Casual Scholarship
What I’ve Been Playing: Agent Alice
I downloaded Agent Alice to my phone a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing it intermittently. It has a Warehouse 13-style supernatural detectives type setup and is very clearly being marketed to women with ad slogans like, “Sometimes it takes a woman to get the job done.”… Read the rest
Here’s to Theresa Duncan! Game: Totally Rexed
FEMICOM Museum recently held the first of a new series of game jams, “FEMICOM Game Jam #1: Here’s to Theresa Duncan!” In total, 12 games were submitted for the jam, many featuring really lovely graphics that I think make a perfect tribute to Duncan’s own game design work, which always seemed like some kind of great punk rock/folk art mashup for girls.… Read the rest
A MAZE. Magazine: “I have a fucking agenda”
I was interviewed briefly for a piece in the current issue of A MAZE. Magazine, which is free to read online right here. The theme for this issue is “women,” and a number of amazing women in and around the games industry are featured.… Read the rest
Coin-Operated Americans has a cover!
I’m so excited about this that I’m using exclamation marks: Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade, the book I’ve been working on since sometime in 2009 or so, now has an actual cover and is available on pre-order from Barnes & Noble.… Read the rest
Influential Game Designers: Shigeru Miyamoto released
Jennifer deWinter and I co-founded and now co-edit a series on Influential Game Designers for Bloomsbury academic. We first discussed the idea of the series several years ago. When we finally picked it up now about two years ago, we then spent months crafting a proposal and shopping the project to presses.… Read the rest
Postcards from the Midwest Gaming Classic
The Midwest Gaming Classic is part fixed-rate arcade, part expo, part museum, and part fleamarket. For a weekend, the event sprawls through a Milwaukee hotel, occupying ballrooms, meeting rooms, and even hallways.… Read the rest
Twiny Game: Unpolished
For Porpentine‘s Twiny Jam, I made a teeny tiny Twine game about painting your nails. The summary of the jam rules run as follows:
… Read the restMake a tiny Twine (300 words or less)!
Teaching Note: Theory in Technology and Humanities
This semester I’m teaching a “Special Problems” graduate course. “Special Problems” courses are effectively group independent studies on specific topics, and so this term I’ve been leading a very small class focused on reading theory.… Read the rest
The Pleasures of Peer Review
For better or worse, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to peer review lately. This comes on the tail end of co-editing three special issues of journals (one on “The Undead Arcade” for Reconstruction, one on “Teaching With and About Video Games” for Syllabus Journal, and one on “Games, Gamification, and Labour Politics” for The Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds).… Read the rest
From Eve to Evolution @ IIT
I was so delighted to get to see Kimberly Hamlin speak today at IIT as part of Women’s History Month. This is at least the third year that the Department of Humanities has hosted a lunch speaker to celebrate Women’s History Month, and it’s always so nice to see a mix of faculty, staff, and students attend.… Read the rest
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