On the way to the (final!) Games+Learning+Society conference last week, my friend and co-presenter Tony and I were talking about hard games, and failure. We focused on how games were organized during the arcade era, around the lives bought with a quarter and how this helped shape not only games, […]
Design and Development
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Later this week, I’ll also be at Games+Learning+Society with Alex and Kishonna, presenting a Well Played of my own on State of Decay. I’ve been such a strong advocate for the game through two releases (and DLC), but here I’ll finally be able to draw the various themes and lines of inquiry I’ve […]
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 […]
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 […]
This semester, I’ve been working as much on game creation as on games criticism and exploration. I’m working on three different projects, one with a larger team and two others with fellow NYMG contributor Ashley, and while I’ve worked on a few small efforts from time to time in the […]
A few days ago, a user posted in the Overwatch Beta feedback section of the Blizzard forums that they were uncertain about one of Tracer’s victory poses in the game, a version of the infamous butt pose. User Fipps didn’t seem to have an issue with other characters who posed […]
Recently, I wrote about the presentation of illness and injury in The Flame in the Flood, and as I’ve played more of that game, I found myself thinking about the visuals of effort. In some games, you can run forever, no matter how many dozens of pounds of gear you’re […]
I get it. I know. You just “don’t really see a problem” with objectification of female characters. You don’t really think racial representation is an issue. You think people are just taking it all too personally. I want to talk to you about this, though, because you’re part of our […]
Recently, as I re-read Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design, I kept thinking about the differences between the games Koster was using as examples and the games I’ve most often been writing about lately, the indies and the so-called walking simulators, games that often have low levels […]
Last week Naughty Dog gave us a new glimpse at Uncharted 4 and we got to see Nadine Ross. Nadine looked like a kick ass Black female character who was clearly taking no shit from Nathan Drake. Some people were excited, some were skeptical about the possibility of another aggressive […]
It’s no small secret that we’re big fans of board games around here so I was pretty excited when I got the chance to get my hands on a beta copy of the re-boot of Kill Doctor Lucky by Cheapass Games. Clue has been one of my favorite mainstream board games […]
(No direct spoilers here for episode five, but instead just general discussion of narrative structure and larger considerations of the game as a whole.) Since the release of the first episode, my experience with Life Is Strange has been a series of ups and downs, but as the story has come […]
I worry that have been falling out of love with video games. The drive I used to have to finish this quest line, explore that new area, or be the first to beat that new game has been waning. I’m not gaming less, by any means, but my gaming has […]
So this week I finally played Super Mario Maker for the Wii U. I haven’t purchased the game for home because I have a ridiculous backlog of games that have come out in the last month and Fallout 4 and Tomb Raider are both looming for release next month. But […]
While I am a huge fan of sports, I am not particularly an avid follower of sports video games. During my undergraduate years, I would consistently slay anyone who dared to challenge me in Madden, NCAA, 2K, and even Top Spin (yo, my backhand was nasty). My interest for these […]
In what seems to be turning into a theme, LEGO has me once again scratching my head over yet another weird decision. LEGO Dimensions released last week, and I’ve been having a blast with it, as you know if you listened to our latest podcast, but the LEGO community at […]