Written by Melissa Click (University of Missouri) and Nina B. Huntemann (Suffolk University) We met in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1995 and soon formed the unexplainable but undeniable bond of best friendship. Melissa left for Columbia, Missouri in 2002 and Nina left a year later for Boston. Both of us [...]
On Monday night I attended a Modern Warfare 3 launch party at a national video game retailer. I was particularly pleased with the diversity of the crowd. I was not the only lady in the house! I spoke with students, an investment banker, a librarian, a building manager, moms, dads, kids, etc. As Kotaku readers [...]
Playtesters play videogames that are unstable, unbalanced and riddled with broken code. Their labor is also unstable in that playtesters are frequently short-term contract workers, unpaid volunteers, or “family and friends.” And yet, from these unstable labor and play environments, testing is “the backbone of software development” (Petro Piaseckyj, Managing Producer, Sony). Playtesting is recommended as [...]
I’m not one to collect things (except for concert ticket stubs), but I do have a fondness for vintage hobby books. As a child I liked to make things. Predictably, I made clothes for my Barbie dolls and jewelry for my friends and family, but I also made computer programs in BASIC on my Dad’s [...]
As a games studies scholar, I risk my gamer credibility to admit that I have never played a single Zelda title. Until I acquired a Wii, my Nintendo consoles were dedicated Mario and Metroid machines. This wouldn’t be a significant gap in my gaming resume if The Legend of Zelda series, particularly Ocarina of Time, [...]
Books
Distractions
watching
game of thrones / hbo
listening
philharmonics / agnes obel
playing
bioshock: infinite / ps3
reading
ready player one / ernest clineTwitter Feed
