This past Tuesday (Oct. 2) marked the release of the much anticipated Resident Evil: 6 and the internet was immediately flooded with reviews claiming RE:6 to be the worst in the series yet. One review on Destructoid by Jim Sterling even said, “If any consistently good thing can be said […]
PC
118 posts
The following video asks the question of whether or not video games are art. Enjoy! Games featured: Journey, Bastion, Braid, Sword and Sorcery, Limbo and The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom.
With the release of Borderlands 2 last week I found myself trying to figure out how I was going to play my favorite split-screen co-op without having a reliable internet connection due to my recent move back home. I quickly recruited my younger sister to play the game with me […]
Heads up readers, there will be a lot of SPOILERS in what will be my first (and probably least popular) post on NYMG as I’m going to try and convince you that the Mass Effect 3 endings weren’t as horrible as the gaming world seems to think and that changing […]
I just gave a talk at CCCC’s about the project Sam and I did on female video game podcasters. I talked about the research we had done, what we found, and what I hoped our community of academics could do with the information we found. There are two (sort of […]
I originally wrote this as a rant to keep saved on my personal computer, and it was not meant to see the light of day. It was a file for me to go to when I lost my way, when my work seemed aimless, or when I needed to articulate […]
There is no denying the change in perception of gamer demographics in the past few years. Video/computer games in the early to mid-90’s were made for an adolescent male audience by male programmers, though this isn’t all that surprising, considering that most of the people who would consider themselves “gamers” […]
Currently I have put in about 12 hours played time on MW3 (for those counting, that’s 12 hours in-game time, not the loading screen and not the lobby). I am currently level 56 (finally I got the claymore) so I feel I have a pretty good handle on what is […]
On October 5, 2011 the world lost a great technology visionary in Mr. Steve Jobs. His passing was extremely sad but, we must admit, not surprising. I won’t take up time and space extolling the virtues of Mr. Jobs and all of the great things that he did at Apple, Atari, Pixar, […]
As I played the new Mortal Komat, I was struck by how similar this game seemed to the ones I had always played: similar characters, similar scenes, and similar moves. I’d like to imagine that video game companies are under pressure to develop their characters to move away from […]
Episode 17: You Say Feminist Whore Like It’s a Bad Thing: Race and Gender in Dead Island and Deus Ex (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) We talk about Techland’s Dead Island, Eidos/Square Enix’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Tea Party Zombies, and Slavery: The Game. […]
I’ve been talking (and thinking) a lot lately about the differences between historical accuracy and the perpetuation of past culture (ie. the treatment of women in LA Noir and Madmen). I do have a genuine interest in creating representations of cultures in the past, and I think we can learn […]
Names of the Sims involved have been withheld to protect the innocent. EA Games released The Sims in early 2000. I was in the middle of writing my dissertation. I was trying to finish, sell our house, and get ready to relocate for my first academic job. I was stressed […]
I watched the first episode of Mad Men the other day, and I found myself thinking about the line between historical accuracy and a perpetuation of attitudes that we no longer find appropriate. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate an attempt at historical accuracy, even when it may get […]
So I’m reading this book called Finite and Infinite Play by James P. Carse, a religion professor. His take on play has inspired some interesting possibilities that I can see being very useful in the current debate about gaming and education. First, and he makes this very clear, “whoever […]
The idea that fields of technology such as open source programming is a meritocracy is very, very dangerous. It leads to all sorts of discrimination, sexism, and racism. It also leads pretty smart people to say some pretty dumb things. For example, Michael Arrington wrote a piece called “Too Few […]