Let's see if this post makes it through the spam filters! Sluts With Consoles is a brilliant two-hander. Girly-twirly pick-me Player One and Gothy just-one-of-the-boys Player Two are locked in mortal - and emotional - combat. They represent the duality of the female gaming experience. Is it better to be feminine or feminist? Is gaming an escape from the cliques of teenage oppression, or just…
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I have never felt less like a human being than while reading this book. I don't mind video-games, I find them mildly diverting. I've never gotten in to massively multiplayer online games (unless you count Twitter). I just don't see what's appealing about them. Why would I want a bunch of teenagers screaming racial slurs at me when I'm trying to relax? The book says "reality is broken" - but it…
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The past is another country to which you can never return. It is a million years ago, and my brother and I have just spent all of our pocket money (and a good deal of next year's) on a state-of-the-art PENTIUM 75 desktop. With 200MB of hard drive space, and more RAM than we'd ever seen (8MB), it was a beast. We chose it because it came with a CD-ROM Drive. Sure, we told mum and dad that the…
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I have a limited amount of time on this planet. I also have a limited amount of money to spend. Therefore, like any Homo Economicus, I have a rational desire to get the most value for money for my time-wasting distractions. So, after months of memes, I bought Untitled Goose Game on the Nintendo Switch to play over the Xmas break. I baulked at the price - £18 - but figured since everyone else on …
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This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. Sadly, most of the screenshots have fallen down the memory hole. So use your imagination. We'd launched Drive To Improve which put a "blackbox" in drivers' cars and gamified their safe driving. I’ve recently taken part in the DriveToImprove Beta. My car now has a small device installed in it, which measures my d…
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(This post started out life as a comment to Robert Brook's Not Everything Is a Game post.) I remember when I stopped beating my wife. I used to beat her regularly without ever wondering why. Without really considering how it made her feel, the effect on our relationship or the effect it had on me. Beating her was just something I did. I didn't take any particular joy in it. I wasn't…
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