Playing at Leadership: Games, Gaming, & Leadership Studies
"Reality, unlike games, is broken." – Jane McGonigal
So here’s an interesting article about a photo project concerning real people and their online avatars by Maria Popova on Brain Pickings. I think I mentioned at one point that most of the time, if given a choice, I will … Read More »
So in all the furor over horrible depictions of women in videogames, Assassin’s Creed: Liberation has quietly made a very important point, as Kotaku‘s Evan Narcisse notes in his article. That point is that the protagonist of the new AC … Read More »
Last year at the Ethical Inquiry through Video Game Play and Design conference at the Prindle Institute for Ethics at Depaw University, I had the great pleasure of discovering (and playing) cooperative boardgames, specifically, Yggdrasil. Since, I’ve also been able … Read More »
So this week’s Gamasutra “This Week in Video Game Criticism” did a write-up of some of the more recent incidents in misogyny and bigotry in the gaming world, which I’m going to reproduce here at length: I would be remiss … Read More »
I’m borrowing a phrase from Stanley Kubric’s Clockwork Orange and spinning off of yesterday’s post about ultraviolence in God of War, talking about the current trend and probable future of videogame violence. Interestingly, there’s a followup to the God of … Read More »
Feminist Frequency just posted a tweet about how an organization called Gamers Against Bigotry was hacked and shut down for putting together a database of people who are willing to pledge that they will not engage in bigoted behavior online … Read More »
Gamasutra recently posted an article about how the next God of War game is going to curtail violence against women. As they point out, it is unclear precisely how that is going to manifest itself in the game. The quotation … Read More »
Rob Fahey’s article at gamesindustry international, “A Question of Maturity,” makes an argument that games are not yet capable of being “mature,” saying that “You can’t make someone experience love through a video game, or sorrow.” On the one hand, … Read More »
So recently there has been a lot of hype surfacing around the “culture of rape” that exists in games and on the internet. But it’s also surfaced in more “common” forums, such as when comedian Daniel Tosh made a “rape-joke” … Read More »
In the last of this triptych, I want to talk about why this is happening in this particular way, with these particular people, and concerning this particular topic. In part, this post stems from my curiosity as to why Sarkeesian … Read More »
Continuing my discussion of the Dr. Nerdlove (DN) article recent harassment of Sarkeesian which I posted on yesterday, but taking a different point… One of the points that I think has been lost in a lot of the furor is … Read More »
Dr. Nerdlove (I’m going to resist commenting on the name, just bear with me) posted today about recent harassment of Sarkeesian, which has now become the hot topic of this blog, and is making me feel obligated to post pretty … Read More »
Anita Sarkeesian posted a link to this article and interview with her on gamesindustry international by Dan Pearson. Pearson’s title, “Woman Vs. Internet: How Anita Sarkeesian beat the trolls,” is perhaps a bit optimistic and reductive, but the attitude he … Read More »
So I downloaded and played the Extended Cut for Mass Effect 3. Given my disappointment in the “original” ending, I wasn’t prepared to be thrilled by its extension. Nor was I. What I was not, however, was saddened, horrified, or … Read More »
Clearly, this issue of online abuse and hate speech is neither as marginal as we had hoped nor is it going to go away quietly on its own. What it will take to make it go away is another question … Read More »