VG boundaries 4

Alexis Madrigal talks a lot about how the saying “you had to be there” applies especially so in this age of the internet, and how future historians may not even understand our internet and the way that we interact with it. This made me think a lot about my relationship with the internet in general,…

In this class I have been challenged to analyze the way games like Undertale and Stanley Parable give players “choices” that may not actually be choices and the way games like Assassin’s’ Creed are able to represent minorities and how that representation can be either good or bad. I think the question of representation is…

I had known Tomb Raider since Angelina Jolie’s movie. I did not know that there existed a mobile game for this action movie, so I was excited to see what the game would present. Having played it, I was very disappointed. It seemed as though the controls were not made with this game in mind. […]

My experience with the Choose Your Own Adventure novel was relatively pleasant. I chose Journey Under the Sea because I had recently read a Korean book about survival on sea, and the idea of expedition under the sea intrigued me. In my first read through the book, I decided to stay true to myself, as […]

Brunt Matches is visual novel game with a choose your own adventure style story and a concrete poetry style interface. The game consists of a screen with a concrete poem. You can click on the green words which will end the

quinn797 argues that Run Lola Run is like a save point in a video game. In the movie, Lola “respawns” three times and the situation changes each time. This is similar to how a save point in a video game

This post was inspired by Exam 4’s “Future Historians Probably Won’t Understand the Internet” and “Game After” readings. Both of these readings suggest that decay is the price we pay for digital media’s convenience and fast-changing nature. Nevertheless, people are constantly trying to preserve aspects of our digital lives, whether through games or Twitter a […]

There’s a term in the video game industry that has haunted game developers and quality assurance workers for over a decade: Crunch. This article posted by The Guardian elucidates the term and investigates how its presence within the video game industry has changed throughout the years. But what is crunch? Unless you are familiar with the […]

  homo economicus was a term first coined by John Stuart Mill, the influential utilitarian theorist and 17th century economist. Since its injection into the discourse of politics and economy, homo economicus has been a central characteristic of both neoliberal economic theories, as well as a heuristic tool by those infatuated by hegemonic thinking into belie […]

I will be focusing on a game I love and enjoy, Overwatch. Overwatch has been lauded for having a very diverse set of characters and bringing representation into the field of triple A games. Despite their efforts, however, it certainly doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. I will briefly talk about three characters... Continue Reading →

Over the course of the semester, we have explored a plethora of topics related to games and how they affect many different facets of our lives: from politics, to identity, to experience, etc. We even learned how to make games utilizing distinct platforms for game creation. Overall, this course challenged me to think about games in a new light. Despite being […]

How can video games be used in politics? What is the relationship between games and elections? Campaigning has grown increasingly mediatized, but little attention is given to the role of video games in both politics and elections. Games and their platforms are undoubtedly affected by politics. In our class, we got the chance to play Killbox that touched on t […]

Throughout the class, we’ve talked multiple times about the idea of seamlessness and seamlessness in a technological society. In making something seamless, one must thereby conceal the mechanisms and make invisible or obscure the full workings and modes of the …

In my previous two blog posts on defining games, I wrote first on the topic of why people define games, and then on the topic of why people (academics in particular) trying to define games is ultimately very problematic. While I would argue that we should abandon the hopeless task of trying to create game definitions to be used in academic discourse, I feel […]