In Body of Mine, a new virtual reality experience, users can put on a headset and body tracking sensors, then look down and see a body — their arms, their chest, down to their feet — that does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.

Why it matters: The project, which was demoed for Axios last week in New York City, is an ambitious and already award-winning experience. It is designed to provoke introspection about gender and a transgender person's experiences, and allow people to explore what it might be like to be in a different body.

• “We really want this to be a way for people to get a headset and explore their own gender and think more critically and deeply about what gender is,” Body of Mine lead designer Cameron Kostopoulos told Axios.

Details: The interactive demo lets the user touch their virtual body as if it is their real one and hear audio clips from trans people about those parts of their bodies.

• Someone assigned male at birth who uses Body of Mine, for example, will seem to inhabit a virtual body that has breasts. When touching their chest, they will hear a trans woman talk about what it feels like to have them.
• Some of the stories from trans people that play inside Body of Mine VR describe anxieties regarding onlookers' comments about their bodies or elation about having a body that feels like their own.

What they’re saying: A major goal, Kostopoulos says, is to give cis users the feeling of being in a body that they do not feel comfortable with and help them try to understand what gender dysphoria might feel like.

• “We want to take it to the areas around the world that have a lot of transphobia and have people who could empathize more and don’t have the opportunity to understand trans issues.”
• “But also what you see in those same places are a lot of people who are in the closet and a lot of trans youth who are really struggling with their identity,” he said.
• He recalled taking a prototype of Body of Mine to a film festival in Oklahoma and letting a trans girl try it and then letting her mother, who kept calling the girl her son, try it as well. The mom was quiet afterward, he said.

The big picture: VR and immersive video have long been used to allow people to experience what it's like to be in an unfamiliar body or setting, often to help people empathize with marginalized groups.

Between the lines: Kostopoulos, who is gay, says he conceived Body of Mine after being outed. “I was thinking about how we can use VR to build safe spaces,” he says.

• He wanted to create something that would tell the stories of his trans friends and potentially help trans people.
• The project is self-funded on an "extremely low budget," Kostopoulos says.
• The demo used in festivals is shown in private screening rooms. "Anonymity is a key part of the experience," he says.

What’s next: Kostopoulos is still refining the experience, which he hopes to eventually release for free on VR platforms that support body tracking.

The bottom line: Kostopoulos hopes Body of Mine will have a positive impact, but is keeping things in perspective.

• “Rarely you're going to see someone with a change of heart right on the spot,” he says. But “you’re relating to stories in a way that you don’t normally and that at least plants a seed.”

Activision says it is getting ahead of a legal threat by suing the creator of a popular TikTok video after the company used audio from his clip in its own post.

Why it matters: Activision is testing the theory that repurposing content on TikTok is fair game and not something it has to pay for.

• It’s also accusing Anthony Fantano, the video's creator, of asking for an “extortionate” amount of money to avoid being sued for using the audio, which it says was permitted by TikTok’s terms of service.

Details: The Activision suit was filed in California federal court Monday.

• It seeks a ruling confirming that the company did not infringe on Fantano’s rights when it incorporated audio of Fantano talking about a thinly sliced pizza into a video about sneakers themed to its video game character Crash Bandicoot.
• Fantano’s 19-second clip was uploaded in April 2021, has been liked more than 5 million times on TikTok, and has become a meme.
• That video was repeatedly reused and remixed over the last two years, which Fantano celebrated, according to the suit.
• Activision’s Crash Bandicoot clip was uploaded in June but is no longer online.

Between the lines: According to the suit, Fantano contacted Activision in late June, threatening to sue and has not been satisfied by Activision deleting the video.

• On July 11, Fantano allegedly asked for a six-figure payment.
• But Activision says TikTok’s terms of service indicate that users grant “third parties” the right to “modify, adapt, reproduce, [or] make derivative works” of their uploaded videos.
• Activision also says it pulled Fantano’s audio from a listing of sounds that TikTok marked as cleared for commercial use.

The other side: Fantano did not reply to a request for comment from Axios. But in an interview with Overcome last year about the clip’s popularity, Fantano said, “I have so many other irons in the fire going on that I don’t really give a s–t about what happens with the sound of me yelling at a pizza.”

