The video showed the woman in a pink off-the-shoulder top, sitting on a bed, smiling a convincing smile. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else's body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd of unknown users had been passing it around online. She felt nauseous and mortified: What if her co-workers saw it? Would it change how they thought of her? Would they believe it was a fake?

The video showed the woman in a pink off-the-shoulder top, sitting on a bed, smiling a convincing smile. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else's body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd of unknown users had been passing it around online. She felt nauseous and mortified: What if her co-workers saw it? Would it change how they thought of her? Would they believe it was a fake?

Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian tries to make it clear her yearly, gender-focused analysis of the video games announced at E3 isn't founded in malice -- it's simply reality. Even in 2017, video games overwhelmingly feature male protagonists, rather than female leads. According to Feminist Frequency, 109 games debuted at E3 this year, and just eight of them (or 7 percent) star female characters, compared with 29 titles (26 percent) featuring male protagonists. Fifty-two percent of newly announced games utilize a system that lets players select specific characters or genders. "We're not trying to be bummers," Sarkeesian said on the Engadget stage at E3. "But it's like, let's look at the actual numbers so we can actually improve for real."

The groundbreaking critical series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is coming to an official end. "This is one of the most emotionally complicated projects I've ever created," writes creator Anita Sarkeesian in a new note to fans. She's been looking to finish the series for a while now, thanks to the toll it's taken on her both personally and professionally. But, while her latest post touches upon the trauma she experienced from angry gamers, the overall focus of the entry is positive and forward looking. Creating the feminist-infused critical video series took comprehensive research to ensure that a wide range of gaming titles were considered, not just the huge hits like Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda.

Before the bomb threats, GamerGate, or the violent emails and tweets, Anita Sarkeesian had a provocative idea. The feminist cultural critic, who'd taken on the likes of LEGO and Dollhouse-era Joss Whedon in her low-key Feminist Frequency web series, decided to go after misogyny in video games. Her life would never be the same. SEE ALSO: The tricky art of marketing women's empowerment in the era of Trump Sarkeesian's biting criticism put gamers on the defensive -- and many of them resented her blunt observations about chauvinism in the games they cherished. Though she wasn't the first or only person to openly confront the problem, her message and medium ignited controversy.