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 […]
Games and Rhetoric
173 posts
As if we needed more reasons to do the research we’re doing. In last few weeks Bioware writer Jennifer Hepler as been at the center of a major shitstorm. For those living under a rock, here is what’s been happening: An interview with Hepler from more than 5 years ago […]
Chaim Gingold over at the Expressive Intelligence Studio blog has posted a bit about a lecture that Cecil Brown delivered at UC- Santa Cruz entitled Games Blacks Love to Play. It is an interesting piece and a fascinating idea as a whole. Brown traces game play through 3 historical periods […]
Alex Layne and I took the time to do a bit of commentary on the 2011 EA game, Shadows of the Damned which has been pronounced severely underrated by a number of gamers and games journalists. We took some time to give it a play to see what we were […]
When it comes to video game villains, I have always had a soft spot. Growing up, it seemed the good guy was always just one tragedy away from becoming the villain. They had flaws, were often deformed in some way, and were undeniably human. But sometimes, the villain goes too […]
Episode 20: Everybody Wants to Be Master Chief: On Masculinity and Intersectionality (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we talk about masculinity and intersectionality. Men, race, sexuality, and anything else that comes to mind. Links of Note: Sponsor Sam or Alex in the […]
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 […]
In this week’s podcast, Alex brought up the fact that she was reading Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory and I thought that while Butler’s work is a little heavy it could definitely lead us to a good discussion of how feminine and masculine characters in video games are constructed aesthetically […]
Episode 19: Kratos is a Giant P*nis: Video Games and the Manly Man Archetype (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) This week we talk about masculinity in games…yep, you read it right. Masculinity. Duke Nukem, Gears of War, Kratos, and androgynous JRPG boys. Links of […]
Thanks to the great post that Alex wrote on representations of women in games I started to think about representations of African Americans in games and decided to come up with my own list of “good” characters. The only well done (playable) characters that I could think of are the […]
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 […]
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 […]
We mentioned thiis on in episode 14 of the podcast, but I thought that I would take a few minutes and revisit it on the blog. Denis Farr over at The Border House blog recently wrote an interesting post on the politics of hair in video games. He talks specifically […]