February 28th
…Love You Man! Reflections on Twenty-Four Years of Male Friendship and Gaming — Gamers with Glasses Jason Mical and Roger Whitson discuss how normative masculine sociality informs shared play experiences and vice versa.
…Love You Man! Reflections on Twenty-Four Years of Male Friendship and Gaming — Gamers with Glasses Jason Mical and Roger Whitson discuss how normative masculine sociality informs shared play experiences and vice versa.
…the primary function of a video game, so there’s less bias against grafting more story onto one that’s already come to a natural and unified end. The theory I gravitate towards most, though, is that it’s because video games are so tied to rapid technological advances.”
Our next two selections take us to imagined worlds both fantastical and science fictional to better understand the precarity of the real-world ecosytems to which we remain indelibly bound.
…pair of pieces distilling personal philosophies of play, both generally and in relation to specific games.
“I am able to play games, and I am a gamer; just a disabled one. I can now better choose the games
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…little less scrutiny.
“This is a game about children playing and after a child spends enough time playing an adult often comes to tell them to finish. It doesn’t take a pessimistic view on the whole
…
…“We are seeing an unprecedented amount of commodification this year. Gibson is selling shares in guitars. You can buy a single shred of fabric from a collectible sneaker. NFTs have people paying millions of dollars for some really hideous JPEGs. Pokemon cards can now be considered intergenerational wealth. This has anyone with the perception of value grasping at straws; people are really out here trying to manipulate the aftermarket for less than $300.”
Our next section this week deals with endings along both narrative and mechanical dimensions, both clean-cut and ambiguous.
…else, this obscure engine for multiplayer games from the 90s is still up and running.”
Next up, two pieces about the games we play to feel seen, to explore identity, to awaken ourselves to new possibilities.
…a space for horse-focused games that reaches beyond the traditional barriers of shovelware-style development and gendered marketing.
…lot of good ideas going for it, but which struggles with a moral framework of juvenile and singularly videogamey nature.
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…it to the function and role of real-world academic libraries.
“I think Hanekoma is the reason I’d ever go back to play the god damned game again. Like the little…
…how its characters took on such a mythical quality. Magic defense is just one small part of that triumph, but the story that the game tells through and about Res speaks to an underlying ethos: Even in war, power takes many shapes, and to confine yourself to too narrow or simplistic an understanding of it is deadly.”
Two authors recount their formative experiences with games and their associated media.