At the Extra Life gaming marathon last weekend, I played a good amount of the indie game The Binding of Isaac. Several of us played together, taking turns fighting bosses and watching (often, with horror). This game is straight up disturbing. But, I find it disturbing in a different way […]
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Alex and I are in the midst of the 24 hour gaming marathon to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network and Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. Every 6 hours we will take a quick break to record a video confessional with any fellow Purdue gamers who are participating and willing […]
On a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, I sat on a couch and obsessively played Angry Birds. I had the chance to go outside and be with friends, but I just couldn’t stop launching birds at those mocking, green pig faces. Still, I listened to the exotic tweets of birds, enjoyed […]
Machinima is the reappropriation of animations (and sometimes sound) from a video or computer game, remixed into a different context. For as long as we have had video games, we have had machinima. On the site we focus a lot on video games themselves, but that is not the only […]
Title: A Day in the Woods Developer: RetroEpic Software Genre: Puzzle Game Platform: Windows and OS X Retail Price (at time of review): $4.99 Alex and I have completed our first video review for NYMGamer. We are happy to present you with our thoughts on RetroEpic’s sliding tile based puzzle […]
On October 5, 2011 the world lost a great technology visionary in Mr. Steve Jobs. His passing was extremely sad but, we must admit, not surprising. I won’t take up time and space extolling the virtues of Mr. Jobs and all of the great things that he did at Apple, Atari, Pixar, […]
Episode 20: Everybody Wants to Be Master Chief: On Masculinity and Intersectionality (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we talk about masculinity and intersectionality. Men, race, sexuality, and anything else that comes to mind. Links of Note: Sponsor Sam or Alex in the […]
I can remember the first time I learned about body dysmorphia in men. I was in a classroom listening to young men reminisce about their high school wrestling days. They wore garbage bags under their clothes when they went running to sweat off extra pounds. They ate nothing but pudding […]
As I played the new Mortal Komat, I was struck by how similar this game seemed to the ones I had always played: similar characters, similar scenes, and similar moves. I’d like to imagine that video game companies are under pressure to develop their characters to move away from […]
In this week’s podcast, Alex brought up the fact that she was reading Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory and I thought that while Butler’s work is a little heavy it could definitely lead us to a good discussion of how feminine and masculine characters in video games are constructed aesthetically […]
Episode 19: Kratos is a Giant P*nis: Video Games and the Manly Man Archetype (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we talk about masculinity in games…yep, you read it right. Masculinity. Duke Nukem, Gears of War, Kratos, and androgynous JRPG boys. Links of […]
Episode 18: Quick and Dirty: Free Games and Extra Life (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we have sick kids and co-hosts so we did a quick podcast to choose the winner of the copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and run down […]
This year Alex and I are participating in the Extra Life Marathon to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network. I play specifically for Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, IN. Riley is a wonderful hospital that does great work for under/un-insured children in the area. Peanut had plastic surgery on […]
Thanks to the great post that Alex wrote on representations of women in games I started to think about representations of African Americans in games and decided to come up with my own list of “good” characters. The only well done (playable) characters that I could think of are the […]
Episode 17: You Say Feminist Whore Like It’s a Bad Thing: Race and Gender in Dead Island and Deus Ex (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) We talk about Techland’s Dead Island, Eidos/Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Tea Party Zombies, and Slavery: The Game. […]
I’ve been talking (and thinking) a lot lately about the differences between historical accuracy and the perpetuation of past culture (ie. the treatment of women in LA Noir and Madmen). I do have a genuine interest in creating representations of cultures in the past, and I think we can learn […]