Games and Race
48 posts
This week Sam and Alisha are joined by Kishonna Gray (@kishonnagray) talk about parenting (and being women) while doing the game studies scholar grind.
Episode 189: New Dawn, Old Problems: A Conversation About Far Cry: New Dawn (Click to download, or find us on iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Spotify). This week we are joined by TreaAndrea Russworm (UMass-Amerhearst) to talk about Far Cry: New Dawn (Ubisoft 2019), race, and representation. What We’re Playing: The Division […]
I hadn’t had a chance to get back to State of Decay 2 for a while, but recently I booted it back up and picked up my community where I’d left off. Right now, I have nine people and only two of them are clearly visually coded as white. In […]
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.
Episode 165: Thunderbird Strike and the Power of Indigenous Game Design: A Conversation with Elizabeth Lapensee (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, BlogTalk Radio, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week we had an amazing conversation with the fabulous Elizabeth LaPensee, Indigenous scholar, artist, and game designer who talks with us […]
Episode 162: That Dude at a Party: A Conversation with Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea Russworm (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, BlogTalk Radio, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week Alisha wanted to title the episode “That Tenure Money”, but we really talked about Jen and Trea’s new edited collection Gaming Representation […]
This past week came with the release of three big (and much awaited…for me) titles, Super Mario Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and Wolfenstein II. Most of us are well aware of the uproar surrounding Wolfenstein II before its release. Certain segments of the internet were irrationally angry about the idea […]
“[T]he content of their character” is a phrase that almost everyone is familiar with even if they are not quite sure why. “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but […]
In the 50th year of the journal of College Composition and Communication, in 1999, Jacqueline Jones Royster and Jean C. Williams began their essay “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies” with a statement they call aphoristic, but that remains an important reminder we […]
Friday the 13th: The Game (Gun Media) is a third-person horror, survival game where you either play as a camp counselor trying to survive or as Jason trying to kill all of the camp fornicators. I was ecstatic to see this game as I recall playing the 1989 version on Nintendo. Being an […]
Episode 150: On Recognition, Representation, and Revolution: A Conversation with TreaAndrea Russworm (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, BlogTalk Radio, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week in the podcast we had an amazing conversation with TreaAndrea Russworm (@ProfessorTMR) is an associate professor at UMass Amhearst, author of Blackness is Burning: […]
I spent a lot of time looking at diversity in State of Decay and its re-release, from actually counting and coding bodies to considering the feeling of a game driven by the kinds of characters who don’t normally lead stories. Results were mixed; the game, while much stronger than many […]
For me I think it all started with Civilization: Beyond Earth and by it I mean that colonialism saturation point with games. To be honest most games are tales of white saviors and colonialism, but that particular iteration of Civilization was one that I had been anxiously awaiting since it was […]
Video games give us the opportunity to explore some dark social and political ideas in a relatively safe space and to learn a bit about ourselves in the process. Are we willing to kill Nazis, sacrifice children, or leave loved ones behind to discover secrets about ourselves (even if we […]