My vision is pretty bad, and it’s been pretty bad since the fourth grade. My night vision is even worse. I have heard optometrists utter “whoa” during appointments (which, in my opinion, is never a great thing to hear a doctor say). That Twilight Zone episode in which the guy’s glasses […]
Games and Culture
337 posts
Michonne is my favorite character in The Walking Dead universe, in both the show and the comic, so when word came down that she was the first of the characters to get her own Telltale outing, I was thrilled (other comic characters have shown up, but never served as the […]
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about female characters and when I choose to play them and when I don’t and for some reason bell hooks’ book, Outlaw Culture, has really been haunting me. The whole book is pretty amazing and was written during the […]
I recently started playing This War of Mine: The Little Ones, and thus far I’ve put about 5 hours into the game. My first reaction as of now: hot, boiling tears of sadness and desperation running down my face — there may have been some snot in there too. The game […]
I’ve been writing a lot the past couple weeks about metanarrativity and postmodernism, about how such things manifest themselves in games like The Magic Circle, like Until Dawn, like Pony Island. And I hope you’ll bear with me while I indulge myself in expanding on some of these ideas a […]
I get it. I know. You just “don’t really see a problem” with objectification of female characters. You don’t really think racial representation is an issue. You think people are just taking it all too personally. I want to talk to you about this, though, because you’re part of our […]
NYMG is by no means new to streaming on Twitch and we’re certainly not new to talking about it. (Sarah’s mentioned her own plights as a woman streaming here and Alex comments on her love for the gaming community in Twitch here); I, however, I’m just getting my feet wet. […]
Last week, I wrote about a game called Pony Island and the manner in which the game makes use of metanarrativity. And I also mentioned that my interest in such a narrative technique stems from my location as a literary studies scholar—an interest that has extended my consideration of such […]
This week, I’ve been reading Sheri Graner Ray’s Gender Inclusive Game Design, a book that, in 2003, outlined some of the challenges the industry was facing in terms of expanding the market and being more welcoming to female gamers. Tracy Lien’s 2013 look at early trends in video game marketing […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]