15 April 2019 minecraft

Let's Play Germinal Minecraft (with Joachim)

Joachim and I played Minecraft together and had some meandering conversations about Minecraft, the modding culture, the history of the server, and the inherent colonial nature of these games.

12 April 2019 biweekly round-up

Brief Assortment of Interesting Things — 12th of April 2019

Here's the round-up from between the 30th of March and the 12th of April, 2019.

21 March 2019 Games

Why Skyrim Remains My Favourite Place To Get Lost In

I realised when I was thinking about the videogames I love that I've written about, that I had never actually written about Skyrim, and I decided to try. So here are some of the reasons Skyrim, 8+ years after it launched, remains my favourite game to escape into.

16 February 2019 dungeons and dragons

Dungeon Mastering For The First Time

I've started Game Mastering a Star Wars table-top RPG set in the Old Republic/pre-Mandalorian Wars era, and it's one of my favourite things right now.

15 February 2019 biweekly round-up

Brief assortment of interesting stuff — 15th of February 2019

This week, let's look at a comic book collection of nonbinary fairy tales, a ritual on destroying your books to make art, a book that shows how feminism became a marketplace buzzword, and more...

15 February 2019 biweekly round-up

Assortiment bref de trucs intéressants — 15 février 2019

Cette semaine, on regarde un recueil de bandes dessinées sur des contes de fées nonbinaires, un jeu pour détruire tes livres pour en faire de l'art, un livre sur comment le féminisme est devenu un buzzword du marché privé, et encore plus!

5 October 2018 Games

Life Is Strange 2: Episode 1 "Roads" Play-through notes

Here are some quick n' dirty notes on the first episode of Life Is Strange 2 I'm putting here to refer back to later.

17 October 2017 Twine

Notes on my presentation on Twine anti-games for the Groupe Féministe Vidéoludique

Version française de l’article est ici. I was invited to speak on October the 11th by the Groupe Féministe Vidéoludique at Université de Montréal on Twine games and feminist, queer, and transgender

17 October 2017 Games

Notes sur ma présentation sur les anti-jeux Twine pour le Groupe Féministe Vidéoludique

Read the English version of this post here. Note: comme j’ai remarqué sur Twitter l’autre jour, j’utilise des pronoms et des accords au masculin dans ce texte quand je me

23 May 2017 Games

A Tale of Two Dominique Pamplemousses

On a bright, late April day, Squinky walked up to the third floor of a typical Plateau triplex and rang the bell. I put on a kettle and made a pot of jasmine

28 March 2017 Games

The Cyborg and Colonization: Mass Effect Andromeda Play-through Notes

Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in ’t! The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1, 188-191 One of my

31 December 2016 Games

End of Year Review 2016

For many, many people around the world, 2016 will be remembered as the year famous baby-boomers dropped like flies. It will also be remembered, I think, as the year the world watched with

21 August 2016 minecraft

Ephemeral landscapes and being in a Minecraft documentary webseries

Civilizations are born and die within Minecraft. —William Brownridge On my Linkedin, one of my top profile bylines is "Minecraft Phenomenologist." I've worked on several projects in Minecraft over the years,

3 May 2016 Games

The gentleman farmer, labour and land: ecocritical possibilities in Stardew Valley

In my first post about Stardew Valley, I wrote about the romanticization of agriculture and rural life, dumpster diving, as well as what kind of gameplay the game encourages in its players. In this post I'll expand on some of that, as well as explore the game's treatment of labour and the land.

11 April 2016 Games

Dumpster diving and pickling pumpkins: ecocritical possibilities in Stardew Valley

My first post on the ecocritical possibilities in the video game Stardew Valley.

31 March 2016 commentary

The apolitical fallacy

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.—Rebecca Solnit I've been hearing the

28 January 2016 Games

Building an inventory in Twine 2 with the built-in Harlowe macros

If you're looking for an inventory system in Twine 2's default Harlowe Story Format, I have here a fairly simple system which I wrote for my incomplete Myst Jam twine game.

3 December 2015 philosophy

Today I livetweeted a talk by Pippin Barr

Storified for convenience. I think. Because there are many tweets, click the big Read Next Page button when you reach the end. Update May 2018: Storify shut down. I exported the tweets, but

3 August 2015 Games

A Short Review: Conversations We Have In My Head

Pronouns, sexual attraction, bodies, parental acceptance, privilege and passing, these are some of the topics in the conversation between Quark and Lex in the videogame Conversations We Have In My Head by Squinky.

3 August 2015 Games

A Short Review: Bloom

Spoilers, and perhaps rampant speculation, ahead. If you have not played Bloom I highly recommend you go play it right now first. Bloom by Caelyn Sandel is a serial fiction about a transwoman

24 March 2015 minecraft

Presentation Notes on Big Fried Chicken Company

On February 13th, 2015, at Concordia University, I presented my research working on The Big Fried Chicken Company in Minecraft for the Amplab at The Building Blocks of Life: A Minecraft Colloquium (see

2 March 2015 Games

Eat Long, and Prosper

Spock is definitely one of my best friends. When I put on those ears, it's not like just another day. When I become Spock, that day becomes something special. - Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

22 January 2015 Games

Using Twine 1.4.2 As A Prototyping Tool for Unity3d

I have been using Twine 1.4.2 almost exclusively since it was released, and have not had time to properly explore Twine 2. As such, this article is concerned with using 1.

11 November 2014 Games

#GAMERella and building Outsider

This past weekend I was a participant in GAMERella, a game jam aimed at women and beginners, whose mission is to foster a safer space where game jamming can happen in a fun,

19 November 2013 Games

Gone Home

I am often intensely homesick for places I’ve never been, ages I’ve never lived, and things I’ve never seen. On the other hand, I’m almost never homesick for anything