Click to download
The latest issue of Memory Insufficient is now available!
To automatically receive future issues of Memory Insufficient and calls for submissions, sign up below:
Memory Insufficient: Asian Histories in Games
Raph Koster seems to be achieving the impossible
These are some over-excited thoughts that I’ve written on an empty stomach with very little revision or proof-reading. I’m sure I’m wrong about a lot of things, but I just wanted to put this out because OMG FEELINGS
Call for Submissions: Asian Histories in Games
Memory Insufficient: Women in Games History
Last month I asked for submissions for a collection of essays on women’s history in games. That collection is now ready! Check it out.
I plan to make this a regular thing, at least for a little while. So to that end, do check out the call for submissions at the end of this latest issue. The next issue will be about Asian Histories in Games, and my goal is to get at least seven essays by May 15th.
To automatically receive future issues of Memory Insufficient and calls for submissions, sign up below:
I made a post-dating sim card game!
This weekend there were two game jams running at the same time: one was a challenge to make dating sims (mostly with Twine) and one was a QUILTBAG-themed jam which I think was proposed by the MIT game lab.
I kind of had separate ideas for each theme at first, then I realised I really ought to just make one idea work for both jams. So I was going to make a twine game about fruitlessly trying to find love in a bad relationship, but then I decided I didn’t have the emotional energy to put myself through that this week.
So instead, I made a card game about couples trying to plan their futures together. I wanted to make a dating sim that wasn’t about courtship, but about what happens after you end up in a long-term relationship with someone. I’m really interested in the difficult strategy at work in negotiating your life path when it’s become clear that you are going to share that life with another person with their own goals. I got my partner to help me test the game and design cards.
It still needs iteration for balance and extra chaos, but here’s the basic structure of the game I made yesterday:
Continue reading
Reading list
If I had a limitless budget to kit out a new games studio with lovely, physical books, what would I buy? I went through the secondary source list for my work-in-progress Dreamcast Worlds and picked out the most useful and thought-provoking entries. Continue reading
Call for submissions on women’s history in games
This year’s Women’s History Month theme is ”Women inspiring innovation through imagination.” It aims to shed light on women’s contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Women have often been shut out of histories of science and technology, and this carries through into the way that histories of video games are told.
I’m hoping to put together a nice pdf collection of articles at the end of the month that celebrate the history of women as innovators in the video games industry. This can include biographical pieces about the achievements of individual women, memoirs from women looking back over their own personal histories in the industry, social histories of women in games, and many more.
If you’ve got something that you think would fit the bill, please email it to me by 20th March: rupa.zero@gmail.com
Shenmue: Historical accuracy as nostalgic fantasy
Featured in February’s Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table.
This is a work-in-progress extract from my crowd-funded book Dreamcast Worlds. I’ve selected a section that explores photorealism, deliberately moving away from technologically determinist arguments about how better console technology “allows” games to become “more expressive” (yes Sony I’m glaring daggers at you after that pseudo-history you just had to shoehorn into the PS4 presentation) and instead looking at accuracy as a design question: what does it mean for a game to be like a photograph?
Accuracy
The high level of historical details in Shenmue’s recreation of 1986 Yokosuka is as much about setting an emotional tone as is it about establishing accuracy. For one thing, they are not consistently accurate. The Sega Saturn in Ryo’s home is anachronistic – set in 1986, but Saturn released in 1990s. Nevertheless, a slavish devotion to accuracy informed work on all areas of the game, possibly in spite of calls for restraint from higher-ups at Sega. Continue reading
Voting in the GDC choice awards
Last week I was absolutely over the moon to be invited to vote for the winners of the GDC choice awards. While making my votes in the different categories, I realised that a lot of the thoughts I have about games that influenced by decisions had never really been written down anywhere.
Announcement: Manga girl seeks herbivore boy
Great news! My undergraduate dissertation, which I wrote in 2010, is going to be published in a book. Manga Girl Seeks Herbivore Boy is a collection of four dissertations on gender, all written by Japanese Studies undergrads at Cambridge in the past couple of years.
My own chapter in this book is about how fatherhood is portrayed in the textbooks they use for moral education classes in Japanese schools. The thing I’m most proud of in my contribution to this book is the methodology; I built on an ethnographic technique called Domain Analysis to visually map out the semantic fields of words relating to the father-child relationship.
Nevertheless, I find the topics covered by the other contributions to this book far more interesting. They cover transgender law, changing masculinities among young men, and manga. The book will be published on 23rd February, but it’s available for pre-order from a number of places. Profits go to the faculty. See the announcement here
