygame.com/release-notes/

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