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From Dog Whistle to Clarion Call
When the Trump White House posted this Instagram homage to the Grand Theft Auto franchise, I couldn’t decide which of the iconic videogame protagonists Trump would identify with more: the drug-addict Trevor Philips, the reformed gangbanger Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson, or the illegal immigrant and possible war criminal, Niko Bellic. Posts like this are, on one…
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Titanfall 2
At a moment when everyone and their sister seems to have thoughts on the nostalgia-jerker Mixtape, I’ve journeyed back into a different past: the dim, pre-COVID era of 2016, to catch up on Titanfall 2. To say that Titanfall 2 is a first-person, action videogame about shooting mechs and jumping off walls is a bit…
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‘Making’ Sense (Where None Exists): Reading, Writing and GenAI
Generative AI has become a widespread fixation, an obsession even, over the past five years or so. Ever since it exploded onto the web, ChatGPT, its LLM siblings and image-generating cousins, have become an inescapable fact of everyday life. Their reach has extended well beyond the online or digital media realms I normally inhabit. Seemingly…
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Forced: Perceptions of ‘Woke’ Politics in Videogames
I am very pleased to share that my latest academic publication has finally hit the digital shelves. The International Journal of Communication has published my article that investigates the way gamers talk about the presence of so-called “politics” in videogames. The abstract: Through a close analysis of online video game commentary, this article argues that…
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In-Class Coins: Results
In semester 2 of 2024, I created an in-class incentive scheme that rewarded students for simple in-class, pro-learning behaviours like speaking up when questions were asked, volunteering to present their group’s work, as a prize for scoring well on a in-class Kahoot! quiz, and even in some cases, just turning up to class on time!…
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Toss a Coin to your Learners: A small game-based pilot
This fall I am teaching three courses at two small colleges here in Maryland. Two sections are the same class, at one institution, and a third similar course at another college. All are in-person, on campus sections. For years now, I have been slowly tinkering with ideas about how school, college in particular, is already…
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Diablo 4: A Terminal Deficit of Soul
One knows basically what to expect when starting a new game of Diablo: archetypal role-playing game class selections, gothic Christian aesthetics, and hordes of hellish monsters to vanquish. In this, Diablo 4 is perfectly competent. Unfortunately, however, the game suffers from a catastrophic lack of character. Having raised my sorcerer to level 100 and turned…
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Critical Game Analysis: The Strange Ox
Occasionally, I am asked about my work as a critical game scholar, and I have to come up with some kind of short-hand for explaining it. Usually my go-to is comparing game studies to film studies or literature, which usually helps get us to a perspective of analyzing games for social, artistic, or cultural significance…
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