On this week's show, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the first Tropes vs. Women video, "Bronies" and if rights holders should be a little kinder to fan projects, and the nightmarish launch of SimCity this week. Download Episode 44 now: SuperPAC Episode 44 (1 hour, 6 minutes) 60.4 MB.

The very first Tropes vs. Women video is alive and kicking and ready for your perusal. The video series by Anita Sarkeesian was crowd-funded by a very successful Kickstarter campaign, though some in the gaming community attempted to take Sarkeesian for being overzealous about misogyny and sexism in both the development and game-playing community.

The first video is called "Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games" and is described by Sarkeesian on the Frequency Feminism YouTube channel as:

Update: PlayStation Lifestyle has an extensive trophy list (may contain spoilers) that lists the "Bros before Hos" trophy being earned by escaping the "Fury ambush," and not by simply curb stomping a Fury.

The UK tabloid The Sun is running a feature length story about a saucy calendar featuring gaming and scantily clad women that is apparently all the rage in Germany - right alongside David Hasselhoff... The article is titled "Nerd is the word," and highlights the fact that the "calendar featuring classic gaming consoles and sexy girls" is a "big hit.." We think it's a big miss personally because it objectifies women in the name of geek culture.

In a recent article in Forbes (as reported by Gamasutra) Electronic Arts executive vice president and chief talent officer Gabrielle Toledano said that blaming sexism for a lack of women in the video game industry is a copout and unreasonable.

In what has to be a record take-down of a questionable piece of marketing, Square Enix pulled a Facebook app promoting Hitman Absolution two hours after it was deployed after a scathing report from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The company later apologized for the app. The trouble began after RPS wrote about how "Hire Hitman" app allowed users to target and assassinate their Facebook friends, complete with death threats to your intended target.

In line with a story we published earlier this morning, Computer and Videogames highlights some excerpts from an interview with Jean-Maxime Moris, the co-founder of Paris studio Dontnod. Dontnod is the studio behind Capcom's upcoming action title Remember Me, which features a mixed-race female star as its protagonist.

Kotaku has a short article chronicling the Twitter hashtag #1reasonwhy, which has served as a rallying point over the last 24 hours or so on what women in both the video games industry and their female counterparts in games journalism have to put up with and why there are not as many women in both fields.

Last week, GameSpot reported that Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill and 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross had said "there is zero tolerance for Xbox Live players who are found to be making sexist or discriminatory comments against others, with a lifetime ban from the network as penalty."

According to Destructoid, that's not exactly the case.

A new print ad from Sony Computer Entertainment France is getting some attention for pushing the boundaries of sexism to promote the company's PS Vita hand-held. The ad (pictured left and courtesy of MCV) shows a female body with four breasts and compares those four breasts to the PS Vita's front and rear touch screens.

The tagline for the ad is "Touch both sides, twice the sensations."

Some are chalking the ad up to what is acceptable in French advertising and cultural standards.