**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 […]
PC
118 posts
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. […]
There was a thoughtful response to my last post, Female Game Protagonists: Engendering Power Through Assemblages. I wanted to respond in the comment section, but it got a little out of control and just became another post. If you missed the last post, it was about using the idea of […]
Power Hour Reviews are a new weekly 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. […]
I’m currently sitting here at a coffee shop with Sam, and I realized I hadn’t put up my post for this week. As I tried to think about what I should talk about, I found that I could only think about one thing: Don’t Starve, the indie game I’ve been […]
Story in video games is one of those controversial topics, though no video game would exist, let alone be successful, without story. Some of the very first debates about video games, arguments that would eventually become the foundation of Game Studies as a field, were about narratology and ludology, or […]
I don’t want to hear whining because this info is a “no duh” for you game pros. It wasn’t that long ago that we all experienced our first Steam sale. Maybe you even have a few games from that sale that you haven’t gotten around to. But let’s be honest, […]
What does it mean to call a game a companion? Referring to a story, or a favorite fictional character, as a companion seems easy enough to understand. I imagine that most of us had our own fantasy worlds growing up, where we were Peter Pan or Dorothy, or Falcor. We […]
If you hold any sort of conversation with me regarding gaming, somewhere along the line I’ll probably mention my love for EA Digital Illusions’ (DICE) first person freerunning game, Mirror’s Edge. The game, which was released in 2008, follows the story of Faith, a member of an underground system of […]
Video games are becoming a more apparent part of our culture every day; it used to be that society viewed gamers as overweight guys who still lived in their parents’ basements. Now, we know that gamers come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and ethnicities, but there is still a large […]
So Papo & Yo (Minority Media, 2012) is a game that I have been interested in playing for a while. When the indie title appeared on PS3 about a year ago I did a bit of research to see what other folks were saying about the title. I was simultaneously […]
By now you’ve played through at least some of Bioshock Infinite, I mean c’mon it’s amazing, and you’ve probably read some articles on how everyone is praising the main female character, Elizabeth, as having been one of the most amazing A.I. companions in video game history. Some people have even […]
This is a visualization based on word frequency. It has not been adjusted in any way. For my diss, I am using a two-pronged approach for analyzing gaming industry company policy. The first is a hermenuetic analysis and the second is a visual analysis. Using various methods of data visualization […]
As technology advances, video game developers are able to portray realism in their games much more accurately: graphics make video games look like movies, AIs interact with characters at an uncanny level, and the stories can hit closer to home than ever before. Still, some people will always look at […]
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 […]
Halo 4 is releasing in just over two weeks and we’ll be seeing the return of our favorite hero, Master Chief and his A.I. sidekick Cortana. We’ll also see a few changes to the game as a new enemy emerges and the reliable Cortana seems to be losing her mind. […]