Playing at Leadership: Games, Gaming, & Leadership Studies
"Reality, unlike games, is broken." – Jane McGonigal
So I know I don’t post here a lot anymore, but today’s level of ridiculous is just that, so I feel like this is worth posting. Even if GamerGate ended back in 2016, more or less, as Breitbart writers and … Read More »
This week is “It Ends Now” week on my university campus. It is also the week that one of our students posted on Huffington Post about being sexually assaulted by another student and her belief that the administration of our … Read More »
Today’s TLF post touches on the ubiquitous problem of the female videogame character wearing metal bikini armor, talking specifically about the most recent Tropes vs. Women in Video Games episode (2.3), “Lingerie is Not Armor.” I’m usually somewhat disappointed by … Read More »
Today I finally got a chance to look over the ESA demographics report for 2015, and noticed that–quite to my surprise–the percentage of women gamers has actually gone down for the first time in many, many years. In 2014, the … Read More »
Like many other feminist scholars in games, when I saw the photos of the go-go dancers at a Microsoft after-party (thrown following a “Women in Gaming Luncheon”) I rolled my eyes, sighed, and thought “of course they did.” It’s a … Read More »
Today on NPC Gamer I wrote about the problem with sexist job culture, specifically in the gaming industry, but, really, pretty much anywhere. What it boils down to is that, especially in tech industries, but also in STEM fields and … Read More »
Last year, I made a post on International Women’s Day (March 8th) that was equal parts hopeful and bitter, still annoyed that GamerGate hadn’t yet died (it’s not totally gone, yet, but is more like those last, few chickenpox that … Read More »
This semester has been kicking my a** in terms of work and grading and committee meetings, so I have been horribly remiss about keeping this blog up to date on other things (like TLF and NPC Gamer), much less containing … Read More »
In my other life (the one where I’m a Shakespeare scholar), I’ve been doing research on early modern witchcraft, and–this week–on the witch-hunts which ran roughshod over Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the process, I came to … Read More »
So on Monday my response to the latest Tropes vs. Women in Video Games episode (season 2, episode 1) went up on TLF. The episode–in a new style from the previous season of the series–is all about butts, which struck … Read More »
So as last week’s SXSW “scandal” unfolded, I had a few thoughts about it. As it kept unfolding, I had a few more. They’re over on TLF.
So today’s bizarre straight-white-troll objection (no, not Star Wars–this is a gaming blog, so I’m leaving that one to the film people) is to the US version of Fatal Frame. Let me begin by saying I know absolutely nothing about the game itself, … Read More »
Most gamers are more than familiar with the concept of DLC, or Down-Loadable Content. DLC is a thing that more and more games have, sometimes in the form of “add-on” content such as new weapon sets, alternate clothing sets, or … Read More »
Last week, Anita Sarkeesian released her seventh episode in the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series on “Women as Reward.” I reviewed it over on TLF.
A few days back, Brianna Wu and Ellen McGrody published a piece on The Mary Sue which argues that Samus Aran is a trans woman, and it has since spawned any number of rants, thinkpieces, and toxic screeds which either … Read More »
