Recently Tauriq Moosa left Twitter (he’s back) after receiving hate, threats, and abuse for writing an article about the race problems in Witcher III. If you haven’t played the game, he’s right: that game is white as hell. He has come under fire a lot, and I wanted to share […]
Games and Culture
337 posts
I got married last weekend and, coincidentally, that same weekend, the New York Times published a trend piece that explores the fact that the number of women keeping their maiden names after marriage is on the rise. And I say “coincidentally” because I just so happen to be one of […]
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 […]
This year the 4th of July feels more distant than others for a number of reasons. Several weeks ago on June 19th we celebrated 150 years of emancipation with Juneteenth (which happened for slaves in 1865, not 1776), Black churches are burning in the South, and unarmed Black children, women, […]
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 […]
The Batman franchise (Warner Bros.) has been frequently questioned on its representation of female characters, despite featuring some of comics’ most memorable women. The Batman: Arkham series has consistently featured some problematic representations of its female characters and other bits of sexist content throughout the four games. Batman: Arkham City […]
Jim Norton wrote in Time Magazine that “Americans have collectively become the most hypersensitive group of whining milksops ever assembled under one flag.” It’s easy to see why he thinks this. Go to a lot of popular blogs, and you’ll see that people are pissed off. Though, “people” is perhaps […]
When Bethesda made the E3 announcement that they were going to be releasing a mobile Fallout game I was more than a little bit excited. I have been playing Fallout Shelter (iOS) almost constantly since it launched. I started with just one vault and thought that I might get that one […]
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 […]
This week, I’ve been reading through The Cult of LEGO, which has turned out to be one of the most comprehensive accounts of LEGO I’ve read to date. The authors included a lot of fun and not so fun tidbits about the history of LEGO. For example, I knew, of […]
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 joked several times on the last episode of the podcast that this was going to be the year of the 4 at E3. We were all anticipating 2nds, 3rds, or 4ths of some series or another and that held up for the most part. One of the things that […]
My post today comes from the conversations that have been happening around games for years, but have come to the fore again in the last couple of weeks with all of the discussion of representations of race (or a lack thereof) in CD Project Red’s The Witcher 3. We have […]