"Where is all the good writing about games?"
…to those basic tenets.
“Perhaps the most damning thing about Cyberpunk 2077, a game that wants so desperately to be bright and loud and cool, is that it is uninspiring. Whereas other games might use their systems to posit new ideas about history, gender, or humanism, ideas…
…in writing and vocal work. And in a genre where many games that feature sexuality swim in the dark creepy end of the pool, HuniePop is refreshingly light and positive about the sex (implied, shown or heard) within it.”
Somebody set us up the. . . antiquated nuclear reactor.
…everybody be cool, this is a robbery! by Skullkid18
The format of a list, regardless of its purpose, can also tell its own stories. This set of entries tells a story as a list of steps, or items, … Exploring Narrative
…is a tale of lesbian romance and coming out | Eurogamer.net Lottie Lynn reflects on A Summer’s End search for the authentic self, and chats with the game’s developers about the vital need for Asian LGBTQIA+ representation.
“The seductive fascination vampires such as Carmilla, the Deneuve-Bowie-Sarandon sex hydra, and our very own Lady Dimitrescu exert on audiences and protagonists…
…Temple’s new Graduate Certificate in Cultural Analytics. Shaw is author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (winner of the 2016 International Communication Association’s Popular Communications Division’s Book Award). She has co-edited three anthologies: Queer Game Studies (2017, University of Minnesota Press), Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence (2017, Routledge), and Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (2018, Peter Lang). She is also the founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive and co-curator of Rainbow Arcade, the world’s first exhibit of LGBTQ game history (Dec 2018-May 2019 in Berlin, Germany). From 2011 to 2015 she was…
…oasis of LGBTQ+ representation in an otherwise very heteronormative media landscape.
“Sure, Bonehilda, cowplants and vampires weren’t real, but having a career, cooking mac-and-cheese and paying bills were. Maybe queer sex and LGBTQ+ relationships were too?” Two meditations this week on games that pull us in, for better and for worse, amid their wider contexts.
Engrossing Play
…sex within containment. From the literal confines of a ship far off from human civilization to the unique challenges of basing a visual novel on more linear source material, Eclipse balances the realities that shape all romance: uncontrollable circumstances and the free will to navigate them.”
Here we’ve got two breakdowns of the culture and context which inform in-game art assets.
…never let go | Polygon Kazuma Hashimoto unpacks the origins and influences of Tetsuya Nomura’s post-millennial zipcore drip.
“As a trans woman who’s spent most of her life closeted, I’ve found HR Giger’s work viscerally communicates an ambience of doomed sex, sexuality, and physical forms, a general sense of unease and confusion that resonates with how I’ve seen the world for most of my life. His images provide meditative spaces that are much…
…over our brains and our social media feeds in 2022.
The latest game from Sam Barlow is another database tale about sex and identity.
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