It seems strange that Shadowrun is only just over twenty-five years old; for me, Shadowrun, that dour, gritty marriage of cyberpunk and fantasy that so made William Gibson roll his eyes, feels eternal. I feel like the landscape has been littered with books and games in the Shadowrun universe for […]
Monthly Archives: September 2015
Spoilers abound; content warnings as well for sexual violence and torture. There’s been a lot of discussion about the “male gaze” around Quiet, the mute female sniper in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and it’s a phrase we’ve employed here a number of times in talking about video […]
“If innate male aggression and dominance are at the root of the female oppression, then the feminist program would logically require either the extermination of the offending sex, or else a eugenics project to modify its character. If sexism is a by-product of capitalism’s relentless appetite for profit, then sexism […]
A few weeks ago, on a brutally hot day, I met someone I’ve admired for some time. I attended Felicia Day’s book signing at the Brookline Booksmith, an independent bookstore the Boston community holds near and dear. My stomach gurgled in a nasty way as I approached the table where […]
During our Back to School podcast last week, we talked a bit about using games for learning in the classroom. I’ve used LEGO in the classroom, but not games, so I started thinking about what that might look like for one of my own courses. I typically teach technical communication […]
As I mentioned during our latest episode of the NYMG podcast, I’ve been playing Until Dawn, and the game has got me thinking about a few different things that I’d like to spend some time parsing through, like the game’s representation of things like gender and race, how it is that […]
It’s easy to condemn the characters in horror movies. After all, they make bad decisions: they split up and go their separate ways, they let personal conflicts get in the way of their better judgment and they put themselves in compromising situations, amongst a number of other things. With the […]
Women have been long denied a voice in the gaming industry. This site, and others like it, have been fighting for years to establish a place where women’s voices aren’t only tolerated, but they are central to what it means to talk about games. Just because this site focuses on […]
I’ve struggled with the concept of ‘gamer’ for a long time. I’ve always considered myself a gamer because of my engagement with the culture since I’ve been a child. But hearing many prominent feminists whom I respect and adore deny their gamer identity, I have begun to challenge my own […]
Episode 110: Back to School Special: Learning With, Through, and Around Games (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). With school starting recently for all of us, we’ve been thinking a lot about games as educational spaces. In this episode we talk about lots […]
TW: I’m going to go ahead and tag this one for racism and racist imagery. This week a little bit of hell broke loose in the serious games space that quickly circulated to the mainstream. Serious Games Interactive tweeted about a game that they were playing, Playing History 2: Slave […]
Be warned: spoilers for all seasons of The Walking Dead, the episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, and the comics through current continuity follow. Two weeks into the new spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, a familiar refrain can be heard: the show is killing off all its Black male characters, a complaint […]
A couple of weeks ago, I was both surprised and not surprised when the story about Target and the gendered toy signs blew up. I was not surprised because I know many people still cling to traditional view of gender and toys, but I was surprised by the level of […]