Playing at Leadership: Games, Gaming, & Leadership Studies
"Reality, unlike games, is broken." – Jane McGonigal
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 »
Sometimes, after a lot of yelling, typing, hand-waving, and crying, sometimes the powers-that-be actually listen. Even more rarely, they listen and then act. And when that happens, it becomes clear that speaking out and speaking up really do matter. That … Read More »
Recently, a couple of prominent think-pieces on academia and feelings have been circulating, at least amongst those in academia (I’m not sure what the rest of the world thinks of them). The first has grown in popularity and infamy: “I’m … Read More »
My TLF review of Anita Sarkeesian’s second video in the Positive Female Characters in Video Games series (on Jade from Beyond Good & Evil). A lot of my frustrations with this episode are less to do with the specifics about … Read More »
On my way to a conference the other day, I was sitting on the plane reading Estelle Freedman’s No Turning Back, a history of feminism. The young woman in the seat next to me interrupted: “Excuse me, is that a … Read More »
Today a friend asked a very good question, and one that I think is valuable to try to answer for cultural critics and academics the world over. What am I even gonna tell my students today. “Well I know everything … Read More »
Last night, Anita Sarkeesian celebrated being named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year. The piece in TIME was written by Wil Wheaton, an advocate of equality and diversity in geekdom in general, and gaming in … Read More »
There have been a lot of discussions lately – in interviews with developers, online, and in my classroom – about the notion of “historical accuracy” or “believability” and issues of diversity and representation. Among them are Golden Glitch’s in-progress game … Read More »
Last week, Indiana passed a so-called Religious Freedom Bill that permits employers and business owners to discriminate against employees and customers on the basis of their religious beliefs. In essence, what this means is that a company can refuse to … Read More »
Today an article by Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw – “A Conspiracy of Fishes, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying about #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity,” published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 59.1 (2015) – came … Read More »
At the moment, I’m replaying BioShock Infinite in order to teach it to my class (Games, Game Theory, and Leadership Studies). The first time I played through it, I had a lot of reactions, some of them positive, some negative. … Read More »
Today is International Women’s Day, GDC (Game Developers’ Conference) and PAX (Penny Arcade eXpo) East are wrapping up, and GamerGate is still hanging on to its undead, stinky existence. In honor of all the women – of all stripes, shapes, … Read More »
So I finally got around to playing Gone Home, mostly because I put it on my syllabus to force myself to play it (in that “I keep meaning to but just don’t” kind of way – not the “oh god … Read More »
So yesterday Stephen Totilo of Kotaku did a write-up of a talk given at NYU by Anita Sarkeesian. Twitter and the internet in general naturally have things to say about this, some good, some bad. But what drew my attention … Read More »
Another Inquisition As-I-Play is up over on TLF, this one talking (appropriately, given my last post) about sexuality in BioWare games and why it – and the NPCCs in BioWare games – are so important to players.