"Reality, unlike games, is broken." – Jane McGonigal
The third installment of my As-I-Play XCOM is up on TLF. Short version: I’ve now caved and started using save games to keep my squad from dying horrible deaths, mostly because I’m lazy and don’t want to try too hard. … Read More »
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how people who criticize games ought to just “make their own games” that say what they believe games should say. There are innumerable problems with this statement, some of them practical and some … Read More »
My second as-I-play post on XCOM: Enemy Unknown has gone live on TLF. I’m a few more hours into the game now, and have started to see my soldiers carving out niches in terms of their tactical abilities (which really … Read More »
Earlier this week I talked to Elizabeth Ballou of Bustle about sexism in gaming (and found a fellow BioWare fangirl – always great). The resulting article, which discusses gender representation in games and talks to several other gamers, both male … Read More »
So over the past week or so I’ve graduated to a new level of reaction to the rampant sexism that surrounds women in media and, especially, gaming. It’s getting to the point now where I’ve become exhausted just looking at … Read More »
Here’s the first “As-I-Play” post for XCOM: Enemy Unknown over at TLF. I haven’t gotten very far yet, so I’m sure my impressions will change – in other words, don’t start yelling at me because I haven’t fallen in love … Read More »
So one of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while is play through XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Everything I have heard about said game is that it’s awesome, and I’m really hoping that all the hype (and the … Read More »
So I was one of many people disappointed by the ending of Mass Effect 3. I was not, however, one of the people for whom the ending “ruined” the entire series. Nor was I one of the people calling for … Read More »
My review of Dark Souls went up last night on TLF. For the sake of full disclosure, although if you actually read the title it should be obvious, I didn’t actually play Dark Souls. I watched. If I’d tried to … Read More »
(Note: Please read the last two words of the title as though you are George Takei, if only for your own personal amusement.) In what seems to be a followup to yesterday’s post about gender-customization and Ubisoft, today I get … Read More »
A piece today at Polygon, entitled “What if ‘he’ and ‘she’ were interchangeable in a game’s story?” seems on the surface to be asking a legitimate question about the role of gender in videogaming. However, given the piece’s brevity and … Read More »
In preparation for a co-authored piece on Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption, I’ve been doing some reading about frontier space and American masculinity, and something I read yesterday in Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America struck me as particularly pertinent … Read More »
My response to the latest Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video – “Women as Background Decoration, Part 1” – is up on TLF. The short version is that I think Sarkeesian is getting better – or at least more … Read More »
One of the big kerfluffles at E3 2014 came with the announcement of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity game. The Assassin’s Creed series has thus far come in a variety of packages (all of which feature the same basic core concept … Read More »
In the last twenty-four hours or so (less, really), there have been a lot of interesting responses to Crystal Dynamics’ trailer for Rise of the Tomb Raider, some positive, some negative, some confused. Here’s something of a recap. IGN‘s “live” response, … Read More »