April 2011
A Study in Sado-Masochism: ‘Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars’
Like a "women in prison" movie, in reverse.
Let’s Play: Interactivity by Proxy in a Web 2.0 Culture (Part 1)
Let's Plays are just a small component of the overarching practice of collective gaming consciousness, to which I would add social media sites, review aggregators, game stores and other physical and digital spaces that affirm, check, and remix gaming knowledge along with other fan practices.
Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, You Just Ain’t No ‘Digital’
A look at Christine Love's spiritual successor to Digital and why you should play it despite its flaws.
A Truly ‘90s Cultural Artifact: ‘Goosebumps: Escape From HorrorLand’
Jeff Goldblum and Isabella Rossellini collaborated with Steven Spielberg on a Goosebumps video game and somehow it never became an Internet meme.
Moving Pixels Podcast: Rewinding ‘The Last Express’
Playing on trains and playing with time. The Moving Pixels podcast looks back on Jordan Mechner's classic The Last Express.
You’re in No Position to Change Anything in ‘Dragon Age II’
Your Grey Warden was a force of change, but your Champion of Kirkwall is unable to change any major plot point. You are not special, which is the point.
Rage Quit: Chapter 3—“You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.”
The serialized novel by Rick Dakan continues with Chapter Three, "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike."
Mobile Gaming Safari
What is the state of mobile/handheld gaming out in the wild? If the sights taken in on one recent trip are any indication, the traditional kings of the jungle might need to worry about their place in the food chain.
War, Death, Wagers: Cormac McCarthy on Video Games
“Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard.”
Space Jihadists: ‘Mass Effect 2: Arrival’ Just Keeps Digging Its Hole Deeper
Arrival demonstrates an almost appalling similarity to American media, not just in the way that we create our own enemies, but in how we manage to disregard the ensuing violence as the Other's doing, surely not our own.
