This week, I came across an article by E. McNeill called “History and Games” in which McNeill makes connections between the subject of history and the subject of video games. Indeed, McNeill engages in such a discussion even though, as he says, many “people seem to view history as dry […]
Games and Culture
337 posts
I recently read a piece by Thomas McMullan called “From Minecraft to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, How Real Life Imitates the Games We Play” in which McMullan discusses Oscar Wilde’s argument that life imitates art: “Wilde wrote that life imitates art more than art imitates life. We look at […]
When I was a kid, I had piles of Star Wars figures, including all the Leias a girl could want. I had combat-ready Hoth Leia, I had Leia in a poncho on Endor, and bounty hunter Leia, who was my favorite, because she was just so cool, strolling into Jabba’s […]
Social media has been employed as a significant site of mobilizing for Black Lives Matter especially with the power of Black Twitter. This form of “social public” as Andre Brock outlines allows users to generate culturally relevant content and disseminate it to their audience. And that scope is beyond the […]
Warning: MGSV spoilers, discussions of sexual violence and war within. Metal Gear is and has always been a weird beast. Sometimes the good guys are bad guys are good guys on the side and sometimes they’re all clones and have maybe exchanged a body part or two. In this universe, […]
This holiday season, with the release of Star Wars, I found myself thinking a lot about fandom and how our love of various things (games, LEGO, movie franchises, etc.) becomes part of our conversations in both real life and on the internet. I’m not a fan of Star Wars. I […]
Episode 118: Who Gets to Be a Gamer?: A Conversation with Latoya Peterson (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). In this episode we talk to the fabulous Latoya Peterson, creator of Fusion’s Girl Gamer documentary. A rousing conversation about gaming as women, online games community, […]
I took a feminist methodologies class this past semester, and, as a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make use of feminist methodologies in my own work and my own research on games and literature. What seems important when conceptualizing of such thinking and practice is that there […]
Oh, December. That most wonderful time of the year, when everyone argues about holiday greetings, politics, and whether or not this terrible weather is really just some career-risking global conspiracy designed to piss off people who really like plastic. Oh, and also, everyone with a website or a YouTube channel that mentioned […]
On any given day, a good 1-2% of my Facebook feed is cats, but lately, it’s been a very specific sort of cats: virtual cats, the fuzzy furballs of Neko Atsume. We’re wrapping up finals week here at the university, and many of the grad students had papers due over […]
I’m going to blame it on some kind of virus induced delirium, but last night I sat on my couch nursing a cold, sipping a hot tea, and watching the Game Awards. Mind you I never watch the game awards. I think the judging is biased and the host(s) usually […]
Life has reached a kind of fever pitch for me. It’s the end of the semester, various deadlines are looming, and changes are afoot at my kid’s school. All of this leads to me being forever in a bad friggin’ mood. Perhaps not outwardly, but inwardly I often think about […]
I’ve written a couple posts on Rise of the Tomb Raider already because I’ve been playing the game a lot lately, and while I’ve been playing, I’ve also been watching Jessica Jones on Netflix. As a result of my concurrent engagement with both, I’ve been thinking that the two seem to […]
The slippery slope of body positivity Has never been more deterring than when Gazing at the sun through Lara’s proclivity To deny herself sufficient calories – On her search for Divinity It was clear from the beginning That body fat and masculinity Were not sufficient representations of a Woman’s sexuality […]
I’ve been playing more Rise of the Tomb Raider this week, and in the course of my doing so, I’ve been thinking more about the manner in which parenthood is represented in the game. And there are two characters, specifically, whose roles in the game, whose relationships and interactions with […]
While food is a crucial part of many games, it often is overlooked. Unless your character is starving, running low on health, or on a food-related quest, you may never really register just how big of a role food can play in a game. From World of Warcraft’s Crunchy Spider […]