In Medias Resolution

Hello Good People Everywhere! Episode 06 of the Games, Seriously Podcast is finally available for listening on iTunes and at the links below! What are those games from your childhood or past which have endured in your memory? What traits from those games made it so that you think of those games even today? Join us in this episode as we investigate those questions and also confess which video game character we'd all like to hang out with. Follow us at the following places: Mai

Hello Good People Everywhere! Episode 05 of the Games, Seriously Podcast is finally available for listening on iTunes and at the links below! Today we are having a look at 11 bit Studio's critically-acclaimed game entitled, "This War of Mine." Based loosely on the Bosnian conflict in 1992, "This War of Mine" allows players to experience the war not as a soldier, but rather as a civilian who is caught in the crossfire and must survive until a ceasefire is declared. How does th

Hello Good People Everywhere! Episode 04 of the Games, Seriously Podcast is finally available for listening on iTunes and at the links below! In this month's episode we examine Joseph Campbell's theory of the Monomyth, also commonly known as The Hero's Journey. While the Hero's Journey has been an interesting analytical lens to use when looking at static media such as Literature and Cinema, how does the Hero's Journey function in the interactive medium of the video game? Foll

Hello Good People Everywhere! Episode 03 of the Games, Seriously Podcast is finally available for listening on iTunes and at the links below! This time we are doing a deep dive discussion on Kairosoft's most excellent and highly-addictive mobile game hit, "Game Dev Story." We try our best to gain insight into why this game works and why we just can't put it down. (Playthrough screenshot album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130752571@N06/sets/72157648651893034/) Also

I'm ultra-stoked to finally be able to announce that the GAMES, SERIOUSLY Podcast which I have been working very hard with my compatriots (Web and Indie dev Rachel Bazelais, Professional Writer Jon Padua, and Games Researcher Thomas May III) is now finally available at: http://gamesseriously.com Furthermore, we even put out a quick promo video narrated by a certain unintelligible, masked villain: If games are something you believe in as a substantial medium and helpful for hu

I was recently interviewed by Alessandro Arena-DeRosa of The Rule of the Games, check out the article write up and/or full audio of the interview in the links below. Thanks Alessandro for being uber professional and keeping my tangents to a minimum! Article: http://theruleofthegames.tumblr.com/post/101312310722/the-frontier-of-video-game-research-an-interview-with Full audio via Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-rule-of-the-games/the-frontier-of-video-game-research-an-in

The Replaying Japan 2014: 2nd International Conference on Japan Game Studies took place at the University of Alberta, Edmonton from August 21st~23rd, and frankly, it was an insightful blast. In the above photo, I'm with the conference's first keynote speaker, Mr. Tomohiro Nihsikado, the original creator of Space Invaders. Back during the classic age of arcade games, game developers handled mostly everything by themselves--the asset creation, the programming (which was conduct

Heading to Canada tomorrow for the Replaying Japan 2014 conference to present my paper on Metal Gear Solid. I'll feel much more at ease after I finish my presentation. Until then, I am admittedly nervous. It reminds me of the first time I went abroad for a conference (shout out for Games and Meaningful Play at Michigan State University). Gonna be a long day of trains, buses, airplanes and taxis tomorrow. In other news, my indiegogo crowdfunding project is in its second day, b

Big news today: Announcing my first ever crowdfunding project on indiegogo! I humbly ask my friends to please share this campaign link with any of your friends who like and believe in games as a dynamic, significant medium. If you feel inclined to donate, you have my eternal thanks and high fives. It's the first time I'm trying this out, but I hope that I can meet my modest goal of $2000 USD in 40 days. The money will be used to fund my research trip to the continental US in

"Unfortunately, Narrative in modern video games at large has always been a rather contentious topic in Game Studies. On the one hand, some have argued that the narratives of games have sufficient depth to be explicated, or that games in and of themselves (and between their players) constitute a kind of meta-narrative. In response to this, others have equally argued that narrative is incidental to the game medium, and/or that a game narrative cannot be meaningfully understood