Tag Archive for video games

| February 16, 2013
16 comments

Games Imitating Life: Rape Culture in MMORPGs?

Contrary to the Kotaku article, no one was accused of rape in game at any point, and that is not the point of this blog post. Any comment that suggests that someone was accused of rape, or attempted rape, will not be approved.

 

A curious event happened to me recently while roleplaying, and I’ll use direct quotes whenever appropriate. For those of you not familiar, I’ll explain things. Roleplaying, being the act of taking on the role of a character that’s not yourself, is traditionally done through tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. With the rise in popularity of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) it’s taken on a different turn in the online space with people playing out scenes as their avatars (their usually three-dimensional computer generated character) in an online world.

These days I play Guild Wars 2 (GW2), a recent and fairly popular MMORPG set in the fantasy world of Tyria. Read more

Category: Culture, Media, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| February 8, 2013
No comments

Video Games and Violence: The Connection

Video games contribute to violence.

That’s my contention, though I can almost guarantee not in the way you think I mean it. Read more

Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| January 7, 2013
6 comments

Seduce Me

Seduce Me is a new adult interactive / erotic strategy game. Initially I, and many others, heard about it when Steam pulled it from the greenlight section due to its adult content. The issue is, and continues to be that sexuality is treated as more damaging than violent media, despite the obviousness that violence is destructive and sex can be something tender and warm.

Instantly I wanted to know more, and I preordered it as soon as it was available.

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Category: Media | Tags: , , , ,
| December 17, 2012
One comment

Normalizing and Desexualizing Kinks

People’s kinks are varied and diverse, and often trail into realms that they’re not interested in or comfortable with in real life. Porn, and other sexual outlets, allow us to explore these things with minimal impact on our day to day life.

However there’s certain people who crave for 24/7 lifestyle fantasies that sometimes involve not all partners realizing the full extent of what it is. While browsing on FetLife the other day, I stumbled across a group that was dedicated to one woman’s fantasy of being sexually harassed in an massively multiplayer online game (MMO or MMORPG).

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Category: Culture | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| July 2, 2012
3 comments

Roleplay in MMOs

I began roleplaying in World of Warcraft in 2006, and that has been my sole venue for roleplay throughout most of these last five years, with brief sojourns in other games – Aion, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online, Borderlands. It was only recently, since quitting WoW, that I’ve adventured into a new territory.

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Category: Media | Tags: , ,
| June 25, 2012
One comment

Fluid Sexuality in Main Characters

Video games often struggle with same sex relationships. They seem to feel that the only way to have same sex relationships is to make them a big, showy event, or to not have them at all.

There are a variety of other video games that have come out recently that feature characters that are fluid in their sexuality and allow the player to ‘project’ a sexuality onto the character. They don’t tell you that you have to play a straight male or a lesbian female – you are whoever you want to be. Sure, not all games can have this level of customization, and many opt to not even have romance or sexuality be touched on at all, but when romance and sex is an option, I enjoy it not being heteronormative.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , ,
| May 21, 2012
One comment

Mental Illness in Gaming Communities

One thing I’ve noticed over my years of being online, and my years of gaming, its that a lot of people suffer in silence from mental illness. It’s often said that many people, when online, are more willing and able to become the person they wish they could be. They become the person they hide during their day to day life.

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Category: Personal | Tags: ,
| April 20, 2012
One comment

Searching for Opinions

I’ve read a few articles lately that talk about how there are some men out there that look for a woman’s opinion before feeling okay about something. Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland had an article about how she’s not just a woman, but a person too. It’s a valid concern, as women are seen as a minority in the business and thus assumed to have different–and specific–views and concerns on various issues, which are often times true.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , ,
| April 6, 2012
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What is Art

As a young adult, I think most of us who have seriously played video games boggle at the idea that they aren’t art. It’s something we take for granted – an obvious truth. However, there are still people who are debating that something so thought-provoking could be art.

I want to boil down the different forms of media that video games contain – and explain how they take it further.

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Category: Media | Tags: , , , , , ,
| April 1, 2012
No comments

Blog Roundup

I’ve been so busy this past few weeks. My writing partner has damaged his wrists, so we’ve been taking the time to do things-not-on-computer. Not to mention I’ve been trying to haul ass editing… 4 or 5 different things to publish.

As well, I did a guest post at Ms Behaved on Relationships and the Success and Beauty myths in heterosexual relationships, so go check that out!

Onto the awesome roundup! There was a lot of stuff I found this week!

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Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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