“If ‘to dust’ is ‘to kill’, ‘dust to dust’ is to render into nothingness.” – Hyperstition Laboratory
Dubai is surrounded and entangled by demons. Thousands of humans are dead. They have starved, been shot, or consumed and blasted apart by sand. You, the leader of a US Army Delta Force special forces team, are tasked to walk into Dubai and find out what happened. Continue Reading
There is, perhaps, no more of an innocuous fantasy video games can absolve than playing hooky from work for a day. And yet, in Paolo Pedercini’s Every Day the Same Dream, that refusal to concede to the droning and humdrum quotidian nonetheless feels subversive. A theory of alienation and its political potential, as it were, can help make sense of that affective experience of totally rejecting what is all too familiar: workplace boredom. Continue Reading
As game critics and scholars have noted, the past decade has seen a remarkable number of critically acclaimed big-budget video games featuring paternal protagonists (Brice, 2013; Joho, 2014; Voorhees, 2016). Games journalist Stephen Totilo (2010) has celebrated what he calls the “daddening” of video games as a maturation of the industry. On the other hand, some game critics have critiqued what they label as the “dadification” of video games as simply another means for developers to valorize violent male agency (Brice, 2013; Joho, 2014). This trend has been noted in titles such as BioShock 2 (2K Marin 2010), Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream 2010), Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego 2010), The Walking Dead: Season One (Telltale Games 2012), Dishonored (Arkane Studios 2012), BioShock Infinite (Irrational Games 2013), The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013), and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red 2015), among others. Continue Reading
This month we talk the latest trends in First Person Shooters with Rob, Chris, Shawn and Pierson with a focus on the games Titanfall 2, Doom, Battlefield One and Overwatch and I swear I only mention D.Va once! We focus on the narratives by first talking about how we as academics dedicate our time to story modes in games. What are some of the popular narratives in first person shooters and what is experiential difference between the stories we tell about gameplay? Do first person shooters need a single player campaign at all? This and pigeons in this months podcast. Continue Reading
The word “cheater” exists to define someone responsible for breaking a set of rules. Ordinarily, people use it to refer to transgressing the rules of a game, the expectations of a romantic relationship, or someone otherwise getting ahead, getting recognition, or achieving something with far less effort than it was supposed to require. Such situations seem obvious — it is clear that you should not look at someone else’s test paper or download a piece of software that boosts the strength of your video-game character – and thereby place blame solely upon the individual. But is cheating always that simple? Continue Reading
Fallout 4 wants to do a bit of everything, dabbling in crafting, town planning and perhaps most interestingly, political commentary. This can be found in the emails on long dormant business servers that exist to give motive to the corporate malfeasance that starts in the now abandoned laboratories and ends with the destruction of civilisation. Continue Reading
Football Manager (FM) is a videogame belonging to the sports management genre. When games media talks about football videogames, they more often than not mention FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) and FM alongside one another (De la Porte, 2014; Wilson, 2015). They are–after all–the best sellers in their category, and at first sight, they seem to have much in common. Yet, although FIFA and PES are both sports video games and are actually competitors, they are confused or lumped together with FM, a game that not only belongs to another genre, but also to another culture. Continue Reading