Last week The Evil Within released, a game I had some high expectations for the title, given that the design team design team includes the self-proclaimed “father of survival horror”, Shinji Mikami. However, while the game seems to tick off all the boxes (creepy hospital- check! Stoic, jaded hero- check! […]
Wendi Sierra
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During last week’s podcast I chose the Borderlands series as my “guilty pleasure” games. The series as a whole is pretty irreverent, the characters are exaggerated, and the games repeatedly present unabashedly non-serious and goofy situations. In many ways, the series reminds me of classic cheesy horror movies- bad, but […]
Last night I pulled out some readings for my classes- things which, despite being barely a decade or less old, are already slightly out of date classics by even academic standards on new media. I got a brief chuckle from Nakamura’s Cybertypes and Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds, both of which mention […]
Recent conversations on our blog, with my friends, in the gaming community, and generally spread throughout my daily life, have lead me to start thinking about what my personal “demands” for the future of gaming are. I put demands in intentional scare quotes- obviously I’m not really in a position […]
I feel like all of our blog posts lately have started with something along the lines of “in the wake of recent conversations”. Nonetheless, here I go: in the wake of recent conversations, I’ve been thinking again about what seems to be an eternal debate among gamers and in game […]
At a faculty picnic last week I was asked if I was a gamer by a very well-meaning (but completely out of the loop) fellow faculty member. I almost laughed- it’s been a pretty rough few weeks in gaming culture and I know this faculty member didn’t have any idea […]
Always Sometimes Monsters is an interactive narrative-style game that attempts to tackle several very serious issues through its focus on player choice and the consequences of those choices. Indeed, the game carries a content warning on its Steam page that says “Always Sometimes Monsters has content dealing with racism, sexism, […]
I’ve played World of Warcraft on and off since 2007. My total played time on my main alone is 162 days, 7 hours, 35 minutes, and 7 seconds (thanks for the seconds, Blizz!). And, though I’ve quit several times in the past, I’m back again. Of course, no one game […]
During the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft I spent most of my time playing some decently hardcore PvP (player versus player content- battlegrounds and arenas) on my holy paladin. I wouldn’t say I was amazing, not by any means, but I certainly achieved a higher than average ranking, and […]
Divinity: Original Sin promises to give players the “freedom of a pen and paper RPG” in a video game. As any one who’s spent any amount of time playing pen and paper RPGs will tell you, that’s a pretty bold claim. So, does Divinity deliver on this promise? Personally, I’m […]
With the tagline “Lose your mind, eat your crew”, how could you not want to give Sunless Sea a try? This narrative-horror-sea-roguelike just released on Steam and Humble Bundle, and is available on PC and Mac. The game is currently still in early access, and the developers describe the present […]
As we discussed in our podcast last week, one of the community-selected sales in Steam’s Summer Sale was “Story-Rich Female Protagonist” games. Dr. B and I were decidedly unsure what to think of this category. Of course, one of the first questions she had is whether the creation of this […]
In the last few days I’ve crafted about nine badges, I’ve leveled up four times, and I’ve helped my team to victory once. I’ve earned some cosmetic enhancements for my profile, and I’ve done a lot of trading. If you play games on your PC, you probably already know what […]
Looking for something new to try, I loaded up a trial version of the new MMO Wildstar and played around with the character creator. I didn’t get five minutes in before I had to quit from excessive sighing.
My post last week, What is a Feminist Game, Anyway?, sparked an interesting conversation in the comments section and led me to discover two new games (Dreamfall- The Longest Journey and Long Live the Queen). I’d love to keep that momentum rolling- what characters have you played and thought “wow- […]
“Why not just review a feminist game?” I was discussing several new games with a friend and trying to decide which one I would write a review for last week, when he asked me that question. At first I thought he was kidding, but he asked again— “No, seriously. It’s […]