While I have spent the last three decades of my life being as politically active as was feasible at any given time and being as verbal about said politics as I could, I have to admit that doing the same with my work as a games scholar has not been […]
Yearly Archives: 2015
379 posts
(Some spoilers for the first three episodes of Life is Strange here, but painted in broad strokes.) Now that we’re halfway through Life Is Strange, with two episodes to go, the game is shaping up to be quite the experience. While some of the major plot events are so heavily […]
[Spoiler warning: The following post covers some potentially triggering content and contains major plot spoilers for Life is Strange Episode 2: Out of Time and some slight conversation/situation based spoilers for Life is Strange Episode 3: Chaos Theory.] The warning signs were there from the start of the second episode: […]
I recently read an essay by Ann Friedman entitled “On Being a Badass,” in which Friedman explores what it means for women to be considered badasses in today’s corporate landscape. As Friedman explains, the term badass generally seems to imply “both toughness and disaffectedness. It’s rare to look at someone […]
I have spent a lot of my last 40 years playing adventure games. Text based adventure games, monochromatic adventure games with crazy little pixelated figures that “moved” from screen to screen along with the story, 8-bit, 16-bit, cel shaded, PC, console, mobile…you name it. Lots of them. More of them […]
Recently, this article about Disney’s cartoon, Miles from Tomorrowland popped up on my Facebook feed. The article, titled “Google, NASA work together on Disney show to inspire girls into science,” describes Disney’s efforts to involve professionals from Google and NASA to help create a more representative strong female character in […]
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is the third in a series of games based on several books and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski. Throughout the first two games, you play a “witcher” named Geralt. A witcher is someone with supernatural powers, who is not entirely human, and who is a […]
This week, everyone is talking about the final scene of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, the meaningfully titled “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” from those who would define it in generous terms to those who would denounce it and go so far as to declare they’re done with the […]
On Wednesday, DC Comics unleashed a brand new advertising and social media movement called “DC You.” With it, DC Universe will introduce 24 all-new series on top of 25 ongoing comics, and will feature characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. DC You promises to bring diversity to the comics […]
Sometimes gamers forget that the virtual worlds we participate in, while they often become as much our “real” world as meat space, are not subject to the same laws of freedom of speech as our meat space. When we participate on forums, chat within a game, or send someone a […]
The latest entry in the Mad Max franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road, employs its grim, post-apocalyptic world to comment on a good many contemporary concerns. There’s the obvious one, which was confirmed to be director George Miller’s inspiration for the series: the oil crisis and ongoing concerns over the sustainability of […]
A YouTube video surfaced today, illegally shot, showing the Joker (Jared Leto) slapping Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) in David Ayer’s anticipated 2016 Suicide Squad film. The video has been removed from YouTube, with a message claiming copyright by Warner Bros. Entertainment. Kotaku retained a GIF of the scene, however: Throughout […]
Last October, Sega released Alien: Isolation, and much of the discussion around the game has dealt with its pacing, its level of difficulty, its relationship and faithfulness to the film franchise, and whether or not the game is successfully scary. Relatively little discussion has occurred, however, regarding the manner in […]
I had a little extra time this week, so I thought I would take a risk and buy a new game without more than the most cursory glance at information. I chose Lifeless Planet because the cover was fascinating. I didn’t know what kind of game it was or anything […]
You’re the lone occupant in a desolate hotel reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel, the haunted building in Stephen King’s The Shining. The corridors appear to stretch on forever and ever, growing longer with each and every step. Is it a trick of the mind? Your stomach plummets as a winged figure zooms at you from down the hall, shattering the […]
Miguel Sicart defines games as systems “in which the rules force the player to face ethical dilemmas, or in which the rules themselves raise ethical issues.” The game rules force players to interact in specific ways in order to confront ethical issues. In this manner, Life is Strange asks players to […]