(Re)coding Survivance and the Regenerative Narrative

S. Rose O’Leary 1 Comment

The theme of this special issue is “(Re)coding Survivance” and is, as I understand it, supposed to be about how we might envision Indigenous futurisms via video game worlds. One of my Indigenous nations, the Washazhe or “Osage,” call ourselves “Children of the Middle Waters” and have special relationships with rivers. Thus, I turn to the source of much of our story to think about how to envision futures in a decolonial, “(re)coded,” or regenerative way. Continue Reading →

First Person Podcast Episode 35: Disco Elysium

Lindsay Meaning, Rob Parker, Sabrina Sgandurra, and Axel Hassen Taiari

FirstPersonPodcast · First Person Podcast Episode 35: Disco Elysium This month on the First Person Podcast, we delve into Disco Elysium with Lindsay Meaning, Rob Parker, Sabrina Sgandurra, and Axel Hassen Taiari to discuss their experiences with the game. We… Continue Reading →

Dreaming of Zion

The American West as Place or Process in Fallout: New Vegas’s Honest Hearts DLC

David G. Schwartz

As a Western set in a post-apocalyptic Mohave, Fallout: New Vegas demonstrates that the big questions that drive Western history are durable and malleable enough to survive even the (fictional) nuclear demise of the United States itself. The fourth iteration of the Fallout franchise is set approximately 200 years after a civilization-ending nuclear war but is valuable for teachers of American history because several major themes of real-life Western historiography are embedded in it. In fact, as I will demonstrate in this essay, the game, and particularly the Honest Hearts DLC, can be used to not just demonstrate, but to allow students to feel why the questions that underlay the study of Western history have real resonance. Continue Reading →

A Multimodal Approach to Video Games and the Player

A book review

Agata Waszkiewicz

In A Multimodal Approach to Video Games and the Player Experience, Weimin Toh describes the process that led him to develop a new, exhaustive model of the relationship between storyline and gameplay in video games. He synthesizes many of the theories of narrative game studies’ through the lenses of the multimodal approach, basing them heavily on the idea of ludonarrative dissonance as introduced by Clint Hocking in 2007. Grounding his research in the previous works and acknowledging the controversies regarding the concept, Weimin Toh does not concentrate solely on ludonarrative dissonance but rather regards it as one of a few types of relationships between two game modes, next to ludonarrative resonance and ludonarrative (ir)relevance. Continue Reading →

Burn the Glitch?

An archaeology of digital queers

Florence Smith Nicholls

Glitches can be characterised as digital pests. Like their analogue equivalents, they can range from mildly inconvenient to unavoidable. Examples include loading errors, clipping through walls, and game-breaking glitches which result in a complete cessation of play. Despite this, glitches are highly valued by certain play communities. Speedrunners exploit glitches in order to complete games as fast as possible, and record their occurrences for other members of their community. Archaeogamers, who study the intersection between archaeology and video games, may also record glitches in order to better understand the development and experience of playing a particular game. Continue Reading →

Writing New Bodies in Digital Fiction

Megan Perram, Astrid Ensslin, Carla Rice, Sarah Riley, Christine Wilks, Hannah Fowlie, Lauren Munro and K. Alysse Bailey

A significant scholarly and popular media criticism of bodily-focused video games is that they perpetuate harmful body image (Barlett and Harris; Sarkeesian). Yet, game scholars such as Kafai, as well as significant subsets of gaming communities, have argued that the medium can act as a resistance mechanism for heteronormative, racist, and anti-queer sociopolitical influence. In a Western context, gendered notions of appearance in media work to affirm an idealized body image for women, communicating that a body that is not white, able-bodied, thin, toned, and feminine, is, in fact, inferior. Continue Reading →

First Person Podcast Episode 32

Romance in Gaming

Lia Black and Sarah Stang

This month on the First Person Podcast, we sit down with Lia Black, and Sarah Stang for Valentine’s Day to discuss their hot takes on romance in gaming. What are their video game crushes? What makes for a good romance narrative? What should we be seeing more of in our romance titles? All these questions and more will be answered on this episode of the podcast. Continue Reading →