“Before a videogame can ever be played […] there must be a metagame.” Patrick LeMieux and Stephanie Lobuk In my experience with playing games, I realize I was always a player. I allowed myself to be deluded, I thought I was an active actor deciding what step to do next. All lies! Without realizing it, Read More
Last February, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems released the first title in the twenty-seven-year-old Fire Emblem franchise specifically designed for mobile gameplay, and the only installment to operate on a platform other than a Nintendo console—emulation notwithstanding. As a strategy role playing game imbued with gambling elements, Fire Emblem Heroes conforms to an increasingly prevalent free-to-play Read More
Independent game-making has, despite its relatively short history, seen a significant evolution. “Indie” games, as they are known, are now associated with such popular titles as Minecraft (2011), The Stanley Parable (2013), and Don’t Starve (2013) – games that have unquestionably penetrated mainstream consciousness. There is a certain sophistication associated with the Indie genre nowadays, Read More
The virtual worlds of video games offer a unique landscape wherein cultural heritage comes into contact (and tension) with new and emerging technologies as well as a plethora of other cultures: fandom culture, internet culture, consumer culture, and so on. It’s a landscape that is relatively new and that offers a veritable cultural quagmire to Read More
The past two months there’s been a lot on my plate. Between teaching, co-curating an event, various writing projects, and being very, very sick, I’ve had little time for other commitments. But at the forefront of my mind has been scholarship applications. In October, I handed in two applications — one for FQRSC at the Read More
‘One can set out by refusing speech, or by making speech the province of the weak, of women, of powerless characters who speak because they can’t act.’ (Chion, 2009, 327). As with the motion picture and, perhaps more pertinently, the animated cartoon, the move to voice acting in videogames introduced both new possibilities and new Read More