Where to begin reviewing great work in game studies? For the listeners, it’s Game Studies Study Buddies. For the watchers–for the win–it has to be the video essays of Jacob Geller.
The Grasshopper and Cricket – Podcast Review: Game Studies Study Buddies
The poetry of earth is ceasing never. Same goes for the discourse of games. It’s never dead. Long may it live! The fun of playing and thinking, writing and reading about video games; the critiques on more general topics opened up thereby; the further discussion that in turn entails… chef’s kiss. Influential texts in game studies, promising new releases, and wild cards–and the meta-discourse. The nitty-gritty, the airy-fairy. Philosophical presuppositions. Utopian politics and metaphysical claims. The poetry of earth and the poverty of spirit–it’s all there in your podcast feed with Games Studies Study Buddies, which releases new episodes monthly.
As Jacotot noted long ago, but not so long ago as Plato, everything is in everything. But let’s not just quote dead white men. Let’s break the canon open and dismantle this. I mean, Universal Teaching: Mother Tongue and Meno are pretty good, but maybe Lauren Hill says it best in her Miseducation:
After winter must come spring
Everything is everything
Long-awaited summer of classics, let me know what your vibe is.
Continue reading “The Grasshopper and Cricket – Podcast Review: Game Studies Study Buddies”Summer of Psychonauts
The end of the school year. Remember how much that used to mean? Long days with no demands, the good times rolling like a Katamari, freedom stretching ahead to the horizon.
It means nothing to us now–except for those of us still in some way involved in school. Which of course we are, this being Video Game Academy!
Continue reading “Summer of Psychonauts”The Loneliness of Loving Lost Kingdoms
After a year of social distancing, I suspect we need to increase the number of words we have for being alone. I think of the old cliché about Eskimoes having many different words for snow – a phenomenon they are especially familiar with. Why, then, are we restricted to only a few words for spending time without other people?
Continue reading “The Loneliness of Loving Lost Kingdoms”Facing the Fear; Building the Future: Lobotomy Corporation and Processing Horror
Content Warning: Horror scenes/art, violence, depression/despair, cosmic horror, Nietzsche as interpreted by teenage boys, political stupidity (esp. capitol riots)
A Tribute to Games I Can’t Play
In January of 2016, I was living with my wife in our Pennsylvania apartment. I was in my third year of classes at Baptist Bible Seminary, but I’d hit a roadblock. I had borrowed as much as the government was willing to lend me, and I was no longer able to afford to take classes full time. In the fall I’d dropped from a full load of four-to-five classes per semester, to only one. I had started substitute teaching at a local private school to help make ends meet.
Then, one day my wife came home from work early and announced that she had just been laid off. The college where she had worked for five or six years had mismanaged its finances and was facing major changes going forward, starting by laying off dozens of staff members, including her.
I turned off the game I was playing, and haven’t ever turned it on again.
Continue reading “Facing the Fear; Building the Future: Lobotomy Corporation and Processing Horror”
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