Every week as I rack my brain trying to figure out something new to discuss I always fall back to asking myself “what do I constantly think about when playing video games?” This question always circles back to the fact that I wish I was employed in the video game […]
Miscellany
1089 posts
When Gears of War first debuted in 2006, I hated the game — the controls felt wrong to me, the game bored me, and everyone I knew was obsessed with it, which made me hate it more out of sheer annoyance. So if you’d told me that seven years later […]
I play games…a lot of games, but games are what I research. When I am researching a game I play the whole game. I have to finish it. Don’t get me wrong, I may not 100% percent it and I may use a game guide (very rarely) if I get […]
In the last couple of months I have been thinking a lot about games research artifacts. I’m not even sure if that’s the best thing to call them but it’s what I’m running with for now. While conferencing this summer I had a handheld game system stolen from a hotel […]
Episode 64: Quiet, Woman!: On Silent Women in Video Games and On Underpants (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) Alex, Sam, and Sarah come together to consider Metal Gear Solid’s mute sniper, agency, and silent women in video games and on underpants. We had a few technical […]
Some things are standard to mention when critiquing and reviewing video games: characteristics that make the game innovative or unique, the fluidity of the interface and the level of the player’s control over the gameplay, its artistic design and the quality of its graphic elements, its replayability, the consistency of […]
As many of you know October 1st marked the launch of GTA Online, the multiplayer component to GTA V we’ve all been anxiously waiting to play. Unfortunately for many of us the online component was unplayable for most of the day Tuesday. I had intended on expanding my Power Hour […]
After spending some time earlier this year exploring the cover for Remember Me and other games featuring protagonists in comparable poses, I decided to do a little further study into game packaging, tallying the types of figures featured on best-selling game covers. I’ve seen a lot of game covers in […]
The convention season is drawing to a close and while it has been an extremely exciting season due to the new consoles coming out this year, it certainly wasn’t a season without its struggles. From Gamescom, to PAX Prime, to E3 the shortcomings of the video game industry in respect […]
In the past few weeks I have played both Saints Row IV and Grand Theft Auto V. Numerical markers aside these games have a lot in common. Both of them involve crime (and lots of it), both build characters based on horrible stereotypes, both drip sexism, and both a super […]
As an extension of the previous post I wrote about regarding feminist-friendly cartoon choices and considering that, in my experience anyway, fans of video games and Japanese anime seem to overlap, I would like to offer some suggestions for navigating the wide and extensive world of anime. Much like any […]
Power Hour Reviews are a new NYMG feature in which we spend one intense hour playing newly released games in order to get a sense not only of game mechanics and characterization, but narrative as well. Let us spend our time first, so that you don’t have to waste yours. […]
A little disclosure here: I haven’t bought Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve never been a huge fan of the franchise (I can take ’em or leave ’em), and my husband and I are so busy these days that neither one of us has had much time for games anyway. I’ll […]
**spoilers** (up to 60% of the game) Playing GTA V, you expect a few things: racism, sexism, violence. Buying a copy is a kind of tacit agreement that you will be getting offended some time in the near future. I don’t think anyone expected respectful portrayals of women (there […]
Episode 63: A Cornucopia of Topics: We’ve Got Plenty to Talk About (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) Join us as we talk about the resurgence of the argument that violent games make violent people as well as our early thoughts on Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft […]
Power Hour Reviews are a new NYMG feature in which we spend one intense hour playing newly released games in order to get a sense not only of game mechanics and characterization, but narrative as well. Let us spend our time first, so that you don’t have to waste yours. […]