Experiencing Racial Identities: Passing in Assassin's Creed: Liberation

Thoughts on a game that I sadly will likely not get a chance to play (rooting for an eventual 360 port, though).

Admittedly, as one poster suggests, I may be misunderstanding the relationship between the persona mechanic in Liberation and its signification regarding Aveline's mixed racial heritage, but I still think that there is something potentially interesting about the way the game might represent putting on and taking off identities and the experience of doing so.

Experiencing Racial Identities: Passing in Assassin's Creed: Liberation

Moving Pixels Podcast: Spaceships and Sadism, The Universe of FTL

I have been speaking of my admiration for FTL for the past few weeks in various articles at PopMatters, so it was good to get the opportunity to get some additional opinions.

I did find myself in the role of the apologist for the game, though, in this week's podcast, as Rick and Nick did not, perhaps, share my enthusiasm for the brutally difficult grind that is FTL.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Spaceships and Sadism, The Universe of FTL

Paying Too Often for Sex in Video Games

I didn't quite expect to see this article go up so quickly at PopMatters. I wrote it only a couple of nights ago, though some of its content has been bubbling about in my brain since my recent playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.

The prostitute has become almost an expected feature in gaming, especially in the open world game, and I wanted to consider how games present this kind of character as opposed to the manner in which such figures of vice and salaciousness appear in other storytelling media.

Paying Too Often for Sex in Video Games

Daddy's Little Gamer, Daddy's Little Murderer

Inspired by a recent discussion at Gamers With Jobs about how to introduce your kids (especially those that haven't played a whole lot of games) to video games, I thought I'd talk a bit about turning my 13-year-old into a little murderer.

Daddy's Little Gamer, Daddy's Little Murderer

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Paths Not Taken in The Walking Dead

Jorge Albor of the Experience Points podcast was kind enough to join Nick and I to discuss the latest episode of The Walking Dead.

I was excited that he was along for the ride as he has written some good stuff on the series and especially about this episode's surprising turn away from leaving every important decision in the protagonist and player's hands.

Moving Pixels Podcast: The Paths Not Taken in The Walking Dead

Self Actualization and the Mini-Roguelike

So, I remain focused on my current obsession, what I have lately come to call the mini-roguelike. The Binding of Isaac and FTL as shortened forms of the consequential formula of the roguelike are games that I seem to spend more hours with of late than "longer titles."

This time up, though, my interest is in how unscripted and more choice-driven these games might be in contrast to other titles. In particular, I find contrasting Bioshock's deterministic view of gaming experiences with what I am thinking of as more self actualizing games, the mini-roguelikes, to be somewhat interesting.

Self Actualization and the Mini-Roguelike