• But, he added, “for somebody who has literally nothing to their name other than, ‘Hey, I have this popular song on TikTok or this popular sound,’ for them to not see any kind of benefit off of that whatsoever, that’s terrible. That’s awful.”

A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that offensive, hateful usernames still persist in several popular online games, though companies involved say they’re working hard to wipe them out.

Driving the news: The ADL study found usernames such as “HeilHitler” and “WhiteLivesOverBlk” in existence across a check of 30 antisemitic, racist, misogynist or other hateful terms in games such as Call of Duty, Fortnite, PUBG and League of Legends.

• The ADL attempted to create new user accounts using the hateful terms as a username that would be visible to other players. For Call of Duty Warzone, for example, 52% of the tested names were allowed; the rest were blocked as inappropriate.
• The ADL also checked a service that tracks usernames across games.

Between the lines: Game publishers tell Axios they’re been on top of this issue.

• A rep for Activision, which publishes Call of Duty, notes it partners with the ADL to improve its player communities, uses “automatic detection systems to filter prohibited content,” and has banned more than 500,000 Call of Duty accounts in recent years for violating its code of conduct.
• A rep for Epic Games, publisher of Fortnite, said “usernames that include vulgarity, hate speech and offensive or derogatory language of any kind" violate its rules and are removed. It said all but one of the hateful usernames the ADL’s researchers found in Fortnite belong to inactive accounts and the remaining one has been reset.

☹️ CD Projekt RED is laying off 9% of its workforce, or about 100 people through early 2024, saying the studio has been “overstaffed.”

🎮 Ubisoft has canceled a sequel to 2020’s open-world Zelda-style Greek mythology adventure Immortals: Fenyx Rising, VGC reports.

• In a statement to Axios, a Ubisoft rep said the company was reallocating resources in its Quebec City studio to “other unannounced projects.”
• The Immortals sequel was in development for well over a year and would have focused on Polyensian gods, sources tell Axios. But the studio’s main priority, they say, is the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Red.

↗️ Capcom reported a 99% jump in operating income for its first quarter (April-June), thanks to sales of nearly 2 million copies of June’s Street Fighter 6, while its Resident Evil 4 remake, released in March, has now sold nearly 5 million copies.

↘️ Microsoft's gaming revenue for its fourth quarter (April-June) grew a lower-than-expected 1%, with a 5% increase in content and services and a 13% decline in hardware sales. The company blamed “weakness in first-party and third-party content.”

😲 Sony says it has sold 40 million PlayStation 5 consoles to customers through July 16, since the system’s late 2020 launch. (Almost as fast as it sold 40 million PS4s with no pandemic hurting the supply chain).

📺 "Twisted Metal," Peacock’s live-action adaptation of the PlayStation franchise of the same name, does not appear to be on track for a repeat of the success of "The Last of Us," after getting smashed by critics. The Verge calls it “a generic postapocalyptic story,” while The Daily Beast says it's “a threadbare pantomime at best, and a maddening misfire at worst.”

Friday, July 28

• Disney Illusion Island (Switch) is released.
• Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest is held in Las Vegas.

Saturday-Sunday, July 29-30

• A quiet weekend.

Monday, July 31

• Venba (PC, console) is released.

Tuesday, Aug. 1

• Cut the Rope Daily (mobile via Netflix) is released.
• The Indie Live Expo Summer Showcase is held in Japan.
• EA and Sega quarterly earnings are announced.

Wednesday, Aug. 2

• Thronefall (PC) is released.
• Unity quarterly earnings are announced.

Thursday, Aug. 3

• Baldur’s Gate 3 (PC, coming later to PlayStation and Xbox) and Flutter Away (PC, Switch) are released.
• The closed beta for Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade begins.

Friday, Aug. 4

• The Evo fighting game tournament begins and runs through Sunday.

My kids weren’t digging the new Mickey Mouse game, despite initial interest (three-player co-op just doesn’t seem to work at their age), but we’ve had a terrific time with some virtual mazes instead.

• The game in question is called Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective (two hours played on Switch, also out on PC and mobile).
• It’s just a set of mazes you can navigate with a controller, but, really, that’s all it needs to be. Simple, beautiful and full of lightly animated characters and sights for us to point to. Lovely stuff.