In my continuing look at game covers, I thought I’d explore the best-rated games of 2013 according to Metacritic’s compiled review scores. So far, I’ve looked at top-selling games instead of best-rated, or I’ve looked at a particular selection, as when exploring Xbox indies, and the results have been surprisingly […]
race
34 posts
I wanted to keep expanding on my look into game covers, but I think it’s important to search beyond the top-selling mainstream titles and most-hyped games across consoles proper, just to see if trends continue past the very middle of the mainstream, so this week I’m doing something a little […]
For the next phase of my research on game covers, I initially planned to look at this year’s releases, but found myself instead falling through an Internet black hole and browsing the listings for the next generation releases. After I was done calculating all the money I would need to […]
When Gears of War first debuted in 2006, I hated the game — the controls felt wrong to me, the game bored me, and everyone I knew was obsessed with it, which made me hate it more out of sheer annoyance. So if you’d told me that seven years later […]
After spending some time earlier this year exploring the cover for Remember Me and other games featuring protagonists in comparable poses, I decided to do a little further study into game packaging, tallying the types of figures featured on best-selling game covers. I’ve seen a lot of game covers in […]
So, this week I went against my better judgement and rented Saints Row IV. I got drawn into the hype. I heard a million other podcasters talk about how it was just plain, old “stupid fun”. And this was the kind of week that I needed some good old fashioned […]
Episode 60: Redeemed by the Blood: The One Drop Redemption Rule for Minority Protagonists (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) In this episode we talk about race in video game characters and discuss the possibility of the existence of the one drop redemption rule in character […]
It’s been that kind of week in this country. The kind that make you question which century we are actually living in. But, don’t worry, the events of this week are not what I am going to write about today. At least not directly. Bear with me and let’s see […]
We’ve all heard the old saying, “If you can’t ask, then you can’t afford it”, but I want us to consider for a moment a slightly modified version that might say “If you have to ask, it might be true for you”. In the last couple of days I have […]
Episode 53: Lara Croft: Whimpering Idiot or Feminist Icon? (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode in which we talk about Tomb Raider! It’s a long episode and the first half is us talking about what we’ve been playing (a lot apparently) and the news. In […]
So yeah, this post is going to be about voice. Voice has always been a huge issue with me. Not necessarily with how a voice sounds, but with the absence of voice and what that absence of voice actually means. It’s because of this that The Little Mermaid is one […]
I have been waiting a long time for Assassin’s Creed III (and ACIII:Liberation, but I’ll save that for another post). I pre-ordered my copy, mapped out my gameplay time, and did the happy dance when I learned that my mother would be visiting during the release window so that Pea […]
Episode 45: All I Ever Needed to Know About History I Learned From Video Games (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode where we talk about history and video games, more specifically Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation as “historical” texts. Links of […]
The cake is a lie. Especially when you are talking about having your cake and eating it too. For years video game developers and company execs have been telling us that their use of racial stereotypes in games was not as racist as we wanted to make it seem. That […]
Yesterday’s article at Kotaku about the representation of African Americans in Assassin’s Creed: Liberation hit really close to home because we were looking at two sides of the same coin. While Evan Narcisse over at Kotaku thinks that the Canadian developers are off point with their depiction of a few […]
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 […]