As we started our sixth year here at Not Your Mama’s Gamer, we pledged anew to do the work of social change, to work harder to take that work offline, and to pursue our Gaming for Good Initiative more aggressively. And with our pledge it seems that the universe heard […]
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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 […]
I recently came across a game called Pony Island, and what has struck me about this game is the fact that it makes use of the idea of metanarrative in the ways it asks us to play it. And as a literary studies scholar, one whose research occasionally focuses on […]
When I was kid, my rubric for normalcy was grounded in the appearance and texture of hair. As a biracial child with an ever present African American mother and absent father and a sea of white peers, I found myself stuck in a conundrum: What am I? Searching for a […]
My great aunt was a hoarder, the stereotypical kind; had she lived another twenty years, she’d have been on a reality show for sure. Her house was a maze of pathways that wound between stacks of brittle newspapers. Anything accidentally brushed released a cloud of dust so thick it seemed […]
For months I have been waiting for the release of the little game with the cute little yarn character appropriately named Yarny. I watched video and interviews for cons, read blog posts, and I have even gone as far as making my own little Yarny figure from wire and yarn. While […]
Episode 120: Who’s Your Daddy?: Society’s Take on Faulty Fathers and Monstrous Mothers (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). The episode in which we talk about Joe Williams’ early access Steam game, Who’s Your Daddy, and how it reflects on the way maintain society […]
Minecraft: cultural phenomenon, powerhouse in online gaming, bedrock of young gamers’ experience and learning, and now, a hotbed of abuse and playground for predators, according to a recent piece on Motherboard by Matthew Broomfield. Broomfield details the exploits of YouTuber LionMaker, who was, and is, befriending and exploiting children as young […]
This week I read a piece by Ed Smith called “Shut Up, Gaming Positivity,” in which Smith discusses what he sees as today’s “atmosphere of ‘gaming positivity.’ It’s a dream shared among developers and critics for gaming to be wonderful, smart, happy and successful—a willingness to force smiles and wave […]
“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. […]
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly building the LEGO Ghostbusters Firehouse. The build is taking awhile both because it’s huge and because, unfortunately, I have other responsibilities. Initially, I was going to hold off on the build because of these reasons, but building really helps me de-stress […]
Undertale. Whoa. I started playing only for the same reason a professor reads a book before assigning it: You need to know before you teach, and something about preparation. I’d heard and read that Undertale (tobyfox) is one of the more popular Steam games right now, and rightly so: It’s pretty much a […]
Alisha’s post this week on the disappearance of demos and the effect that it has had on the games industry gave me a chance to think about why i haven’t really missed the availability of the demo in most cases. I’ve said many times how I tend to go media […]
Alisha and Ashley brought a game called Who’s Your Daddy to my attention this week. According to Patricia Hernandez at Kotaku, “Who’s Your Daddy is an early access multiplayer game. One person plays as the dad, and another person can play as the baby. The baby has but one goal: to […]
Last night I found myself browsing Steam demos, as I often do. Every couple of months I’ll find one or two that catch my eye, but more often than not, I scroll through the list and discover there’s nothing that particularly sparks my interest. More exciting is the occasional demo I get […]
As promised, my ESL composition class played A Bird Story and it’s been a wonderful and insightful experience reading their reactions to a game they’ve deemed as unworthy of “gaming” status (I’ll touch on this a bit below); they didn’t anticipate that I would, however, expect this reaction from them regarding a […]