We are very excited to announce our latest Special Issue! In this issue, we focused on the voices and experiences of queer and trans people of colour, and efforts to decolonizing the games studies space. With amazing work by our… Continue Reading
Guest editor Khee Hoon Chan is a writer from Singapore, with bylines in Polygon, Edge Magazine, PC Gamer, Unwinnable and more. They daydream about being a professional Street Fighter player. It isn’t exactly a little-known secret, but do you… Continue Reading
From arcades where people would take turns playing the machines, to console gaming with multiplayer options, to massive-multiplayer online games and online discussion forums, videogames are not always a solitary experience. Let’s Play videos, in which players record and upload their playthroughs of games, are a central component of many videogame communities. Since the Let’s Player narrates their feelings and choices in their videos, LPs “reveal a hidden layer of the game narrative: the story of the player and the experience” (Kerttula, p. 17). This is especially relevant to the discussion of morality and moral-making because the narration of the moral and ethical choices moves the discussion from an individual to a community space. According to Sari Piittnen, “LP narrations significantly feature complex moral evaluations, and explore the discursive means through which these are produced” (p. 4672). Continue Reading
While French studio Dontnod is still releasing new episodes of Life is Strange 2 and is teasing a new project, Twin Mirror, they have already developed four games in five years. To me they all bear a common theme which leads the experience: memory and how it defines identity. Let’s see how each game uses these ideas in their themes and gameplay and what it could mean for the studio. Continue Reading
In this month’s podcast five past and present editors of First Person Scholar discuss the episodic drama Life is Strange. We discuss how the game deals with choice and agency and how it depicts the self and character in a… Continue Reading