Body Types in Games · Corporate Decision Silliness · Games Criticism · Rants

Whole Hog

This is a short post. But I am cranky. Like many people in the gaming culture/press/business/what-have-you, I have spent many a moment over the past couple days looking at my Battle.net client longingly, hoping I too will suddenly receive a beta invite for Blizzard’s upcoming TF2-alike, Overwatch. To kill some time, I decided to look… Continue reading Whole Hog

Fan Culture · Games Criticism · Gendered gaming · Sexuality in gaming · Uncategorized

Paradoryxical

Where to begin. Although the information has been floating around gaming's social media spheres and message boards for a few weeks now, yesterday Polygon ran an op-ed by Laura K. Dale about Oryx, the titular king of Destiny's recent The Taken King expansion, being transgender. As a cis-though-not-as-cis-as-they-thought-they-were-for-30-years person, I struggled a lot with whether it was even… Continue reading Paradoryxical

Bizarrely Out of Character · Games Criticism · Games Journalism

Teachable Moment

Right. By now I'm sure many of you have heard about Michael Thomsen's WaPo review of Super Mario Maker. Suffice it to say that I found it really freaking obnoxious. Others did, too. I didn't see many people defending it, and I can imagine some reasonable ones; Tom Auxier at least had a couple reasonable explanations for… Continue reading Teachable Moment

Games Criticism · Games Journalism · Rants · Sexuality in gaming

Dismissed

Hi, Twitter. So I made this tweet earlier tonight, around dinner time-ish: https://twitter.com/laevantine/status/618580256325283840 I've got thoughts about both of these topics, obviously, but I've been skirting writing about them for various reasons. Some of them more professional, some silly (FF14 has eaten up a lot of my life lately), and some personal (I am scared… Continue reading Dismissed

Body Types in Games · Gendered gaming · Rants · Sexuality in gaming

Not Safe For Work (Or Anywhere Else)

So, let's talk about Cobra Club, the dick pic simulator by Robert Yang, for a little bit. Because the content of the game is NSFW -- and because I'm going to spoil some of the game's stuff -- you can find the rest of this post under the fold. I'm always in a weird place… Continue reading Not Safe For Work (Or Anywhere Else)

Games Criticism · Gendered gaming · Sexification

Please Don’t Touch Me

So: Dragon's Crown. It's come back into my life recently, as I have been playing it on my Vita (it's a surprisingly good fit for that system). Also spoilers, despite all its art style problems I thoroughly enjoy Dragon's Crown, as it's an exceedingly well-crafted and satisfying brawler. It also came up in this editorial about an… Continue reading Please Don’t Touch Me