I sit here today wrestling with this question for a very good reason. A summer camp I’ve been involved in is on the precipice of being shut down. The camp is designed to get middle and high school aged girls involved in IT, computer science, and video games. Last year […]
alexlayne
211 posts
You may or may not believe this, but studying games isn’t always fun. In fact, sometimes it’s downright horrible. Ask any PhD student who is researching video games from any kind of critical perspective and they will tell you: games are full of some of the most defeating, vitriolic, toxic […]
It’s no surprise that people generally think the internet has made our society more violent and toxic. Perhaps it’s not the internet as much as the anonymity it provides, but either way. Hate, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all kinds of fear-based/difference-based abuse has always existed, of course. We didn’t need […]
Conditions, diseases, the law, careers, crimes. The list could possibly go on forever. What list? You ask. The list of things that mean less, carry less weight, and are taken less seriously when they happen to women than to men. One only needs to quickly peruse the history of medical […]
Games are alive with emotion. Maybe that emotion is excitement at finding a new piece of legendary gear, or aggression at trying to kill a particularly difficult boss, or sadness when a character dies (what, you’ve never cried during a video game? No? Yeah, yeah… me either…). One of the […]
I think back to the biggest, most important moments in my life and career, and every time I have a life altering success I can directly trace it to a mentor. I failed Biology 101 twice as an undergrad. I got a C+ in my freshman English class. Somehow I […]
In academia, there are constant fights about disciplinary boundaries: you can’t teach ethics in a course: that belongs to philosophy; you can’t say the word history in a course description; you can’t touch certain authors. Disciplinary boundaries can be a good thing: they let scholars know they have a home; […]
On Wednesday Zoë Quinn wrote a heartbreaking post about why she is giving up the fight against her ex boyfriend who has defamed her, harassed her, and made her the most hated person on the Internet. The last one isn’t true of course, but one could think it is by […]
“Twitch reveals itself to be a perfect witness of events happening over the video game industry and community” (Kautoue et. al.) As NYMG begins its new venture, Gaming for Good, I started thinking more about the importance Twitch and other streaming platforms in the new emerging social fabric of games. […]
I have a love/hate relationship with the Call of Duty franchise. On one hand, I enjoy the mental release that comes with playing a first-person shooter. I don’t typically find the violence gratuitous or distracting. In a FPS, you aren’t typically very engaged with the stories or the characters, so […]
While food is a crucial part of many games, it often is overlooked. Unless your character is starving, running low on health, or on a food-related quest, you may never really register just how big of a role food can play in a game. From World of Warcraft’s Crunchy Spider […]
As I launch a new game studies program, I am becoming keenly aware of issues that crop up when you bring games and concepts from game studies into an undergraduate classroom. When I was a graduate student, surrounded by professors and graduate students, I almost never had to argue about […]
I love you. I hate you. Let’s have sex. Leave me alone. “Somebody help me” joins the ranks of the most powerful three word phrases in the English language. It can be an annoyed exasperation or a desperate plea. But one thing is certain: we all need the occasional helpful […]
The Dwarf Run is a very interesting game because its very existence represents a desire in the gaming community for a return to early point and click adventure games. When I was growing up, Realmz was my absolute favorite game. Realmz is a fantasy adventure RPG only developed for the […]
Our work at NYMG has always been in service of making games better for everyone. This includes the community that loves games, the industry that makes them, and the academics that talk about them incessantly (myself included). Some people don’t like the way we go about this. In particular, some […]
I worry that have been falling out of love with video games. The drive I used to have to finish this quest line, explore that new area, or be the first to beat that new game has been waning. I’m not gaming less, by any means, but my gaming has […]