Episode 103: E3 and the Year of Fours (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher). Our show was long, the news was deep, and it was late, late, late when we crept away to sleep (or to play video games after hours of […]
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We all know Ceiling Cat loves watching us play games. I have my own furry mob that games along with me too: one Great Dane and two Boston Terriers. Often when I stream you can catch them scooting across the camera, wrestling, chewing on bones, and annoyingly jumping into my […]
A quick stroll through the Playstation or Xbox stores reveals the distinct lack of a once-common feature: demos. A search of the Steam store returned 15 demos released since the beginning of June, most for free but some available only for purchase. Many of these demos, however, are for games […]
The Music Machine delivers an experience that’s uncharacteristic of most horror games. There are no monsters chasing after you, despite the fact that they’d be right at home on the abandoned island where the game is set. There are no jump scares waiting for you around the corner (at least […]
Last week saw the disbanding of the Frag Dolls, a group of female professional gamers that was formed in 2004 to demo and promote Ubisoft games as well as to participate in professional competitions (they became the first all-female clan to win a pro circuit tournament–CPL–in 2006). The first team […]
Moms have it rough, man. I’m talking socially, of course, considering the fact that the United States is only one of two countries in the world that doesn’t provide paid time off for new mothers. (Get it together, United States.) But I’m also talking representationally, and it is this particular […]
Downloadable content in theory is a lovely idea. It means that games we love will never be static, and we can continue playing them and exploring new content and loving them for much longer than if they had remained as they were at launch. Lately, though, I wonder if that’s […]
I have been anxious to see Splatoon up close and personal since it was first announced in a Nintendo Direct conference. First off the game was going to release with amiibo. Little Inkling amiibo with funky little hairdos and super soaker type paint sprayers. And if the collectible gods smiled down on […]
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Han Solo, or Princess Leia, or some sort of princess hybrid of the two. They were my heroes. Sometimes I wanted to be a female Robin Hood instead, or Laura Ingalls or a character from a fairy tale, but whatever the […]
I have always been a huge advocate of ethical reflection and thoughtfulness in the classroom. I believe that regardless of what you teach about or what you teach with, you should be cognizant of the possible ramifications for your students. For example, I gave a talk in 2011 about how […]
A few weeks ago, Polygon editor Arthur Gies published his review on The Witcher 3, an action-based role-playing game developed by CD Projekt RED and based on the Polish fantasy novel of the same name. Though Gies’ review was largely positive and although he still admitted that The Witcher 3 […]
After writing about Among the Sleep a few weeks ago, I have found myself continually thinking about the idea of children as protagonists. Indeed, I have been working to understand just what it is about the embodiment of childhood that is at work in such figures. In other words, what […]
Though there have been some great strides in the presentation of empowered female characters in videogames, developers still have a long way to go. In a recent dialogue with Samantha Blackmon and Alisha Karabinus about female characters who fall short of their potential, we found ourselves asking why narratives and […]
I get a lot of people asking me how the writing that I do here on the site connects back to the academic writing that is expected in the job that I do that keeps the lights on around here. Well, today I presented a piece (along with Alex Layne […]
Episode 102: Elfroot, Bells, and Potato Crops, or Pick, Plant, Repeat Forever: Tedium in Games (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher) Long title, for extra tedium. In this episode, featuring special guest Tanya D., AKA @cypheroftyr, AKA “the spawn point of […]
While I have spent the last three decades of my life being as politically active as was feasible at any given time and being as verbal about said politics as I could, I have to admit that doing the same with my work as a games scholar has not been […]