The Strong. VGJUNK. NAMCO MUSEUM ONLINE. Retro handheld games collection. Brett Weiss: Words of Wonder: The Video Game Reading List. I got the new Game Informer in the mail and was disappointed to discover that my new book wasn't featured in "The Video Game Reading List.
" Some of my friends' books missed the cut as well. However, I am pleased that G.I.'s Matt Helgeson spotlighted some worthwhile titles that deserve a large readership. True, these are already some of the best-selling video game books on the market, but kudos to these authors for getting recognition for their hard work. Click on the magazine pages for a closer look, and click on the links below to order these fine titles. Ralph Baer, a Pioneer of Videogames, Is Remembered. PCGamingWiki PCGW - an encyclopedia of PC game fixes. Gamepedia. World's Biggest PAC-MAN. QWOP. N64TH STREET. The First Female Gamers. The miniature wargame play celebrated in the War Game Digest could reach only a limited audience because it required painstaking efforts from dedicated and artisanal adults.
Avalon Hill’s board wargames, on the other hand, could reasonably aspire to reach the mass market. They built on the recognized tradition of juvenile board games, but with a complexity that attracted a more mature consumer — all without the expense and craftsmanship that miniatures entailed. Avalon Hill branded many of its wargames as famous American battles, with titles like Gettysburg or D-Day, which minimized the need for advertising or explanation. This introduced many thousands of young enthusiasts to the principles of wargaming. But once Avalon Hill opened a communication channel for their customers, something unexpected happened: a community that self-identified as gamers formed, and exhibited many characteristics that are familiar to us today.
Interactive exhibit features two decades of female game developers. When discussing games history, the accomplishments of women are often overlooked.
One museum is seeking to fix that by highlighting the work of major female developers. “Women created this industry,” Alex Handy, founder and director of a California digital art museum, told me via email. “From the imagination and creativity of Roberta Williams, to the technical skill of Carol Shaw, to the leadership skills of Amy Henning, women are an integral part of the history of video games.” Now, a new exhibit in Oakland, California, honors the legacy of Williams, Shaw, Henning and five other female developers. No girls allowed. First-person shooters, action games and sports games have been popular among boys ever since the early '90s.
In 2012, the three categories combined were responsible for 58.8 percent of video game sales in North America. They're easily some of the most visible kinds of games, lining the shelves at retailers and appearing on television screens any time a story about video games makes the news. But not everyone buys the idea that games have become the realm of males.
"I've always known there were some games and genres that attracted a heavier male audience than others, like shooters for instance," says Brenda Romero, a developer who has worked in the game industry since the early '80s and has been credited on titles such as Wizardry, Jagged Alliance and Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes. But Romero points out that if we go back to fall 1993, two significant things happened in gaming. The End of Gatekeeping: The Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture - Paging Dr. NerdLove. Girl Gamers Episode 2: Why do women make games? How do you start making games?
From writing a graduate school term paper on public bathrooms to animating dress up dolls, this generation of creators got their start in surprisingly simple ways. In the second episode of Fusion’s five-part digital series Girl Gamers, we explore what motivated these developers to start designing their own games. Want to play? Try LIM, the game merritt kopas created, or Mainichi, the game Mattie Brice made. Inferences About Avatars: Sexism, Appropriateness, Anthropomorphism, and the Objectification of Female Virtual Representations - Nowak - 2015 - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
Monstrous Women in Dragon Age: Desire Demons and Broodmothers. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m a great fan of the Dragon Age series.
I enjoy the soap opera-esque drama, the wisecracks, and waving around a giant sword while covered in the blood of my enemies. Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons. There is a clear problem of representation in games and — more broadly — in the cultures produced by games.
This problem in representation has most recently yielded controversies such as #gamergate1, but it is also more or less responsible for debacles such as the PAX dickwolves saga, and the recent death threats to Anita Sarkeesian spurred by her “Tropes vs. Women in Games” series. Outside the spotlight of digital games, some members of other game communities, such as Ajit George2 and Shoshana Kessock3, have been outspoken about problems of representation at Gen Con4, North America’s largest tabletop game convention. Image CC BY-NC-ND, by Angela Marie Henriette. An Analysis of Gender-Inclusive Language and Imagery in Top-Ranked Board Game Rulebooks. On July 2019, a poster on BoardGameGeek asked a question on the General Gaming forum about board game rulebooks: “Why do so many games insist on having gendered pronouns in the rulebooks?”
