Casual Scholarship
Women Gamers as Social Animals in the GameHouse Survey
By now, you have probably seen some of the data from the GameHouse infographic above [source]. Collected by Harris Interactive for GameHouse, the data includes a few particularly sexy statistics.… Read the rest
Pole Position to Family Game Night: Fun for the Whole Family
This television spot for Atari’s Pole Position (1982, Namco) has one of my favorite exchanges of all time. As the camera physically invades the space of the family car, focusing on the bespectacled, bow-tied father driving the vehicle, an aggressive voice shouts at him:
… Read the restHey!
From The Memes of Babes
At some point while I was taking a break from some edits, I came across the “Cool Chick Carol” meme. Cool Chick Carol is a spinoff of the Good Guy Greg meme.… Read the rest
Pandemic and Collaboration in Games
A few weeks ago, some friends had us over for a game night. We played a few hands of Pirate Fluxx, during which I tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that I should get “talk like a pirate” points for speaking in my normal voice, since I had participated in the heyday of Napster when I went to college.… Read the rest
This Week in Feminism and Gaming: Tits, Chicks, and Casual Sexism
This week saw the publication of two sharp pieces on the casual sexism of much of video gaming culture. At Kotaku, LaToya Peterson responds to comments a Comic Con panel titled “East Meets West, Art Direction for a Worldwide Audience” in “The Tits Have It: Sexism, Character Design, and the Role of Women in Created Worlds.… Read the rest
What Video Gaming Does to Women
One of my all time favorite quotes about video gaming comes from Nikki Douglas, Grrl Gamer, in the classic From Barbie to Mortal Kombat:
… Read the restMaybe it’s a problem … that little girls DON’T like to play games that slaughter entire planets.
U.S. Classic Arcades Map
View U.S. Classic Arcades in a larger map
I’ve begun maintaining a map of places to play classic arcade games in the United States. All of these locations have more than 10 vintage video games, with a focus on the period from 1972 to about 1987.… Read the rest
Lana Del Rey, “Video Games”
Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” is a sweet little love song, even if it’s so drenched in melancholy it sounds like longing for something that’s already passed. In the song, video games are woven in as an activity among other daily minutia, like putting on perfume and drinking beer.… Read the rest
Arcade Machine as Object
I was digging around the ever excellent Arcade Flyer Archive earlier this week looking for some images of men and women playing video games together. While I found quite a few of what I was actually looking for, I’m most fascinated by an image I wasn’t looking for.… Read the rest
The Evolution of Video Game Controllers
Pop Chart Lab makes these totally beautiful, totally detailed charts on pop culture topics. The one above is “The Evolution of Video Game Controllers.” I am interested in how we have arrived at a point where, culturally, the phrase “video game controller” refers exclusively to console controllers.… Read the rest
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