Last year, as I was getting ready to move out to Indiana to begin my Ph.D. program, I watched the first season of the French television series The Returned. As I watched each episode (while I piled books into boxes and wrapped plates up in paper), I was struck by […]
Yearly Archives: 2015
379 posts
By now, many of you have probably heard about the controversy over Target’s decision to remove gender signage from toys and bedding. When I first heard about the change last week, I was happy because at the time I thought it meant that I would no longer have to wander […]
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 […]
People often ask me why I maintain a cache of nigh ancient game consoles when all of the old games are now available on emulators or virtual console. It might be the archivist in me, it might be the hoarder in me, or I very well be a gaming snob, […]
We occasionally get pushback from the Internet, whether it’s in the form of people seeking to engage or those seeking nothing more than to harass people they don’t agree with. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much par for the course on the Internet these days. But, last week, Anita Sarkeesian backed Sam […]
NYMG has occasionally written about the sexism issues in e-sports. There have been numerous instances of the very few women who do compete in e-sports being harassed, marginalized, and basically driven out of the competition altogether. Sarah Nixon wrote a great post on the differences between smack talk and discrimination […]
I’ve been catching up on some much overdue research this summer, and in the course of my reading, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about critique and immersion. Indeed, it would seem that, often, when people discuss critical thinking and scholarship in relation to video games, they usually work under […]
With her humongous axe and fire orange braids, I grinned like an idiot as I led Thora, Jotun‘s viking protagonist, from one pissed off giant to the next. Not only does she possess a diverse body type, sturdy and difficult to take down, she’s also unwavering in her courage and that’s a […]
I remember sitting up way past bedtime playing King’s Quest when it originally released. I was just starting high school and it was one of the first actual graphics based computer games that I played. I played the game far into the night (many nights) trying to figure out where […]
Episode 108: Love is a Battlefield: Games That We Love (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher). Tonight we just sat down and talked about some of our favorite games and why they are our favorites. It was lighthearted and fun and we hope that you […]
Ever since Bulimia.com released their re-imagined takes on female video game characters, there has been a great deal of debate as to whether or not the redone bodies actually were more “realistic” as stated. From the original explanation for the project: Some gaming studios boast their hyper-realistic lighting techniques, touting […]
LEGO is often used in educational setting, particularly K-12 and in engineering. I have used LEGO in my college courses to teach basic instruction writing and in larger iterative design and usability projects. But, I was surprised to learn recently that Serious LEGO is also being used in corporate training. […]
I usually try not to get all emotional in my posts, but I just couldn’t help it with my topic this week. Hopefully you, reader, can enjoy and do a little reflecting on your own. I recently spent two weeks without the Internet. I competed in the 2015 PDGA Amateur […]
Update: Several of our readers have reached out to us about the title of this post, and I wanted to make sure that their voices are heard and that we take the opportunity to begin a conversation about it by addressing their concerns. Here is one such email we received, […]
At the Distant Worlds: Music of Final Fantasy concert in Pittsburgh on August 1, conductor Arnie Roth dropped a bit of shocking news: a Final Fantasy XII remake is in the works. The bit came during his first monologue, where he introduced himself and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the […]
As we move into August and the anniversary of #GamerGate’s beginnings, I’ve been thinking through a lot of the discussions around gaming, and gaming identity, over the past year. It’s not a new topic for me; I’ve written about what it means to be a gamer often, both recently and […]