Gaming the System

1982 I begin on the shaggy tan carpet of my living room in front of a wood paneled television flickering the image of a game I later find out is called Missile Command. My hands grip the rubber of the joystick and click it violently left and right, smashing the big concave red buttons in [...]

Recently, a friend of mine joined Twitter and the first direct message he sent me was a simple question: “Why are all the people posting on Twitter trends black?” It was an intentionally exaggerated but honest and innocent question and one I had been thinking about a lot lately. In the past few months, I had [...]

Last week I attended the Games, Learning, and Society conference.  I also presented a talk there on a panel entitled “Representations of Self and Other in Games” which was a pleasure because it was one of the few explicitly political panels at the conference. Given the educational focus of the conference and the large attendance [...]