I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the cliché of the grizzled, brown-haired hero, wondering just what it is that keeps them at the top of the game-protagonist heap, and what encourages designers to keep on designing them. I’ve been thinking about these men, so similar, and about Lee Everett […]
Episode 106: This Ashly Burch Interview Is Strange (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher). Or maybe it’s just awesome! Who knows, really? What we do know is this: we talked Life Is Strange, Adventure Time, voice acting, writing, mental illness, and we even got to […]
Back in May Electronic Arts announced that it would feature female soccer players in its popular FIFA game series, starting with the upcoming FIFA 16. According to the release statement, the game will feature 12 international woman’s teams. Many were also excited to learn that the women would not be […]
I spent most of last week at an annual academic games conference and have spent a lot of time processing and digesting what went on there. The thing that I love about these conferences is that I get to sit and talk (and drink beer) with other academics who often […]
No More Heroes, created by the enigmatic Suda51, is arguably one of the most entertaining action-adventure/hack-n-slash franchises to ever hit the Wii. The game follows Travis, an aspiring assassin whose dream is to fight his way through the United Assassins Association until he is number one. Admittedly, I was a […]
At a party a few weeks ago, I ran into a guy who was in UCSD’s undergraduate literature/writing program at the same time I was, and, in the course of our conversation that evening, we found ourselves eventually turning from the typical small talk (Hi! How are you? What are […]
Nintendo president, Satora Iwata, passed away Saturday at the age of 55. During his 2005 GDC keynote, Iwata-san said “On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.” And it was the gamer in Iwata-san […]
When I first heard about Pley.com, a LEGO rental service, I had mixed feelings. As the “Netflix” of the LEGO world, Pley.com offers a similarly styled rental service. You select your desired LEGO sets and add them to your queue, and as the sets come available, they are sent to […]
Episode 105: Dialogue, Critique, and Privilege (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher). For Episode 105, we welcomed three friends of the show in to talk about some difficult topics. We were joined by Dr. Cody Reimer (congrats on the new position!), PhD student […]
I’ve often wondered about the potential reach of games. If marketing was a little different. If (some) games were. So when Her Story came along, with its straightforward interface, search-based mechanic, and nonlinear mystery narrative, I saw the potential immediately for the game to spread, though the problem with something […]
We’ve been talking a lot about Tauriq Moosa’s recent Twitter hiatus, because of the far-reaching potential. Personally, I’m unable to equate my experience with Moosa’s experience because I’m a white female on the Internet and not a person of color. I can’t possibly understand his experience with blanket negativity and outrage culture, […]
Today we are excited to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for our new Invisibility Blues video series is going live. Through this series, Samantha and Alisha will explore race and racial representation in video games via such topics as women of color, indigenous populations, and character generation engines in games. […]
Another anime season has come and gone and it’s time again to reflect on and discuss some notable series of the Spring 2015 season. This season unfortunately didn’t produce as many standout titles as last season did, which was something I admittedly find a bit disappointing. Many of this spring’s titles […]
Recently Tauriq Moosa left Twitter (he’s back) after receiving hate, threats, and abuse for writing an article about the race problems in Witcher III. If you haven’t played the game, he’s right: that game is white as hell. He has come under fire a lot, and I wanted to share […]
I got married last weekend and, coincidentally, that same weekend, the New York Times published a trend piece that explores the fact that the number of women keeping their maiden names after marriage is on the rise. And I say “coincidentally” because I just so happen to be one of […]
A few days ago, I stumbled across Seduce Me the Otome on Steam. The game is free on Steam, and is described as “A romantic comedy visual novel centered around a girl named Mika Anderson, who gets entangled in the affairs of incubi.” I was curious and the game was […]