By and large, constable, the good’s an illusion, a fable folks tell themselves so they can get through the day without screaming too much. –Andre Linoge The concept of morality has been constantly explored in video games since the beginning: protagonist/antagonist, good/evil, light/dark. There is a black and white morality […]
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If last year’s E3 was all about the women, this year’s is all about the undead hordes, with announcements about the next season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, a sequel to NYMG-beloved State of Decay, a Dead Rising 4 that looks like it’s getting back to the franchise’s roots, and […]
“Xbox, record that.” For Xbox gamers, you have either heard it or said it yourself. This simple phrase is the practice of recording something. “Xbox, record that” cues the system’s in-game DVR, through which a gamer can record, edit, and share clips from actual gameplay. This small but significant tool within […]
Over the past few years, surveys conducted by IGDA have revealed a rising number of female game developers. Since 2009, the number of female developers has doubled, but women still only represent approximately 22% of game designers, woefully low numbers compared to data that indicates women make up half the […]
Episode 129: Gay Farming; On Digging, Dating, and Identity Politics in Stardew Valley (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). This week Jynx joins us for their first podcast and we have a little fun. In this episode we talk about our experiences and expectations […]
The past few weeks, I’ve been writing a lot about representations of fatherhood and daughterhood, and my preoccupation with such representations stems from my interest in the ways family structures are manifested in game narratives. This week, my mind has turned from parent-child relationships and toward sibling relationships and how […]
I have been a feminist since I could talk. For better or worse, I have always seen injustice, prejudice, racism, sexism, and unfairness in the world, and it always deeply disturbed me. Of course, I have grown and changed as a feminist. I’ve had to confront ways my privilege has […]
This semester I am teaching a game studies course that I think may be one of the best courses that I have ever taught. The course is called “Women and Games” and it is a cross-listed undergraduate-graduate course. Over the course of the last couple of years as we have […]
Forecast: Not good but getting better. Maybe. I’ve written before about being nonbinary and considering what that looked like in games and why continued strides in representation matters. This week Laytonya Pennington at BGD looked at Kingdom Hearts Unchained X and offered evidence of why better representation is necessary for […]
Obsession is one of the most frightful things I’ve encountered. I’m not talking about how we think of obsession in popular culture: someone counting calories, watching a show over and over, or even wanting to spend most of your time with your puppies (I’ve been known to proclaim that I’m […]
The past couple weeks, I’ve written about patriarchal constructions of fathers and daughters in The Last of Us and Rise of the Tomb Raider, and I wanted to spend some time this week wrapping up these assorted musings. My last two posts have worked to put these two games in […]
This summer, I’m in a class focused on women in games, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: one step forward, 97,000 steps back at every turn. The success stories—of games, characters, girl gaming clubs, industry professionals, more—are both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because we’re starved for them; terrible because those […]
Content Warning: Please be aware that this piece make reference to an episode of sexual assault. True to form, I am continuing on my track to be one of the last people who plays anything. While Dark Souls III just came out and Bloodborne’s been out for almost a year, I’m […]
Gamers have long had the stereotype that they are overweight, greasy, caffeine-addicted hermits with pale skin and acne who never left their parents’ basements. Gamers are depicted this way in many popular shows and movies, such as Southpark’s “Make Love Not Warcraft.” In the episode, the boys gets fatter, more […]
Episode 128: Never Alone and the Gifts of Our Ancestors: A Conversation with Amy Fredeen (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or TuneIn). Last night we were privileged (nay blessed) to have a conversation Amy Fredeen of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC). Amy is the Executive Vice […]
Last week, I wrote about patriarchal constructions of fatherhood and daughterhood in The Last of Us, and I want to continue in that vein this week as well. To extend this line of thinking, I want to examine how it is such constructions come to be repeated across gaming narratives. […]