Game Developers Fear Anti-Trans Measures Could Hit Their Industry Next

Ashley Poprik has never been the model for a video game character. As a writer on projects like Spider-Man 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, they work on games, not as characters within them. In 2023, however, a cabal of angry gamers was convinced otherwise. They were furious over how Spider-Man 2’s Mary Jane looked; more specifically, they complained, she simply wasn’t hot enough. The problem, these gamers falsely claimed, was that Poprik—then a writing intern with no ability to change a character’s face, let alone one based on a real-life model—had inserted themself into the game. Gamers concocted this conspiracy based on a photo of the writer, placed side-by-side with Mary Jane; in the photo, Poprik and MJ both sport long hair with a middle part, are smiling, and have a similar face shape. Poprik, who identifies as gender-fluid, describes themself as having androgynous features. “A big narrative spun up that I was a trans woman, and so I was getting hate from any alt-right winger,” ... Read full article.