Feminist work in game studies is sort of like playing golf. You hit 20 bad shots to every good shot, but that good shot is what keeps you coming back. You finally squared your hips correctly, didn’t take your eye of the ball, the WHAM! It goes soaring across the […]
Games and Education
87 posts
Now for all of you youngin’s who don’t know what Tuesday Cafe was let me start with a little story. As a new-ish grad student and a budding technorhetorician I entered Connections MOO on a Tuesday evening for the first time almost 20 years ago. The place was full of […]
Let me start by saying that I have not entirely been following the so-dubbed Spaklegate fiasco closely. Mostly what I’ve seen are hurt reactions by people who cared about what things like sparkleponies was doing for people, particularly for graduate students. It made us feel comfortable, and it let incoming […]
Trigger Warning: the game about to be described (The Day the Laughter Stopped) and the content of this article discusses and addresses rape and sexual assault An interactive fiction game – although in truth it more closely resembles an interactive narrative/fiction experience than what I’d personally define as a game […]
Games scholar James Paul Gee introduces the idea of an intersection between identity and learning in his book entitled What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, through which he infers that video games are particularly able to encourage the player to assume the identities and mindsets […]
We opened the week with Alex’s description of 3 Games Studies programs at 3 universities. This is, of course, a mere sampling, but a good place to start. Alisha’s post on (Mis)Representations of Women brought us back to the discussion that we had about MGS’s new scantily clad, mute, female […]
Like our blog? Do you enjoy playing and thinking critically about games? Want to do something in the gaming industry but worry you don’t have the “tech” skills? Well you may not know it, but even without skills to make the games, there are still ways that you can further […]
It’s been a while since I did a play with your kids post and I really miss it. Pea and I have been playing a number of different games together, but none have really stuck (or replaced) the way that Ni No Kuni or Animal Crossing have. When I started […]
Episode 66: Put An Ace Bandage On Those Things: Talking Games Research with Carly Finseth (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode where we talk about games research, why we do what we do, and where we go from here.
As most of you know, I am on sabbatical this semester and working on a new games and learning project. As always it is difficult to force myself to sit down and write (in a scholarly way) what it is that I find myself arguing here, at conferences, and anywhere […]
It’s been a while since I’ve done a play with your kids post because not much has changed in these parts. We are still doing a second play through of Ni No Kuni and spending far too much precious gaming time on Animal Crossing: New Leaf…both Pea and I. And […]
I’ve kind of fallen behind in a lot of things in recent weeks and one of them has definitely been my posts on what it’s like to game with children. Not as in having children, but physically with a child. As we wait for the new Lego City Wii U […]
I spend a lot of time listening to other gaming podcasts and a bit less time watching video podcasts about games. A lot of the folks that I watch and listen to have a lot in common with me older gamers (Gamers with Jobs), female gamers (Ladies of Leet), gamers […]
It’s difficult to find provocative topics to write about each week when I am drowning in dissertation work. Right now I’m working on my literature review, which though often a throwaway chapter, is crucial to my argument. The lack of overlap between important fields, and the ways I suggest we […]
So, it looks like it bears saying again. Parents should be playing with their children. Not just when they are little and cute and want to play tea party, Legos, or pirate fairy princess, but when they are (pre)pubescent and cranky. When you really start to wonder if they were […]
As a GameStop employee I have to be extremely aware of the ESRB Rating system and what each rating means. Employees are required to test on the rating system before they can begin their employment and are trained to take the ratings very seriously. Every time a M (mature) rated […]