Going back into academia means having a long book list for research and summer is reading time to for me. While being acquainted with game design, designers, and game studies, I haven’t actually read much in the canon that informs contemporary thought on games. If you hang around games academics as much as I do, […]
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Pokemon Go and Device-Mediated Relationships
Having spent the past several years hooked to social media and being a part of digital pop culture phenomena as they happened, it’s a new joy to witness trends on the ground. I usually get this with fashion but within the past few weeks it’s been Pokemon Go. I didn’t quite catch the bug, I […]
empathy machine
empathy machine is a combination of experiments concerning the current state of the video game industry, virtual reality evangelism, game design as a discipline, and activism. A previous game of mine, Mainichi, is projected on the wall through a veil of twine and hooked up to a Makey Makey which, along with conductive fabric, turned my body into […]
Intro to Reality Games for Game Designers and Critics
Being involved with artistic and critical communities around play, it’s easy to see repeated narratives about games eventually made into a canon. Certain games and play experiences are seen as exemplar and in-turn define how we think of what games are, particularly good ones. As with any sort of curation, canonization is political and reflects […]
Murder Mystery Writing as Design
Within the various medium wars game developers seem to wage with other forms of expression, writing and narrative are the most bitter of enemies. Even if we’re past arguments about whether narrative and play can even be in the same room, writing is by far less integrated into design processes than visuals and even audio. […]
Teaching Representation in Games
This past semester I taught a class on representation in games for the first time. I’m not a stranger to the topic, much of my critical work and speaking gigs have been about representation in games, but it was a new experience figuring out how to teach undergrads about the topic. I figured it’d be […]
Rethinking the Games Conference
There are days where I feel really self-conscious about calling myself an activist, since a lot of my work is in writing, speaking, and the realm of ideas. But I do feel closest to a feeling of activism when I help organize conferences and run various events that seek to include voices and perspectives commonly […]
Good News!
Good news! This year I’m going to be a Jury co-chair of IndieCade, helping choose the nominees for the awards and curating games at various events like IndieCade’s presence at E3. This was an unexpected appointment to be honest; I’ve been attempting to detach myself from games stuff but the various forces in the world […]
My First Year in Stardew Valley
Some time after Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures but before Star Ocean: The Second Story, Harvest Moon 64 was my favorite game. Most video games centered around action and compelled you forward through tension, and I was showing early stages of anxiety that would steer me away from games that relied on menacing or competitive […]
The Humans of Waiting Rooms
Over the past month, I’ve participated in public-facing playtests of the latest Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman installation game, Waiting Rooms at The Rubin Museum here in New York City. Unlike many games exhibited in museums, Waiting Rooms is a work in progress and barely substantiated by any sort of physical object, making it feel […]
Why things aren’t changing
Why aren’t things changing? In the aftermath of yet another woman getting harassed out of her job and being thrown under the bus by a prominent games entity so save face, it’s hard not to see things in games as particularly bleak. There has been more visibility of marginalized creators, greater stress about the importance […]
New Difficulties
Ever think about what the games you play say about you? Or maybe your habits while you play them? Despite not fully enjoying the genre, I’m drawn to strategy games, particularly turn-based ones with idiosyncratic units on a chess-like grid. Maybe I first came to them under some rule of opposites; I actually don’t like […]
Why I’m Boycotting GDC
If there is one conversation I want happening at every games event this year, it’s the one about activist burnout and the exploitation of marginalized people by conferences and other institutions. Video games and the tech industry overall are riding off the diversity wave- with good intentions, we can all assume- trying to answer criticisms […]
Exploring Taste in Play
I recently gave a talk on exploring the different ways players can express their tastes or preferences through play in video games that highlights some interests I still have in the genre. Springing from a piece specifically about Style Savvy, I wanted to reach for a design imperative to structure space for different kinds of […]
Remembering Monsters: Morinth
As I grow accustomed to teaching games and doing outreach work to those who mostly see entertainment games as the main creative potential of the medium, I’m wanting a way to access and appreciate these works on my own terms. There are a few of my peers who are able to navigate talking about what […]