For this, the forth post in the series of posts that I have written about Mafia III and Luke Cage, I wanna play around with the notion of freedom and the ways that freedom gets enacted or enacted upon in the narrative we play. While my previous posts have used as […]
Yearly Archives: 2016
260 posts
Today we are officially taking a self-care day in light of what is going on with the presidential election. In the meantime, enjoy the view from here.
It’s election day here in the United States! Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken opens the way I open most conversations with games scholars: with a discussion of the idea of a game. What even is a game, anyway? Where she differs here from most, however, is that instead of discussing […]
To start things off, I’m going to be honest with everyone: I’m not big on sports. I wasn’t just the kid that got picked last for gym class, I was the kid who got a stomach ache so he wouldn’t have to play. I didn’t even have to fake the […]
In last week’s podcast, we talked a bit about agency and feelings of control when watching a movie or TV show versus feeling control while playing a game. Opinions varied, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week. I find that when I watch a movie or TV […]
I’ve been reading Patricia Melzer’s Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought, and as a result I’ve been revisiting the ways feminist science fiction and video games converse and intersect. In the past, I’ve interrogated this conversation by specifically examining the different ways motherhood is represented in feminist science fiction […]
Last week I wrote an article about my personal dissatisfaction with Facebook as a means of social networking or as a means of finding out news stories. And, as I’m sure many of you have seen, over the past week #NoDAPL supporters have voraciously used social media (whether spreading articles, […]
I spend a lot of time, much more time than I should, thinking about just what games are. Not what they mean to us, though also that, but what they are, where they begin and end, and what place we the players have in considerations of games. This is a […]
It’s hard for me not to get into the Halloween spirit. In addition to being a huge fan of dressing up in costumes and consuming vast quantities of sugar, Halloween is my birthday, and that adds a whole new dimension of fun and mayhem to the holiday. My sophomore year […]
Episode 139: When Horror Gets Real: The Halloween Episode (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we talk about what we are playing and watching as we all hold our own private Halloween celebrations. Thinking through horror games like Night Terrors (iOS) and television […]
I wrote a piece when Pokemon Go first came out about the backlash Go-ers faced on social media for being happy and excited about the game. The general sentiment among some was that it was appalling to waste your time on PG when so much horrible shit was happening in […]
I’m always trying to figure out ways to improve inclusion in my classroom and help students begin to recognize the implications of various technologies or arguments. I’ve written before about the LEGO Serious Play methodology and how I see it contributing to project in the technical communication classroom and projects […]
When I first saw the “Coming Soon” link for Ginger: Beyond the Crystal (available on Steam, XBox One, and PS4) I have to admit that I may have squealed a bit. A puzzle platformer with an adorable little blue dragon-like character. It sounded like the perfect game to play with my […]
I discovered Thumper on Steam (also available on PS4) when my friend recommended it to me last week, figuring I’d be interested in the soundtrack more than the game itself. Thumper (Drool) is based around a simple premise: ‘classic rhythm-action, blistering speed, and brutal physicality’. You play as a space beetle careening […]
Some spoilers here for the second episode of the third season of Black Mirror, “Playtest.” The shift of Black Mirror to Netflix, with the release of the third season of the dire science-fiction show just in time for Halloween is making some waves. Black Mirror has got to be one of […]
I’m a year late, but I’m finally playing Until Dawn. I feel like I’m having an entirely different experience with the game this year than I would have last year because this year, I’m playing during the election. I imagine that had I played last year, I would have plowed […]