As educators we talk about Serious Games, And it’s no small secret that I am not a fan of the serios game. Rather than creating small and less engaging games that focus on specific comment why can’t we just use commercial off the shelf games and look for the larger […]
Yearly Archives: 2012
Episode 31 : “Monstrous Mamas, MILFs, and (M)androgeny: Femshep, Ripley, and Chun Li’s P3nis” (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode where we talk about female protagonists on (stereo)typically male roles. Focus on Mass Effect 3, the Alien movie series, and the women of Street […]
I have a love/hate relationship with war games…always have and I probably always will. I am a bit of an aggressive gamer. I like to run and gun. Shooting things after a long stressful day usually makes me feel better. I am a sucker the CoD:MW# games. I like going […]
Gaming is a huge part of both the academic and leisure sides of my life. I have been playing video games as a leisure activity for more than 30 years so the overlap into other areas of my life are both inevitable and undeniable. Lately I have been looking at […]
“If you ask people to hire who they like, what you end up with is a homogenous team. People like people who are just like themselves.” An interview with game designer Sheri Graner Ray Sheri Graner Ray Interview (click here to listen, right click to download directly to iTunes) Transcript: […]
I originally wrote this as a rant to keep saved on my personal computer, and it was not meant to see the light of day. It was a file for me to go to when I lost my way, when my work seemed aimless, or when I needed to articulate […]
Episode 29 : Women Behaving Badly (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we are joined by guest co-host Nicole Marie and we talk about misogyny in the games industry in light of the Bioware/Jennifer Hepler. We also talk about our desert island game choices […]
As if we needed more reasons to do the research we’re doing. In last few weeks Bioware writer Jennifer Hepler as been at the center of a major shitstorm. For those living under a rock, here is what’s been happening: An interview with Hepler from more than 5 years ago […]
Chaim Gingold over at the Expressive Intelligence Studio blog has posted a bit about a lecture that Cecil Brown delivered at UC- Santa Cruz entitled Games Blacks Love to Play. It is an interesting piece and a fascinating idea as a whole. Brown traces game play through 3 historical periods […]
Alex Layne and I took the time to do a bit of commentary on the 2011 EA game, Shadows of the Damned which has been pronounced severely underrated by a number of gamers and games journalists. We took some time to give it a play to see what we were […]
Episode 28 : Blinded by the (Gas)Light: Psychological Torture in Video Games (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we are joined by guest co-host Charlotte Hyde and we talk about gaslighting in video games. Links of Note: Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love
Episode 27 : Brains! Making, Using, and Eating Them: On Countdowns and Cognition in Video Games (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we talk about the games that we are anticipating most in 2012. 2011 gave us a lot of solid games to […]
There is no denying the change in perception of gamer demographics in the past few years. Video/computer games in the early to mid-90’s were made for an adolescent male audience by male programmers, though this isn’t all that surprising, considering that most of the people who would consider themselves “gamers” […]
Sometimes things stick with you for a reason…bits of a comedy show, a disturbing news story, and the hundreds of hours that you spend playing farming/social simulations on a handheld device. And sometimes those things come together in a perfect storm that allow you to write a post like the […]
Episode 26 : I’m Not A Grave Robber, I’m a Pragmatist: Puzzle Games and the Best (and Worst) of 2011 (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we are joined by guest host Adam Strantz while we talk about our favorite and most disappointing […]
Multi-colored, interconnecting plastic bricks–such simple and brilliant playthings. According to the Danish company’s website: “The name ‘LEGO‘ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words ‘leg godt,’ meaning ‘play well.'” LEGO video games are as popular as ever. I confess, I am a rabid fan. I have the Star […]