1 The poster noted that their friends had actually drawn a line in the sand, writing, “they’re not interested in learning a board game which only uses masculine pronouns…”2 The post generated 361 replies, some supportive commiseration, and still other comments filled with a level of anger that surprised us. One poster shared that they were so offended by the use of ‘he or she’ in the rulebook of a top-ranked game that the poster set about writing their own customized rulebook to include only ‘he’ in reference to a player.3 It was only after this homebrew rewrite that this poster reported they could finally tolerate the rulebook again.
“risk” by hellosputnik is licensed under CC BY 2.0 For Shelly, board games growing up were either relegated to those deemed educational (e.g. Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG Source Books. In this article, we are asking why representations of LGBTQ themes and characters have been so scarce in the context of role-playing games.
A preliminary analysis of the first three decades (1974–2005) of English language RPG source material shows that when the topic has not been silenced altogether, it has been met with reactions that seem humorous or extreme in hindsight. Our aim here is to map an alternative history of role-playing game source books, one that pays attention to queer sexualities, and connect these representations to other cultural spheres. A Wilder from White Wolf’s Changeling: The Dreaming (1997). Introduction Games that deal with sexuality are few and far between, and games that deal with non-normative sexualities are even less common. Although there is substantial research on role-playing games and player cultures that surround them,3 non-normative sexualities seems to be a topic that still calls for initial study. Gayme Corner: "Videogames for Humans" and the Intimate, Playful Engagement of Twine. Welcome to the fourth installment of Gayme Corner, a biweekly column in which I talk about games, all types of games, and the ways we play them.
This week, I dove into Videogames for Humans, a lovely series of essays about Twine games edited by game creator and writer Merritt Kopas. I’ve talked a bit about Twine in this column, and Twine games have been mentioned on Autostraddle dot com, but we haven’t really talked about Twine. Here’s what I know about Twine: it’s a visual tool for writing interactive fiction and games. Passages go in boxes, boxes can be dragged around the screen, and links are drawn between them, offering options to go forward and sometimes backward and sometimes cycle through choices.
Everyone Should Play Slam City Oracles. Never have I seen a game that is more specific to the Autostraddle community — maybe Gone Home. Maybe. But this game was basically made for us all. Jane Friedhoff’s Slam City Oracles is a smash-em-up game where you rocket two badass beings into the ground, buildings, clouds and whatever the fuck else they can hit — and you do it all to a riot grrrl soundtrack.
Here’s the game trailer for a little glimpse: You read that right — two beings. Davey Wredon's "The Beginner's Guide" Is Brilliant, Horrifying, Secretly Feminist. Header by Rory Midhani I spent this past weekend playing and replaying The Beginner’s Guide, an experimental narrative-based game released by The Stanley Parable’s Davey Wreden on Thursday. It’s described (vaguely, but accurately) on Steam as “the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.”
I would describe it (also vaguely, also accurately) as sort of similar to the book House of Leaves, or the film Adaptation. If you find either of those things interesting, go and get this game immediately, because it’s brilliant. It costs under $10, and start-to-finish, it takes only an hour and a half to play all the way through. The Rise of Escape Room Games. The blindfold comes off. The first thing you see are the others, wiping their eyes and squinting at the new light. The room comes into focus. No one that's there has ever been inside of it before.
There's a door with a lock on it, and a timer begins counting down. Home is where the future of games is. Take a moment to think about the things in your home. What story do they tell about you? About your relationships, your family or your life? In a dusty vase I have some roses, dried. Four months ago I got them for Valentine’s Day, and then I had to travel for a few months, so they stayed here.
I remember my sweetheart writing me while I was gone: Your roses are almost black. “Is it okay if I write about our plants,” I asked him. “Nobody wants to read about that,” he demurred. Casey O’Donnell, "Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators" (MIT Press, 2014) Casey O’Donnell View on Amazon. John Sharp, "Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art" (MIT Press, 2015) The Art of the Game and the Game of Art. How 8-Bit Music Was Made On The NES And Commodore 64.
Why video games have launch problems. 7 Genius Game Ideas That Started Life as Fan Mods. Did Blowing into Nintendo Cartridges Really Help? When I was a kid with a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), sometimes my games wouldn't load. But I, like all kids, knew the secret: take out the game cartridge, blow on the contacts, and put it back in. And it seemed to work. (When it failed, I'd just keep trying until it worked.) But looking back, did blowing into the cartridge really help? I've talked to the experts, reviewed a study on this very topic, and have the answer. GAME & GRAPHICS. Character Assassination.
