Love Interest: Werner Herzog, the Power Fantasy
While this game is categorized as a Boy Love (BL) or yaoi game, these are ultimately under the otome genre, which are games aimed specifically at heterosexual women.
View ArticleMass Appeal vs. Accessibility in Video Games
Video games reflect themes and skills found in boys’ styles of play as children, and any introduction of qualities that are different from that (especially if tagged as feminine) are cast out as...
View ArticleLove Interest: Ikezawa Hanako, the Otaku Exotic
You’re a male student who has the pick of five high school girls with disabilities to date and sleep with. Yes, Katawa Shoujo has a sensationalist premise promising for something to go horribly wrong.
View ArticleNarrative Is a Game Mechanic
If game mechanics are meant to provide players with experiences such as fun and anxiety, then narrative actually is a game mechanic, as much as game mechanics can also be narrative elements.
View ArticleLove Interest: Second Date – Ikezawa Hanako, a Trans* Narrative
Upon a first glance, there seemed to be little application for this analysis outside of criticizing pandering to men’s interests in visual novels, however, my personal connection to Hanako provided me...
View ArticleHow Could He?: Exploring Social Issues Through ‘Dragon Age II’
No one is implying that the LGBT community turn into blood magicians and that the religious march out to cage and murder them, but this conflict still echoes the tensions felt in the lives of real people.
View ArticleValuing the Feminine: Why I Love Vanille
Let me come out with it now: my favorite Final Fantasy characters tend to be the classic cheerful and energetic archetype, like Aeris, Selphie, and Vanille.
View ArticleWomen, the Ensemble, and Narrative Authority in the Final Fantasy Series
What makes some of the games in the Final Fantasy series interesting is how much the women share narrative responsibility with other characters.
View ArticleOne Day That Wall Is Gonna Fall: Game Design for Everyone
Zia’s song from Bastion wasn’t meant to be a challenge to gaming juggernauts, but it will be on the lips of those leaving GDC this year.
View ArticleFans, Capitalism, and Mass Effect 3’s Ending. Oh My.
How can something like this happen? My finger begins to cramp from scrolling through all the screaming and virtual facepalming over the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle on Twitter.
View ArticleDear Esther, We’re Moving Past Story
Dear Esther critiques games that use innumerable amounts of game mechanics to communicate experience. It achieves much with just one.
View ArticleNo Exit: How Games Can Change Us
As I change when I move from a bar crowded with friends to a public bus to a lover’s bedroom, I changed when playing Survivor. In this light, rules are actually a kind of perspective, a way of viewing...
View ArticleYou Want To Make a Boyfriend – You Just Don’t Know it Yet
There is an app taking the world by storm. It’s hot in Japan, it’s free, it’s Boyfriend Maker.
View ArticlePursuing My True Self
I remember when I first met him. Well, no, not him, but maybe- he’s a him, to me. I want Naoto to be a him to me as I want my lovers to have me as a her.
View ArticleWould You Kindly
I thought his eyes were blue. But he reminded me they were the color of shit.
View ArticleTriptychs
We tend to see them as objects. When we talk about games, we’re referencing a thing, either with physical boundaries or digital limitations. Games are objects with qualities, to be dissected, parsed,...
View ArticleThe Dadification of Video Games is Real
I recently watched a Lets Play of The Last of Us, because god forbid I play a shooter ever again in my life. But I do like to keep up with what's going on and what people are buzzing on about.
View ArticleGhosts
1987. I really like saying that. Nineteen eighty seven. It was the year I was born.
View ArticleIz Gamez Criticizm Art???
To start off, I am always going to answer ‘Is X Y?’ with ‘sure.’ Mostly, I see something like art as a lens or perspective; you can see something as art, and bring in what you understand of that to...
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