Story Time: I sit, staring at the intro screen to, of all things, Pokemon Y. I’ve been here for maybe 10 minutes, staring at a very simple question that Professor Sycamore asked, that every Professor of Pokemon Studies always asks right at the beginning of the game. “Are you a […]
#YesIPlay
32 posts
There’s an innate yearning within humanity to connect, share, and make sense of our experiences. It’s more natural than secret-keeping, which is dogmatically taught to us before we learn how to string concepts and words together. So when I was asked to talk about the fact that #yesIplay, it took […]
#YesIPlay, but these days I spend much more time in these amazing gaming support sites that the gaming community creates for itself around games of all types. Almost every game has them: tabletop, pen and paper, mobile, flash, video. These spaces might be as dense as wikis like WoWWiki, representing […]
I spent most of my early life thinking my father would have really rather have had a boy. I thought this for a variety of reasons, but when I talked about it, he would always vehemently deny it. (And he hates it when I talk about this, so if you […]
Last week, I rushed home to Arkansas because my mother was having surgery to remove tumors that had been discovered on her right ovary. Her tests came back with cancer markers, and the mass was growing so rapidly, nearly doubling in size in a matter of days, so we all […]
More than eleven years ago I made my first account on Neopets, a browser-based virtual pet website whose gameplay centers around improving and customizing your pets, collecting, playing Flash games and trying to make it big in what’s essentially a capitalist economy. I was ten or eleven or so and […]
A couple of days ago I downloaded Prune for iOS at the recommendation of a beloved friend who knows me so well it’s ridiculous and a tad scary. In the game, the player has to shear off branches with the swipe of a finger, an action that alters the direction […]
It’s no secret that Journey is one of my all time favorite games, having extensively written about its brilliant use of silence and its characterization of landscapes. Though it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I find the entire experience to be relaxing and fulfilling. Whether it’s the cool blues of […]
Right now and for the next few weeks, I’m under a self-imposed ban on LEGO building. I’m moving, so instead of building, I’m dismantling my LEGO models. It’s horrible. Not that I mind the dismantling process, it’s still gives me something to do while watching TV, but dismantling does not […]
I’ve often wondered about the potential reach of games. If marketing was a little different. If (some) games were. So when Her Story came along, with its straightforward interface, search-based mechanic, and nonlinear mystery narrative, I saw the potential immediately for the game to spread, though the problem with something […]
We’ve been talking a lot about Tauriq Moosa’s recent Twitter hiatus, because of the far-reaching potential. Personally, I’m unable to equate my experience with Moosa’s experience because I’m a white female on the Internet and not a person of color. I can’t possibly understand his experience with blanket negativity and outrage culture, […]
(We were asked by a friend of the site to run this personal essay, which we present here anonymously at the author’s request. Warnings for difficult subjects like sexual abuse and depression apply.) I was sexually abused at thirteen years old. The experience left me so damaged that I wasn’t able to […]
If I hadn’t discovered roleplaying, I wouldn’t have known what it was that set my ever-restless soul afire. I considered myself a serious writer at the delicate age of seven and, having come to this realization at such an early age, I carefully consumed and documented the world much like […]
Not long ago, Sam and I wrote about the monetary burden of performing critical work, and that and related issues have been a hot topic lately, with many discussions about gaming, cost, and access going down on social media. In the interest of continuing that discussion, and as part of […]
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 […]
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 […]