I’ve been catching up on some much overdue research this summer, and in the course of my reading, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about critique and immersion. Indeed, it would seem that, often, when people discuss critical thinking and scholarship in relation to video games, they usually work under […]
Miscellany
1089 posts
I remember sitting up way past bedtime playing King’s Quest when it originally released. I was just starting high school and it was one of the first actual graphics based computer games that I played. I played the game far into the night (many nights) trying to figure out where […]
Episode 108: Love is a Battlefield: Games That We Love (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher). Tonight we just sat down and talked about some of our favorite games and why they are our favorites. It was lighthearted and fun and we hope that you […]
Ever since Bulimia.com released their re-imagined takes on female video game characters, there has been a great deal of debate as to whether or not the redone bodies actually were more “realistic” as stated. From the original explanation for the project: Some gaming studios boast their hyper-realistic lighting techniques, touting […]
LEGO is often used in educational setting, particularly K-12 and in engineering. I have used LEGO in my college courses to teach basic instruction writing and in larger iterative design and usability projects. But, I was surprised to learn recently that Serious LEGO is also being used in corporate training. […]
I usually try not to get all emotional in my posts, but I just couldn’t help it with my topic this week. Hopefully you, reader, can enjoy and do a little reflecting on your own. I recently spent two weeks without the Internet. I competed in the 2015 PDGA Amateur […]
Update: Several of our readers have reached out to us about the title of this post, and I wanted to make sure that their voices are heard and that we take the opportunity to begin a conversation about it by addressing their concerns. Here is one such email we received, […]
As we move into August and the anniversary of #GamerGate’s beginnings, I’ve been thinking through a lot of the discussions around gaming, and gaming identity, over the past year. It’s not a new topic for me; I’ve written about what it means to be a gamer often, both recently and […]
I’ve often written about how I would like to see more original games, games that move away from (what is to me) the tired genre of First-Person Shooters (FPSes). It’s not that I always dislike FPSes, but I do want more from a game than just running around and shooting. […]
I’ve played about an hour and a half of The Magic Circle, and, to be completely honest, I haven’t yet figured out whether or not I like it. I think I do. But I’m not sure. I’m mainly confused, but not really in a way that makes me annoyed or irritated […]
This post is a write-up of a talk I gave recently at the Games+Learning+Society conference in Madison, WI. Enjoy! The GamerGate explosion in 2014 had far reaching implications that spidered across many areas: industry workplace practices, how gaming communities function, and how people view video games and gamers. Scholars have […]
“For girls” has always been somewhat of a cringe-inducing term for me. When combined together, these two seemingly innocuous words form a concept that is loaded with a long history of stereotypically gendered marketing and the perpetuation of gender norms. It dredges up the distinct childhood divide between the “boys” […]
Episode 107: A Conversation with Dr. Kishonna Gray (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher). We don’t always get to sit down with other academics who care as much about games as we do, but when we do, we talk for hours… and that’s […]
Recently I have found myself having lots of heated discussions about racial representation in video games and the importance of paying attention to the history behind these representations (*cough* Cuphead *cough*) and in some cases it has been a bit of an uphill battle, but it’s not new. It’s the […]
“Outspoken women, especially non-white women like Pao, are instant targets if they publicly acknowledge the existence of prejudice, worse still if they purport to do something about it.” –Katherine Cross Ellen Pao, now titled as the *former* CEO of Reddit, has faced it all. Death threats, harassment, abuse– oh wait, […]
This past week, I’ve been catching up on reading Adrienne Shaw’s book Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, and a series of questions that Shaw asks in the second chapter (entitled “Does Anyone Really Identify with Lara Croft?: Unpacking Identification in Video Games”) […]