No Man’s Sky, the procedurally generated universe-exploring created by the small team at Hello Games, may have made a splash at this year’s E3, but last night’s demo on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert launched the game into a whole new dimension. Hello Games’ co-founder Sean Murray seemed in his […]
Games and Culture
337 posts
Episode 112: On LatinX Nerds and Hispanic Heritage Month: A Conversation with Sylvia Monreal (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). We sat down with Sylvia Monreal of ¿Como Se Dice Nerd? to talk about her Hispanic Heritage Month Game Jam, Latinx identity in gaming […]
I finally got around to playing through Her Story last week, and as a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a game can be and what a game can do. Indeed, Alisha has already written previously about the fact that there is even discussion about whether or not […]
As a middle-aged (when did that happen) woman who plays games I often find myself in the situation where I am either called upon to “prove” my credibility as a gamer or simply ignored in gaming spaces. The former happens in both academic and non-academic spaces. Unfortunately in academic spaces […]
So, I have some things to say about “resting bitch face.” For those of you who may have been living under a rock up until reading this post, “resting bitch face,” as Jessica Bennett explains in a recent New York Times piece, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF.,” is […]
Alisha asked me something earlier this week, and since it’s something that’s been nagging at me since, I figured, hey, maybe it’s about time I write about it in an effort to explore the subject more deeply. The subject at hand is perhaps best introduced in the paraphrasing of Alisha’s […]
Spoilers abound; content warnings as well for sexual violence and torture. There’s been a lot of discussion about the “male gaze” around Quiet, the mute female sniper in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and it’s a phrase we’ve employed here a number of times in talking about video […]
“If innate male aggression and dominance are at the root of the female oppression, then the feminist program would logically require either the extermination of the offending sex, or else a eugenics project to modify its character. If sexism is a by-product of capitalism’s relentless appetite for profit, then sexism […]
A few weeks ago, on a brutally hot day, I met someone I’ve admired for some time. I attended Felicia Day’s book signing at the Brookline Booksmith, an independent bookstore the Boston community holds near and dear. My stomach gurgled in a nasty way as I approached the table where […]
As I mentioned during our latest episode of the NYMG podcast, I’ve been playing Until Dawn, and the game has got me thinking about a few different things that I’d like to spend some time parsing through, like the game’s representation of things like gender and race, how it is that […]
Women have been long denied a voice in the gaming industry. This site, and others like it, have been fighting for years to establish a place where women’s voices aren’t only tolerated, but they are central to what it means to talk about games. Just because this site focuses on […]
I’ve struggled with the concept of ‘gamer’ for a long time. I’ve always considered myself a gamer because of my engagement with the culture since I’ve been a child. But hearing many prominent feminists whom I respect and adore deny their gamer identity, I have begun to challenge my own […]
TW: I’m going to go ahead and tag this one for racism and racist imagery. This week a little bit of hell broke loose in the serious games space that quickly circulated to the mainstream. Serious Games Interactive tweeted about a game that they were playing, Playing History 2: Slave […]
A couple of weeks ago, I was both surprised and not surprised when the story about Target and the gendered toy signs blew up. I was not surprised because I know many people still cling to traditional view of gender and toys, but I was surprised by the level of […]
The fall semester began last week at Purdue, and I’ve been spending some time this past week catching up with other members of my cohort and meeting with professors to discuss my research goals. And I’ve been thinking about a few things as a result of these conversations—conversations that, of […]
There’s an article that I’ve seen making the rounds on Facebook called “Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, and the War on ‘Unlikable Women.'” And I read it, not because I necessarily have any strong feelings (in any direction) about Ariana Grande or Kim Kardashian but because I am struck by the […]