When I first heard about Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, I was extremely excited, as any Harry Potter fan who plays games would. I played the PC games when I was younger dozens of times. It helped that I do not play mobile games very often and have been looking for […]
Episode 171: Take the Cannoli: How Mafia (the game) Can Serve As a Model for Video Game Design (Click to download, or find us on iTunes, BlogTalk Radio, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we have a conversation with Alisha Karabinus and Rachel Atherton (@wrathertweets) about their research on how analog games, like the […]
I saw TERA for the first time on the Playstation Network. Though originally released in 2011 the MMORPG was ported to North American consoles this March. The game is developed by Bluehole Studio based in South Korea, which is important to note for several reasons. The first is that, though […]
We are so pleased the bring you the inaugural issue of the NYMG Journal (Vol. 1, no. 1), the first Feminist Game Studies middle-state journal. Here you will experience games scholarship in multiple media and from a variety of communities.
Or… What would a game studies talk look like if I didn’t cite any hetero white cismen OR work from after 2006. Because when I say intersectional feminist game studies I also think part of the path forward is developing better inter-generational critical game studies.
Vampires do not appear to hold the same appeal in media as they once did, but why? Portraying and playing with our deepest fears, not least of which is death—or worse, becoming the monster ourselves—some of these creatures spent the ‘90s, the aughts, and the first half of the 20-teens struggling with what they are, striving to reconcile their monstrosity with the human they long to still be, and, typically, falling in love with human women.
When The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt came out in 2015, critics and fans alike hailed the game as a video game standard-setter because of its stellar graphics, entertaining gameplay design, deft voice acting, and engrossing narrative. Jonathan Leack of Game Revolution called the game “one of the largest worlds […]
Since I’ve been writing about game design and the amateur mafia community I’ve been playing with, I’ve noticed more and more how little information there is, in an academic sense, on the processes of game design. A colleague recently came to me for suggestions on behalf of one of her students […]
For the last several years we have used the category “Play with Your Kids” to talk about how we play games with our children and which games we have enjoyed playing with them the most (or sometimes the least). For the last year I have been homeschooling my own daughter […]
Sea of Thieves is a Microsoft play anywhere title by Rare that is available for Xbox One and PC. It currently costs $59.99 US. Anyone who knows me knows I love pirates. Anything pirate themed immediately grabs my attention and gets me excited; my favorite movie of all time since […]
Recently after our president announced his plan to meet with executives in the video game industry to discuss the level of violence, particularly violence related to guns, children are exposed to in the entertainment medium, Nintendo dropped a surprise announcement for the next Super Smash Brothers installment. Super Smash Brothers, […]
Episode 169: The Stories of The Station: A Conversation with Kevin Harwood (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, BlogTalk Radio, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we talked with Kevin Harwood, the Creative Director & Producer of The Station Games (The Station). We […]
Once again we are coming together as gamers and community members to play games and raise money for charity-gaming.org. Charity Gaming provides games to chronically ill children who are hospitalized. Being hospitalized is never any fun and it’s even less fun when you are a child who is hospitalized long […]
In many games, mental disorders are very much defined as auxiliary to the characters within the game. They are used to derive a sort of mechanic and are ignored narratively as they relate to character development and seriously dealing with these topics. Games like Amnesia, Don’t Starve, and The Evil […]
Video games allow us to play in the realm of the macabre. We can be monsters, killers, and super villains. We can exist in worlds that are full of human wreckage, zombies, death, decay. Like our fascination with post-apocalyptic movies and books, video games allow us to explore countless realms […]
Sometimes being a teacher means you have to have some tough conversations with your students. I think of them as dialogue wheel options, Bioware RPG style, when I’m standing in front of my freshman writing class. Every day my options light up depending on the topic to be taught, the […]