I’m going to blame it on some kind of virus induced delirium, but last night I sat on my couch nursing a cold, sipping a hot tea, and watching the Game Awards. Mind you I never watch the game awards. I think the judging is biased and the host(s) usually […]
Life has reached a kind of fever pitch for me. It’s the end of the semester, various deadlines are looming, and changes are afoot at my kid’s school. All of this leads to me being forever in a bad friggin’ mood. Perhaps not outwardly, but inwardly I often think about […]
I’ve been chatting with a friend about Metal Gear Solid V and the art of the sneak recently, and it made me think a little differently about what I wrote regarding combat avoidance back in the summer. We were talking about stealth first as a puzzle — discussing MGSV and […]
I’ve written a couple posts on Rise of the Tomb Raider already because I’ve been playing the game a lot lately, and while I’ve been playing, I’ve also been watching Jessica Jones on Netflix. As a result of my concurrent engagement with both, I’ve been thinking that the two seem to […]
The slippery slope of body positivity Has never been more deterring than when Gazing at the sun through Lara’s proclivity To deny herself sufficient calories – On her search for Divinity It was clear from the beginning That body fat and masculinity Were not sufficient representations of a Woman’s sexuality […]
Episode 116: Submerged: An Interview with Ed Orman of Uppercut Games (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). In this episode we talk to Ed Orman of Uppercut Games about their beautiful games, Submerged (2015). In this show we talk about diverse characters, game […]
We often, or at least I, think of constructing and sharing stories in the form of talking over dinner and a glass of wine, or on the front porch during a fall sunset just as the fireflies begin sprinkling out; stories are generally thought to be read in books where […]
I write and talk and think a lot about gender representation in toys, games, and just in general media and the world around me. My aim and hope is to show the places where gender representation is missing or problematic. When I think about girls having access to and playing […]
I’ve been playing more Rise of the Tomb Raider this week, and in the course of my doing so, I’ve been thinking more about the manner in which parenthood is represented in the game. And there are two characters, specifically, whose roles in the game, whose relationships and interactions with […]
I have a love/hate relationship with the Call of Duty franchise. On one hand, I enjoy the mental release that comes with playing a first-person shooter. I don’t typically find the violence gratuitous or distracting. In a FPS, you aren’t typically very engaged with the stories or the characters, so […]
While food is a crucial part of many games, it often is overlooked. Unless your character is starving, running low on health, or on a food-related quest, you may never really register just how big of a role food can play in a game. From World of Warcraft’s Crunchy Spider […]
Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn is often mentioned as playing on a number of horror tropes. Everyone can survive (depending), the two sex-craziest teens may have a real heart-to-heart about vulnerability (maybe), the ostensible Final Girl could meet her maker while others survive (possibly), and the black guy might make it (if […]
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 […]
As I launch a new game studies program, I am becoming keenly aware of issues that crop up when you bring games and concepts from game studies into an undergraduate classroom. When I was a graduate student, surrounded by professors and graduate students, I almost never had to argue about […]
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about the construction of motherhood in Alien: Isolation and Among the Sleep, and since then, I’ve been playing Rise of the Tomb Raider and thinking a lot about how parenthood is constructed in this game as well. Indeed, it would seem that, […]
Episode 115: Life is…Weird: On Choice and Consequences in Life is Strange (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). This episode we sit down and talk about DONTNOD’s episodic game, Life is Strange. All of it, filled with spoilers, and pulling no punches. Join us […]