The game of chess as we know it in Western society today is vastly different from the game as it was used and valued in Medieval European culture. Today chess is ultimately reflected in two principal ways; 1] a simple form of leisure, a game that can be utilized to distract oneself from the mundane…

The way in which the game of chess was able to so easily immerse itself into Medieval European society between 1100 and 1500 C.E. has fascinated historians for many years. In his anthology Chess in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, Daniel O’Sullivan explores the relationship chess had with European culture during the Middle…

As an avid lover of indie video games, I decided to write a film review on a documentary I came across called “Indie Games: The Movie.” The film centers around the creation process of several indie video games; Super Meat Boy, Fez, and Braid. As noted in the film, Braid has been regarded as not…

For this weeks short take, I wanted to talk about my favorite type of video game –or actually my favorite type of game in general– puzzle games. I find puzzle games to be a really interesting type of game, one because they can be really difficult to figure out. Portal was the first puzzle video…

Teamwork has always been one of the most important aspects of gameplay. The line between a group of people playing a professional sport, or trying to complete an intense raid in World of Warcraft is relatively fine. As someone who has played many sports, but has never played in a massively multiplayer game online, I…

So, the first thing that came to my mind while jumping into this book was, “what in the hell is this chick talking about?” As a person who has never played WOW, or for that matter any MMO video game ever, it is difficult to understand the rhetoric of what the author is saying. It’s…

I assume we have all experienced it. That feeling you get when you fail a level in a video game, when you lose a game in sports, only to continue to torture yourself and keep trying until you win. In Juul’s book The Art of Failure he scrutinizes this paradox in video games. He states,…

Techno-nationalism and Creative Industries

Edgerton’s book delivers a great historical analysis of technology throughout the 20th century. His primary argument seems to be the differentiation of invention and implementation, to which he argues are not one in the same, but complementary components of each other. I like how he argues that, “to become widely used, a thing does not…

I find it really interesting how games are used as a display of social and political functions of a State. It is also interesting how the changing nature of the Chinese economy and political system in the 1980s influenced how China was able to compete both on a national and international level. I thought the…