When thinking about the ways motherhood comes to be framed in games, some questions that often come to mind are–how do games represent motherhood? What assumptions, biases, and social norms are games manifesting? Are they perpetuating normative, patriarchal constructions of motherhood? Or are some games working to complicate such constructions? […]
Miscellany
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A lot of Game Studies proper deals with representation in games, particularly surrounding things like race, gender, sexuality, class, and body type. That may seem like the most basic statement ever (like, duh!), but as I think more about studying games as Game Studies, I need to answer questions about […]
The first real enemy I came across in Zenith was a horde of giant spiders. In a fantasy RPG, massive arachnids aren’t uncommon monsters to encounter, and are something of a cornerstone when it comes to game worlds full of magical adventures. What I didn’t expect, however, was for the […]
We’ve been grappling, the past couple weeks, with a game called Bound, and we’ve been particularly struck by the game’s ambiguous narrative and by its surreal landscapes. And something we continue to ask ourselves is–what is the purpose of the conversation between the two, between the narrative and the gameworld? […]
In recent weeks and months social media and television media has given me a lot to think about in terms of the sexualization of the black body. From Lena Dunham’s ignorant comments about Odell Beckham Jr. on social media to my own experience watching a television show on Netflix to […]
As we’ve talked about on the podcast, Sam and I have both been reading Katherine Isbister’s How Games Move Us, but while she’s been open chatty, I’ve been reserving my thoughts. For me, there’s a lot to wrestle with, because the book directly engages with a lot of ideas I’ve […]
Episode 136: Dangerous Depictions: A Conversation with Tommi Godwin (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we are joined by guest, Tommi Godwin. Tommi is a veteran, she was an officer, a sentinel, and a woman deployed in Iraq in 2005-2006. She […]
My knowledge of Overwatch prior to actually playing it had nothing to do with the gameplay and everything to do with the surrounding lore. Blizzard released official information on setting, backstory, and character histories via YouTube videos both before and after the game’s official release in May of 2016, which […]
Invisibility Blues is back for a discussion of the position of games criticism within the industry, and the sometimes unfortunate response to critical work viewed as damaging to gaming communities. We would like to thank writer Tauriq Moosa for joining us this time around as we discuss our roles as critics, […]
I ended my blog post last week with some lingering questions I still have about the representation of single motherhood as a destructive and dysfunctional force in The Park, which doesn’t feel like a particularly satisfying way to wrap up my examination of the game. So I want to spend […]
This holiday weekend was one of the first times my daughter and I had to just relax and spend time alone since the beginning of the school year a month ago, so when she asked if we could stay home and write/plan/make a Minecraft machinima (like all good nerdlings), I […]
I’ll be blunt: I didn’t want to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but with the controversy around the game’s engagement with/appropriation of (depending on whom you ask) racial issues and activist movements, it’s an essential experience for someone looking for the human in the code. Mankind Divided promised humanity in […]
There is something aesthetically appealing about historical games that I value and appreciate. While I am not a huge fan of contemporary war games, I am fascinated with games that feature historical combat. One of my favorite games of all time is Call of Duty: World at War. This game […]
Episode 135: Just Too Canadian: A Conversation on Feminist Game Studies with Emma Vossen (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we talk with outgoing Editor-in-Chief of First Person Scholar, Emma Vossen (University of Waterloo) about feminist game studies, “doing” game studies […]
Last week, I interrogated manifestations of single moms and mental health in Stranger Things and The Park, but I wanted to take some more time to think about how such representations occur across the horror genre. In other words, I find myself continuing to ask—what kinds of patterns do we […]
Note: I received a free review code for this game. But my review is not indebted to the company, nor is it influenced by it in any way. This game is on iOS for $4.99 As soon as I saw a review code for this iPad game come across our […]