cultural critique
34 posts
Like many people, when I first started playing Forgotten Anne it felt like I was playing inside of a Studio Ghibli film. The game is a cinematic adventure platformer that contains beautifully illustrated graphics, amazing and adaptive choregraphed music and seamless animations. At many times it looks and feels like […]
I recently watched two TEDTalks. The first was titled ‘Why tech needs the humanities’ (2017) and was presented by Eric Berridge, the cofounder of BlueWolf, an IBM company. The second was ‘Teach arts and sciences together’ (2002) presented by Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut. While neither are exclusively […]
Women as reward. It’s an unfortunately common sexist practice I see in many of the video games I have played and the video games I have seen marketed. Rewarding players with women, all women – not just those that are cisgendered, is equally problematic. While games use women and women’s […]
Prior to heading home for Thanksgiving, I picked up the Oregon Trail card game. As I wrote about before, my mother has recently expressed an interest in playing games, and I thought the game would be fun and nostalgic. I missed the mark a bit on the nostalgia part, however, […]
I recently watched the documentary Can We Take a Joke? When Outrage and Comedy Collide. As you might imagine, the premise is that outrage is ruining comedy. I was curious. We hear similar arguments here at NYMG: We are ruining video games. We just want to take away everyone’s fun. […]
I’m currently working my way through Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. I’m writing about it here because the book was described to me as feminist science fiction written by a man. I had forgotten that description until I had gotten a little ways into the book, but it came back to me […]
I’ve been watching the second season of Fargo, which is a great show. The second season is set in the 70’s, so much like Mad Men, the sexism is blindingly obvious, as it was in the first season of Fargo. The portrayals of sexism in both seasons are a bit […]
We are pleased to announce the debut of the first installment of the Invisibility Blues series, along with its new home here on NYMG. In this first episode, we look at character creation in a variety of games, focusing on selectable features, game lore, and the potential impacts of limitations. […]
When I tell people I teach game design, they often immediately assume I do programming. And yes, I do some of that, but as anyone that teaches game design will tell you, it’s much more than that. Increasingly I think of my job as advocating for a compositional approach to […]
I’ll never forget the moment, years ago, when I mentally “picked” a flower while walking into a Blockbuster Video. I glanced at their sidewalk planter, which had a number of beautiful pink and purple flowers in it, and I swear I saw a hand icon in my vision and heard […]
“Why not just review a feminist game?” I was discussing several new games with a friend and trying to decide which one I would write a review for last week, when he asked me that question. At first I thought he was kidding, but he asked again— “No, seriously. It’s […]
Yesterday I was sitting in the coffee shop reading Miguel Sicart’s latest book, Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay and giggling at the passage that read Cocktail parties are terrible places for doing philosophy. Yet when a polite stranger asks me what I do, I end up awkwardly explaining […]
In the past few weeks I have played both Saints Row IV and Grand Theft Auto V. Numerical markers aside these games have a lot in common. Both of them involve crime (and lots of it), both build characters based on horrible stereotypes, both drip sexism, and both a super […]
Video games have always involved a lot of death and I’m usually okay with that. I kill people, people kill me. It’s tit for tat. I get that. But lately it seems that games have taken on an emotional bent that ask the player to experience those deaths in a […]
I want to start this post by paying respect and thanks to all of the soldiers, volunteers, and contracted folks who have served to protect our country and made the ultimate sacrifice. I would also like to take the time to give thanks for the friends and family that supported […]