special issue

“Share Melancholy Thoughts”

Playing with Mental Illness in The Sims 4

Ingrid Doell

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 →

A Better World

Examples of Disability in Overwatch

Amanda L. L. Cullen, Kathryn E. Ringland, and Christine T. Wolf

Video games, like any other cultural product, reflect the cultural values that influence their creation; these values then influence perceptions on what is normal and acceptable in a social context (Flanagan and Nissenbaum 2014). Mass media shapes the perceptions of disability by influencing the language used to talk about disabilities, including what is (or -perhaps more significantly-, what is not) covered by news outlets and other mass media (Haller 2010). The invisibility of those with disabilities continues to be normalized when they are left out of media such as video games. Continue Reading →

Mad/Crip Games and Play

An Introduction

Adan Jerreat-Poole 1 Comment

Content Notification: reference to self-harm

The first time I saw Poison Ivy, I fell in love with her. But I didn’t get to play Ivy. I had to play Batman. And Batman punished Ivy for being a Mad queer femme. He played the role of the legal system, and the legal system punishes people like her, like me. The logic of the game was patriarchal, sanist, ableist. The game made me hurt us.
Continue Reading →

FPS Special Issue Call for Papers

Mad/Crip Games and Play

Adan Jerreat-Poole, Special Issue Guest Editor & Betsy Brey, FPS Editor-in-Chief
Call For Papers

CFP: Disabled characters tend to appear as villains, sidekicks, and/or background props to add “flavour” to games, rather than as protagonists. These media representations both infantilize disabled bodies and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Access to games and gaming culture remains exclusive to the assumed able-bodied player. This special issue invites Mad and crip perspectives on games, play, and gaming culture. Continue Reading →

Becoming Sensate

New Approaches to Observing Play

Krystin Gollihue

Games move us (Apperley & Jayemayne, 2012; Giddings, 2009). They teach us how to play them, how to move through their worlds, how to learn their protocols, and how to negotiate their persistent blending of virtual and physical worlds. The moving parts of a situation of gameplay – the platform, the narrative, the player and her environment – act as an assemblage, a constantly changing interaction of humans and nonhumans influencing one another. The notion of play is not a fixed reality, but a result of these elements in constant contact and becoming what we recognize as play (Massumi, 2002). Continue Reading →

Getting Good: An Introduction to the Becoming Machine Series

Nick Taylor 3 Comments

As a researcher who studies games and their practices, communities, and industries, I am deeply interested in the ways that my own proficiency with games (or lack of) modifies how and what I know about them. To take a pithy example, my years-long experience playing in Guild Wars 2’s PvE scene affords me some insight into the ways that the game has evolved to create some opportunities for incidental collaboration between players while suppressing others. At the same time, my utter incompetence with the game’s PvP play leaves me less capable (and less willing) to investigate it – to ask, for instance, how the Guild Wars 2’s meta has evolved in response to the demands of top competitive guilds. Continue Reading →