Imagine a mechanical world that rotates and changes at the push of a button. Monstrous creatures, toe-like in appearance, float up and down the corridors of an old house. You cringe as you hear them spew nonsensical words in odd frenzied voices. They want to transform you into one of […]
Miscellany
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A recent study out of Germany, “Sexist Games =Sexist Gamers? A Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Between Video Game Use and Sexist Attitudes,” attempts to assess whether playing sexist video games contribute to sexist attitudes in real world situations. Since its release, members of the gaming community have argued as […]
The very first time I tried my hand at streaming I was hit on. I had just returned from GameStop with my just-purchased gaming headset – I had never really seen the need for one before as I rarely game online – and was a bit giddy to get started […]
Back in 2013, Maddie Myers wrote about what it costs to be a “real” gamer, and when she referenced it recently, we couldn’t help but look around at our own costs of the work we do for this unfunded, volunteer-only site. The harsh reality of games criticism—or, as Myers puts […]
I’m not one to believe that gaming is a metaphor for life, but sometimes there are some truly uncanny moments and I had one of those this week. Recently my 6 year old started playing Pokemon Y on her own 3DS (she “played” X with me on mine when it […]
For an Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL), the term dark ages refers to the time period between playing with LEGO as a child and picking it back up again, later, as an adult. I experienced such a dark age in both gaming and with LEGO. Although, I have no way […]
This is a little different from our standard Power Hour Reviews not only in that I’m revisiting a game we’ve already looked at extensively (in an earlier version), including reviews, but in that I’m exploring the basics and changes in all three modes. It’s an extra-double-bonus look at the update of […]
State of Decay feels very diverse; you begin story mode as a black man and the first person who joins you and your friend is a Latina. In Lifeline, you begin as a female soldier fighting alongside a Hawaiian man and a black man. Often, in Breakdown, it’s easy to play […]
When I tell people I teach game design, they often immediately assume I do programming. And yes, I do some of that, but as anyone that teaches game design will tell you, it’s much more than that. Increasingly I think of my job as advocating for a compositional approach to […]
Last night, some of the women of the NYMGamer team started tweeting under #yesIplay. #yesIplay is about telling the stories of of “gamers”—a term we’re using loosely here—that are often silenced or questioned. video games, board games, whatever and however you want to define it. #yesIplay is intersectional; we want to hear […]
I recently had an enthralling conversation with a close friend about the various representations of strong female characters. My friend, using Morrigan from the first Dragon Age game as an example, explained that the sorceress doesn’t have to forfeit her traditionally feminine appearance to be a strong and able character. […]
The minute I saw that Vice branched out to Vice Gaming, I was thrilled. Vice is a lot of things: Vice Magazine started in Canada in 1994 and quickly gained a reputation for having politically incorrect, provocative content. In 2002, the British edition of Vice was started, and by 2007 […]
Episode 99: August and Everything After: An Actual Discussion on Ethics and Gamers (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher) This week, Alex, Alisha, and Sam talked GamerGate, the continuing, shifting mass that continues to dominate so much of the discussion of […]
Romance can sometimes be a tricky and troubling thing, and it appears that this is no different in the the virtual world. In my review of Story of Seasons, a new addition to the Harvest Moon franchise that had to undergo a name change due to licensing issues, I described […]
Does someone who hates you deserve your pity? Your understanding? You empathy? A friend of mine once said that she feels bad for the men she argues with on sports fan websites, because it’s clear no one has ever loved them. They’ve never been touched by a hand that signified […]
Recently I was asked by a group of graduate students (not my own) why I do games research. It’s a question that I get frequently and the answer is not usually what people expect. Or at least not fully so. They expect me to tell them how I see my […]