Play’s Republic

Digital playgrounds like the ones mentioned here are incredibly popular with the kids these days. Neopets and the Cartoon Network are also sites that are incredibly popular. The catch with this are the masses of commercial messages being targeted at children through these tools. It’s particularly concerning considering how susceptible children are to advertising messages. […]

[Read more →]

Japanese Marketers Target Gamer Girls, Moms
By Chris Kohler
“Initially taken off guard, Japan’s game makers are now in the grip of girl fever — scrambling to market directly to women gamers who were once ignored.”
Part of what I find interesting about this is that many of the games described might be placed in the rather infamous […]

[Read more →]

More Mario references.

[Read more →]

Super Mario Frustration
(Not safe for work, due to heavy, constantly, unceasing profanity.)
I highly enjoyed this. Mostly because its the ultimate example of what happens to me pretty much every time I’ve tried to play a video game that wasn’t tetris. (Disclosure: I think the games I was attempting to play were typically Mario related games, […]

[Read more →]

Digital Games versus Video Games…
Is there a difference in terms? A wrong or right one? What do people think?
For my final, I think I’m essentially arguing for an academic focus on “digital play” instead of “digital games”, but I want to make sure I’m using the terms properly. It seems like people are calling them […]

[Read more →]

After looking at sexuality and video games, I got a little curious about what conservative religious groups are doing with video games. I imagine there’s some controversy over material appropriateness etc, but I also imagine that there are several conservative religious organizations creating their own material.
In God in the Console (2003), Tom Loftus argues that […]

[Read more →]

Salon has an interesting article up at the moment on the representation of multiple sexualities in video games. Apparently there’s been quite a bit of internal debate on whether to allow players of an upcoming Lord of the Rings game the option for same sex marriage. It seems like much of the debate was over […]

[Read more →]

Well, I’m sure you all already knew that Abhishek and Aishwarya tied the knot this past Friday, but in case you didn’t, consider yourself informed.
The point here is that I spent some time on YouTube yesterday watching Bollywood videos. So I’m sitting there, watching a Abhishek’s performance1 from the Zee Cine Awards2 this year, and […]

[Read more →]

I’m currently in danger of being caught talking typing about others while they’re sitting behind me at a coffeeshop, but it seems an appropriate topic for the blog.
Never let it be said that playing video games is a completely unsociable activity. There is a regular gathering of gentleman here at Murky who play WoW […]

[Read more →]