The Evolution Of Super Mario. Ask-gallows-callibrator: vergess: ... Nancy Drew: The Most Iconic Woman In Gaming. She may not wield badass dueling pistols like Lara, or rule over the Mushroom Kingdom like Peach, but this detective has made the transition from pages to pixels, and gathered a formidable online fandom in the process. We should all be a little more like Nancy Drew. How the F.B.I. Made 'Winners Don't Use Drugs' the Arcade Motto of the '90s. What it's like running an arcade in 2015. Many say arcades are dead. Party Like It's 1995: The Rise and Fall of the Girl Game. “Being a woman who likes gaming must be like being a worm who likes fishing,” a dude friend of mine remarked recently. He was commenting on the constant negativity, abuse, and neglect that woman-identified gamers face daily. It’s tough out there. 20 driving games from 20 years of the PlayStation.
5 Unhealthy Marriage Myths You Should Never Believe Marriage is rewarded with gifts, tax breaks, and shared health insurance. The pooling of resources makes it easier to rent a nicer apartment, buy a house, and even travel. Directly and indirectly, we are told marriage will make you happy, but will it? Xbox 360 Production Has Ended. Share. Xbox 360's circle of life comes to an end. Sony Japan stops repairing PS2 consoles - AfterDawn. PS2: A Tribute. Eighteen-years after its birth, the PlayStation 2 has finally been laid to rest. "Make it Biblical:" How Vagrant Story Changed Game Localization. ‘Ocarina of Time’s Inescapable Influence on Modern Gaming. Tony Hawk On ‘Skate Jam’ and How Games Changed His Life – and Sport – Forever. Internet Archive is now emulating and archiving Adobe Flash animations and games. The History of Flash Games. Flash Games Mattered. The Rewards of Being Your Ideal Self in Grand Theft Auto. 2020 is changing gaming and no one noticed.
League of Legends prodigy Faker carries his country on his shoulders. A game that speaks of Africa. A Saudi Prince is using video games to fuel an intellectual renaissance in the Middle East. The World's Most Popular Video Game Fights Racist Harassment With Artificial Intelligence. Reviews, Kickstarter Updates, Community Discussion. How To (Accidentally) Build A More Female-Friendly Game. Indigenous Board Game Design in The Gift of Food. The difficult history of videogames and indigenous people. About the Game — Heroes Must Die. The playing’s the thing in game-to-stage adventure ‘Heroes Must Die’ More than Skin Deep: Evaluating Fantasy Video Games’ Underlying Racial InfluencesAmanda C. Cote and Caden Perry / University of Oregon – Flow. Quick Hit: Sexism In Games Bingo. Anita Sarkeesian Describes the Fury She Cannot Express in Public. One Week of Harassment on Twitter - Major Trigger Warnings for Death, Rape, and Gendered Insults -
Racism sexism and gamings cruel optimism. List of ethical concerns in video games (partial) How Chan-Style Anonymous Culture Shapes #gamergate (with images, tweets) · a_man_in_black. Game of Fear: The Story Behind GamerGate. The Bad Apples Of #GamerGate. Almost No One Sided with #GamerGate: A Research Paper on the Internet’s Reaction to Last Year’s Mob. How Gamergate's earliest target came to empathize with her abusers. Meet the Woman Helping Gamergate Victims Come Out of the Shadows. Gamergate didn't fade into obscurity. We just stopped noticing its existence. Why SXSW Cancelled a Panel on Digital Harassment. Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Gamergate: How the Netflix series absorbed the anxieties of the online movement.
Reimagining Disability in Role-Playing Games. A Burnt Torch: Darkest Dungeon, Mental Health and Lovecraftian Horror. A tsunami of testimonies: assaults in the Swedish larp community. Uncertainty in Analog Role-Playing Games, Part 3. O Jogo do Bicho: Pushing the Boundaries of Larp in Brazil. The Trouble with Gender in Larp. Manipulating Environments in American Freeform. A People’s History of Board Games - YES! Magazine. A Little Gamey: Why "Cinematic" Should Be a Dirty Word in Video Games. Why Video Game Soundtracks Have Gotten Worse (And How They Can Get Better) - Life In An Electric Box.