At The_Critical_Is_ Simulation, Death vs. Desynchronization, and Historical Trauma “But even within this repetition, the game does not let us forget that nothing we are experiencing is “real”–the human player is not only one step removed from the “real event”, the step constituted by the television and game console, but is about four steps removed from what the game considers… Read more →
Tag: gaming
Do You Know What You’re Playing?
Do you know what you’re playing? A simple enough question you might ask, one that I would normally squint at and hesitantly say “Yes” to as I turn on the console to play whatever game I’m working on. These days, that game is Assassin’s Creed, specifically Liberation, a PSP-Vita turned PS3 spinoff of the main series. The historical-action-stealth video game… Read more →
GUEST POST: Constructions of Gamer Identity in Popular Television
Editor’s note: We’re trying a new experiment here at The_Critical_Is: guest posts. Today’s guest post is by Amalia Charles, a writer out of Massachusetts. Misogyny and abhorrence of the non-normative in online gaming communities is not a rare occurrence. I am a self-identified female gamer, who has been harassed, mocked, alongside having her sexuality and gender questioned by multitudes of male voices… Read more →
An Exercise in Thought and Feeling, or a Flood of Questions
At the moment, I’m trying to tease out a set of questions that have been stewing since I came across a string of video games about depression. Three games in particular have largely informed my thinking on the matter. They are Elude, Sparx, and Depression Quest. To unpack and explain the context out of which these questions arise, I want… Read more →
The_Critical_Is Roundup
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It’s a Man’s World: Trans-Humanism, Women, and the Myth of Godliness
Of recent, I’ve been fascinated with game consoles. Not, as one would imagine, in a comparative manner, where I debate the merits and follies of the PS4 and the Xbox One (PS4 all the way, baby!) Rather, I’ve been fascinated with game console as an idea, as a space of liminality. How do we think of the console as a critical tool,… Read more →