First Person Podcast Episode 51 – Best Games of 2021

Image of Google search engine bar with the words "princess bride board game" in the search bar

  Welcome to the 51st episode of the First-Person Podcast and the annual Best Games episode of 2021! This year we wanted to take this opportunity to introduce the current FPS team, so you will hear some new and old… Continue Reading

First Person Podcast Episode 50 – State of Game Studies

FirstPersonPodcast · First Person Podcast Episode 50: State of Game Studies Welcome to the 50th episode of the First-Person Podcast and the last episode of the year 2021! As this is our 50th episode we wanted to take some time… Continue Reading

Re-Imagining The Borderlands

A Review of Queer Game Studies

There’s a scene that Bonnie Ruberg describes in the final chapter of Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), which still resonates long after I finished the work. It’s a scene of the inevitable social banter after a panel discussion at an academic conference where, as Ruberg states, she feels “pressured to either tone down my queerness […] or to perform it” (271). For Ruberg, her queerness is not evident in people’s assumptions of her while also simultaneously too evident in her research in queer gaming. She reminds herself to not mention her ex-girlfriend and to silence her kinkiness; she dresses the professional part to blend in and answers questions about her research with a smile on her face—and yet, she still deals with feelings of being “the weird grad student” and with people’s seemingly never-ending questions of “Queerness? And games?” with a twinge of disgust (272). Continue Reading

“You are not alone”

The unlikely intersection between Dark Souls, Burial, and... writing the dissertation

During my MA, I grew attached to the music of the UK electronic artist Burial. His music helped me a lot throughout the writing process of my Major Research Project (MRP). His music is ethereal and spectral, simultaneously steeped in the depths of loneliness and pulsating with a comfort that draws listeners out of that loneliness; it is the kind of music that reflects the push and pull of (academic) isolation I experienced at the time and still deal with today. Take this beautiful remix of his, for instance, which is drearily pulled back slow and yet soothingly shimmers. It’s a song I had on nonstop repeat during my MA. Continue Reading

Interview with Brianna Wu

Software Engineer, Game Developer, Feminist Warrior

On November 1st and 2nd Brianna Wu visited University of Waterloo as part of the HeforShe campaign to talk with students and professors about women in tech initiatives, Gamergate and feminism in the games industry. I was able to steal her away from her busy itinerary to discuss the role of academic institutions and publishing in the tech world, as well as some of her missions while she is here in Waterloo. Continue Reading

Difficult Writing

A Response to Emma Vossen’s Publish or Perish

So I’ll start with quick praise for Emma Vossen’s piece and the inspired and inspiring video for SSHRC. It’s a brave reflection on graduate student precarity, academic responsibility and this idea of middle-state publishing. That Emma is doing this in the context of game studies and in the spirit of inclusiveness and positive change is even better. I am a faculty member. I read it in all its middle state glory and I want to honour the valuable labour and contribution there with a response. Maybe it’s better to be outside academia for Emma’s arguments to take hold. I don’t think so. Her arguments are at the heart of our vocation as academics (and certainly as game studies scholars). Maybe Emma thinks this makes it harder for her to get an academic job, I think the opposite and many of my colleagues will agree. Continue Reading

Publish or Perish?

Or Publish with Purpose?

If you are an academic you are probably achingly familiar with the phrase “publish or perish”, which has become the motto of our broken system. Publishing has become a numbers game and as someone in game studies, it’s hard not to see it as a game. If as a grad student you ask someone with a job how to get a tenure track job, they will often tell you the exact same things: “It’s very difficult to get a job but if you publish X many journal articles in journals of X quality and go to conferences X Y and Z and then cast your net wide enough you will get a job.” That is the formula I’ve heard 100 times: publishing along the party line = job. After you get a job, you might have to write a book to get tenure, but that book must be for an academic audience and must be published with a “good” academic publisher. Continue Reading