We are thrilled to welcome you to First Person Scholar’s first issue in its new form! Our new format will take the place of our weekly publishing schedule from before, and replace it with a term-based publishing schedule (Fall, Winter,… Continue Reading
Eric is a history PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo. He studies history at the intersection of disability and fandom. Aside from work on his dissertation, he co-hosts a podcast on Canadian ghost stories called The Before Midnight Society… Continue Reading
This month on the First Person Podcast, you join Lia Black, Giuseppe Femia, Chris Lawrence, and Sabrina Sgandurra to look at the roles they have filled. What experience are they looking for in the characters they portray? How do they… Continue Reading
I wake up sad, but I ignore the mood and continue with my day, taking care of my needs, going to work. When I return home, I file reports on my computer, cancelling the impulse to talk to my desk, as the reports will take longer if I do. I keep progressing, always a forward trajectory: I become charismatic, get promotions, work towards my aspiration by learning to play chess and keeping a half-built spaceship in my backyard. I am developing a friendship that might become more than that with a neighbour who constantly sports a tweed newsboy cap and a blue silk shirt. I’m playing The Sims 4 and my character is my first intentionally “insane” character. Continue Reading
Content/Trigger Warning: Discussion of trauma and sexual assault.
Darkness is often synonymous with fear; where things go bump in the night, where monsters live. But what could make someone fear the light?
For Renée T., the protagonist of the LKA’s The Town of Light, the light bathed her with hellish attention, turning her inside-out. The game’s title, which initially strikes one as pious and placid, is actually a description of terror. The town is a mental asylum where young Renée is confined, in an Italian village at the height of the Second World War. Women couldn’t vote in Italy; lobotomies were all the rage; ‘hysteria’ was a diagnosis. Continue Reading
Her new book, SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient–Powered by the Science of Games (Penguin Books, 2015), seeks to explain in detail the SuperBetter method, which aims to teach how to live and overcome every life obstacle with a gameful mindset. McGonigal defined what “being gameful” means to her back in 2009: “having the positive traits of a gamer” (or a game), such as strong motivation and goal orientation, confidence in one’s own capabilities, enjoying the pursuit of new challenges, perseverance in the face of obstacles, and a passion for learning new skills 1. SuperBetter explains how to bring this mindset to everyday life. Continue Reading
Games, we know, do not have the best reputation in terms of representation. Through the decades, games have gained notoriety for excluding people who aren’t seen as their target audience: especially women, people of color, and people of different sexualities. On top of that, certain genres—particularly military shooters and horror games—have developed a reputation for stigmatizing people with mental illnesses. Too often these games equate people who have a mental illness with monsters and/or villains. For example, Silent Hill (Konami, 1999) … Continue Reading