This week we talk with Amanda Schofield, Co-Founder, Managing Director, and Creative Director at Studio Drydock.
diversity
40 posts
Content warning: Sexism in historical based games are discussed. Many articles that are linked contain hostile comments. Some of these comments are mentioned or paraphrased. If you visit Total War: Rome II’s Steam page you’ll notice something interesting: Over the past week the reviews for this game have spontaneously […]
I hadn’t had a chance to get back to State of Decay 2 for a while, but recently I booted it back up and picked up my community where I’d left off. Right now, I have nine people and only two of them are clearly visually coded as white. In […]
I recently watched two TEDTalks. The first was titled ‘Why tech needs the humanities’ (2017) and was presented by Eric Berridge, the cofounder of BlueWolf, an IBM company. The second was ‘Teach arts and sciences together’ (2002) presented by Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut. While neither are exclusively […]
Women as reward. It’s an unfortunately common sexist practice I see in many of the video games I have played and the video games I have seen marketed. Rewarding players with women, all women – not just those that are cisgendered, is equally problematic. While games use women and women’s […]
We got an e-mail last week about good games with troubling elements — so, basically, all games. But the question was: how do we choose the right way to handle games with problems? We have to play the games to understand them, and we want to support devs who are […]
Every now and then the LEGO community will debate the lack of diversity in minifigs. Most minifigs have the generic iconic, yellow LEGO head, but occasionally, LEGO will go outside of that and try to create more realistic representations. These more realistic, (sometimes diverse) heads tend to be found in […]
I recently watched the documentary Can We Take a Joke? When Outrage and Comedy Collide. As you might imagine, the premise is that outrage is ruining comedy. I was curious. We hear similar arguments here at NYMG: We are ruining video games. We just want to take away everyone’s fun. […]
My knowledge of Overwatch prior to actually playing it had nothing to do with the gameplay and everything to do with the surrounding lore. Blizzard released official information on setting, backstory, and character histories via YouTube videos both before and after the game’s official release in May of 2016, which […]
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 […]
As I sat down to give my post a once over before running it today I got a Twitter notification that lots of people were sharing that same tweet so, being the ultimate procrastinator, I clicked over to see what was going on. It was the story of the auctioning […]
I’ve been watching the second season of Fargo, which is a great show. The second season is set in the 70’s, so much like Mad Men, the sexism is blindingly obvious, as it was in the first season of Fargo. The portrayals of sexism in both seasons are a bit […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about my transition to Games Studies this last semester and the role it plays (and will play) in my research as a Second Language Studies student; I’ve also been pondering on the role of intersectionality lately, specifically how Latoya Peterson admonishes in her article, Intersectionality […]
Not long ago, I started playing State of Decay again. I know, I know, but at this point, it’s become a comfort object for me, something to help me relax during a busy week. I started a new Breakdown game and fiddled a little with Lifeline again, and looking at […]
So this semester one of the things that I have been doing (in my ample free time) is working on a diversity grant proposal to fund a tech/games/STEM based summer program for young girls of color. As I have been thinking through the minutiae of the project I have been […]
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 […]