The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, the National Council of Women’s Organizations, and the National Organization for Women, along with House Rep Katherine Clark (D-Mass) held a congressional briefing today on the ongoing issues of violence, harassment, and stalking in the online arena. Speakers included Michelle […]
Last week, I reviewed the first hour of Flying Mollusk’s Nevermind, which mostly meant I worked my way through the training session and a bit of the first real part of the game. In my initial gameplay, I was introduced to some heavy possible directions for the narrative: an alcoholic mother, […]
While the rest of us were enjoying TableTop Day this weekend in the privacy of our own homes (or in public if we so chose), Anita Sarkeesian was at a Columbus, OH game parlor having her photograph taken without her permission and posted (and RT’ed) on Twitter. This is problematic […]
Does someone who hates you deserve your pity? Your understanding? You empathy? A friend of mine once said that she feels bad for the men she argues with on sports fan websites, because it’s clear no one has ever loved them. They’ve never been touched by a hand that signified […]
Last week, I shared some analysis of gender signifiers in character models from State of Decay, a game that seems to do a good job of presenting practically dressed and designed characters, while also featuring some diversity in body types and more. A commenter pointed out, however, that including some […]
Not all disabilities are visible. Not even the physical ones. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t affect the ways that we interact with technologies. I know that Alisha and I suffer with some pretty nasty RSIs (repetitive stress injuries) and I have some pretty significant hearing loss in one […]
Recently I was asked by a group of graduate students (not my own) why I do games research. It’s a question that I get frequently and the answer is not usually what people expect. Or at least not fully so. They expect me to tell them how I see my […]
The Final Fantasy franchise is certainly known for some “offbeat” character outfits. Between the excessive ornamental decoration and strange mishmashes of different styles and themes, fans have come to expect unique interpretations of style in every new edition. After years of some visually stunning and detailed but occasionally odd clothing […]
This week the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) has decided that once a publisher stops supporting a game doing anything to restore it to functionality is the equivalent of hacking or piracy. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has responded by asking the U.S. Copyright Office to make special exceptions for museums, […]
In some ways my experience last week could have been the closing scene from a cheesy Disney movie: a girl enters the room and a hush falls across the crowd. The sudden arrival seemed to have fundamentally changed the character of the environment. Except, of course, it wasn’t a ball […]
I first wrote about Nevermind last year after reading about the developers’ goals for the game via their Kickstarter campaign. Nevermind was billed as a horror game with a twist: the more fear the player feels, the harder the game gets. The intention here is to help players learn to […]
I’m back! After a semester hiatus, I’m thrilled to be back in the mix. Dr. Craig Anderson, a Professor at Iowa State, has made his career on proving the negative effects of video games on youth. He is the figurehead for this movement, and he is the primary source and […]
A recent thread on GamerGate hub KotakuInAction outlines a plan to “game” Twitter to get viral traction for a tag about the ggautoblocker, the tool created by Randi Harper that allows for wholesale blocking of GG participants, and TheBlockBot, a similar, though more universal tool. The call asks supporters to […]
With the release of the upgraded State of Decay Year One Survival Edition just around the corner, it seemed a good time to revisit the original game, which I explored at length over the months after release in terms of realism and representation (as well as gameplay and mechanics). At […]
Early on the morning of April 3, Randi Harper (aka freebsdgirl), architect of the ggautoblocker, reported police had shown up at her door due to a call about a hostage situation. Harper details the events both on Twitter and on her blog, and says because she filed a report in […]
Vampires are fascinating in that they operate on the fringe of a culture and society. In some ways, they represent the ultimate outcast, often othered for their monsterness, and because of it, they needn’t adhere to what’s traditional or considered socially acceptable. In some instances, they’re almost auto-excluded from social […]