Alisha and I are heading to a conference this weekend to talk about our work on Invisibility Blues (and maybe a little something else). It’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s great that people see the value in the work that we are doing and think that we can help them in […]
Games and Rhetoric
173 posts
Recently, I played through Kiva Bay’s game 12hrs, a game in which players are thrust into the role of a homeless woman trying to survive the night. Suffice to say, 12hrs is a harrowing experience in general, but unusually so here because I initially played as part of a group. […]
Since we’ve been discussing Her Story again lately, I went back and replayed the beginning. The game initially seeds the player with four videos tagged with the keyword “murder,” and since the gameplay is built solely from searching keywords, I catalogued all the major options in these early videos, omitting articles and […]
Ever since Bulimia.com released their re-imagined takes on female video game characters, there has been a great deal of debate as to whether or not the redone bodies actually were more “realistic” as stated. From the original explanation for the project: Some gaming studios boast their hyper-realistic lighting techniques, touting […]
Recently I have found myself having lots of heated discussions about racial representation in video games and the importance of paying attention to the history behind these representations (*cough* Cuphead *cough*) and in some cases it has been a bit of an uphill battle, but it’s not new. It’s the […]
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the cliché of the grizzled, brown-haired hero, wondering just what it is that keeps them at the top of the game-protagonist heap, and what encourages designers to keep on designing them. I’ve been thinking about these men, so similar, and about Lee Everett […]
A few days ago, I stumbled across Seduce Me the Otome on Steam. The game is free on Steam, and is described as “A romantic comedy visual novel centered around a girl named Mika Anderson, who gets entangled in the affairs of incubi.” I was curious and the game was […]
Over the years — and particularly, in the last year — the notion that game reviews should be objective, depoliticized, or both, has arisen time and time again, and been debated, discussed and parodied to oblivion. But who are the people asking for objective game reviews? Who thinks they’re possible, […]
It’s that time of year again, the time when all of the academic conferences and game and comic cons start to bump up against one another and cry out for my limited attention (and cash). It’s this time of year when I really feel the liminality of the space that […]
I have been an avid Frisbee (aka disc) golfer for years. That’s not to say I’m good because I’m not, but I am passable. I played in the 2014 Amateur Worlds Championship (where I got second to last in my division, only because the person I was battling for last […]
Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the games community about criticism and objectivity. Questions have arisen such as: What is criticism, and what does it mean for the gaming sphere? What are the bounds of criticism, and what purpose does it serve? Is critique censorship? What is […]
The recent NYMG piece on Sam’s reaction to the new Cuphead trailer has inspired a lot of reaction of its own about the game, the animation style that influenced it, and what it means to critique a trailer, and so for the purpose of further discussion and analysis, we have […]
I watched the movie Tammy last night. It stars the fabulous Melissa McCarthy, one of my favorite all-time actors. I started thinking about how amazing to see a plus-sized actress for the first time. I know, I know, there are “plus-sized” actresses and models all over the place, right? Well, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]