The Languages of Video Games

Willingness to Fail and Gaga Feminism

In the final chapter of Aubrey Anable’s book, Playing With Feelings, entitled “Games to Fail With,” she discusses how our modern conception of failure is viewed as something for us to be ashamed of. In the fashion of Marxist critics she writes, “In the American…

Talking Casual Games and Gender

In Aubrey Anable’s book, Playing With Feelings, she discusses the relationship that casual games have with gender. By their very name casual games are written off as not serious games. As games that aren’t for “real gamers.” This begs the question of who a real gamer is? In…

Response to Jeffrey Goldsmith Article

According to Jeffrey Goldsmith Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov. As a Russian AI man, he had designed games for fun and suddenly arrived to the idea for the game known as Tetris. A researcher discovered that on higher levels of Tetris the brains of the…

Response to “This Is Your Brain on Tetris”

People becoming addicted to Tetris is a common enough occurrence to where it’s turned into a well-known joke. In the article “This Is Your Brain on Tetris,” the writer tells of their own experience getting sucked into Tetris and outlines the explanation…

Response to Jeffrey Goldsmith’s “This is Your Brain on Tetris”

First of all, absolutely hilarious that the designer of Tetris couldn’t finish making it because he couldn’t stop playing the prototype. Could you imagine knowing that you’ve got something that amazing and you can’t yet give it to the world because of the very…

Playing With Feeling: Introduction

What has bothered me since the first day we started discussing video games was the fact that the discipline of video game studies seemed to be divided on core issues, like whether or not to count games as art, whether to focus on the narrative aspects or keep to the…

Recap of “By your Bootstraps”

Anna Anthropy takes a light-hearted approach in her ten-step guide to starting a video game. She cites that she leaves her suggestions abstract as to not be a literal step by step guide, but more a walkthrough. Her first piece of advice is for us to find a platform we are…

Response to Rise of the Videogame Zinesters by Anna Anthropy (Chpt. 7)

This chapter in this book is integral to what we are currently attempting in our class. Right out of the gate Anna Anthropy puts your mind at rest about what a daunting task creating a video game can seem…

I Have No Words & I Must Describe Something

When someone asks me what a new game is like, odds are the first thing I’ll tell…