games

In this column, Nadika Nadja explores the world of gaming and how it opened up realms of experience for her. Second Life, an enormous immersive multiplayer game, and many other similar environments on the internet, have been revelatory and powerful spaces for people to discover aspects of themselves, particularly in terms of gender and sexuality. From shame and fear, to play and sex, and to…

Games on mobile phones are often a disregarded area of study, because it is relatively cheap and less glamorous than video games. But global consumer spending on mobile gaming in 2015 was estimated to be worth 34.8 billion dollars, and there have been several reports talking about how India is on the ‘verge of a mobile gaming boom’. What the numbers often fail to mention is that a large chunk of…

The thing about gaming is you can’t quite explain the immersiveness of it to non-gamers. I speak not about mindless arcade games you play to pass the time (although I think time-passing on a screen is totally legit. Play on, candy crushers). I mean multiplayer Real Time Strategy (RTS) games with tens of thousands of players competing for glory.

If there’s anything I love with a passion, it’s kicking serious ass. Which is probably why, as an 8 year old, Dangerous Dave inspired equal amounts of angst and satisfaction in me. In this simple 8-bit videogame, I overcame obstacles and struggled through levels, overusing my jetpack privileges and never quite pressing the Alt-key fast enough. Okay, maybe I wasn’t a particularly good player, but…

DJ's choice is a weekly section by GenderIT.org, exploring the depths of the web to provide you once a week with a top 5 of creative, interesting and informative pieces and resources on gender and ICTs. Delight yourself with this selection of “sparks”: Good readings, interesting links, videos, pictures, cool authors to point to, amazing tools, and much more. Send us interesting material to…

For those of you that don't know the appalling vitriol that Anita Sarkeesian has been subject to, you can read a summary of it here. It's worrying that there are people out there who are capable of perpetrating this campaign of hatred. But what's more worrying is that we don't seem to know what to do…