After the grueling year that has been 2020, we invite you to join us in reminiscing the games that we played over these past 12 months. Come find out what we were busy playing and join us in welcoming our newest cast member, Alex Chalk. Continue Reading
Books and games have been an invaluable source of consolation during my city’s lockdown restrictions. Reading Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture during this “unprecedented time” was no exception. Gamer Trouble explores videogame texts and events through an intersectional feminist lens, unpacking the 2010 Dickwolves controversy and offering fresh readings of Fallout 3 (Bethesda, 2008), Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007) Bayonetta (Platinum Games, 2009), and Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007-2012). Continue Reading
I argue in this essay, Elsinore’s use of branching and discoverable dialogue, multiple story paths as well as choices and consequences, construct a narrative mode that reveals the themes of racism and sexism and the ways in which systems of oppression reinforce each other in the narrative. Elsinore uses the video game medium to reorient Hamlet around the intersecting vectors of gender and race, and in doing so it offers an intersectional feminist reinterpretation of Hamlet. This essay will look at how Elsinore adapts Hamlet by focusing on the treatment of Ophelia’s sexuality, showing how narrative agency and discoverable dialogue can reinforce the intersectional commitment of the game. Continue Reading
As we enter into a new year, we’re all thinking about how incredibly thankful we are to each and every reader and contributor that has continued to make First Person Scholar the amazing publication that it is. With everything we’re all dealing with and the changes FPS made back in September, it heartens us every day to see the continuing engagement we have with all of you. Now that our holiday break is over, we look forward to sharing more amazing pieces, and hearing from new and familiar faces who wish to publish with us. Continue Reading
FirstPersonPodcast · First Person Podcast Episode 41: Button Mapping We are ending this year on a more technical note by discussing the button mapping that we see in our modern games. Join Giuseppe, Sabrina, Lia, and Patrick as we discuss… Continue Reading
In this essay, I argue that Pandemic is also useful to convey technical information to its players about the epidemiological principles that are governing our response to the virus. In particular, the game does an excellent job of allowing players to experience the importance of “flattening the curve” of virus cases. However, in its current form, the game lacks a mechanism to model another key factor in the spread of the coronavirus in the United States: the political decisions made by various government institutions in response to its arrival. Continue Reading
As a way to confront the police state we seem to be barreling toward, Tanya Kan and her development studio Vivid Foundry have created Solace State. A different kind of visual novel, Solace State, focuses on the interaction and social relationships of a group of young hackers to imagine a hopeful ground-up approach to bettering a dystopian world. Instead of a singular, white hope, the game demonstrates the diversity of faces and voices involved in mounting a revolution. Continue Reading