At the end of the twentieth century, RE/Search published three volumes dedicated to the “Incredibly Strange.” Looking a cinema and music, these were forays into the unconventional and unpopular, the avant-garde and in... more abstractAt the end of the twentieth century, RE/Search published three volumes dedicated to the “Incredibly Strange.” Looking a cinema and music, these were forays into the unconventional and unpopular, the avant-garde and in-bad-taste, outsider and oppositional cultural artefacts. This project produced an archeology of marginal media with decidedly countercultural sentiment which has been influential in intellectual attempts to comprehend weird in culture; from Washburn & Demo’s (2013) “Bad Music” anthology and Hoberman and Rosenbaum (2009) adventures in “Midnight Movie” culture to Jeffrey Sconce’s (1995) conception of the “paracinema” community. Chris Charla has recently revived the strange, this time looking specifically at games with a series of zines (a punky format of which RE/Search would most certainly approve) called Incredibly Strange Games. Here the tone is softer and more celebratory, lovingly exhibiting the unusual and unplayed. Inspired by the ethos of the “incredibly strange” and a personal penchant for shovelware, shitty games (kusoge), the Simple Series by 505 and neo-situationist numbers like the LaLaLand games, this “Seriously Weird Edition” seeks to take weird seriously. A venture in five parts, this collection brings together a variety of strange tales of videogames demonstrating that the weird can be wonderful and, of course, well played.

Video Games and The Weird

Video Games, Trash, Kitsch, Camp, and Trash Film, Trash Culture, and KUSO culture

Psychoanalysis, Death, and Video Games

Dear Ada is a Feminists in Games supported project which invites members of the videogame community to submit letters on the subject of gender and games. Letter writing as part of a long feminist tradition of life wri... more abstractDear Ada is a Feminists in Games supported project which invites members of the videogame community to submit letters on the subject of gender and games. Letter writing as part of a long feminist tradition of life writing is chronicled by Margaretta Jolly in In Love and Struggle, which spans generations of writers including letters between mothers and daughters, queer love letters, political movements and letters after the advent of email. This article reflects on the Dear Ada letters and how the project is situated within a larger feminist epistolary history.

Video Games, Feminism, Letters, and Epistolary research

Publication Date: 2008

Publication Name: Journal of Media Practice

The contemporary consumer aesthetic of 'cute' has a dark history, seeped in international politics and negatively gendered connotations. Yet, we are sold cute in a variety of forms as positive 'play'. This talk will ... more abstract The contemporary consumer aesthetic of 'cute' has a dark history, seeped in international politics and negatively gendered connotations. Yet, we are sold cute in a variety of forms as positive 'play'. This talk will focus on the culture of cute games and electronic toys in the context of gender and history to discuss what types of games are being played with cute objects on cultural and personal levels.

Video Games, Kawaii, Cuteness, and Culture of Cuteness

クソゲー (kusoge) means “shit game”. This category of games while largely dismissed by popular criticism as well as players developed a substantial following at the turn of the millennium. The nature of the appreciation o... more abstractクソゲー (kusoge) means “shit game”. This category of games while largely dismissed by popular criticism as well as players developed a substantial following at the turn of the millennium. The nature of the appreciation of bad games is a combination of camp taste and avant-garde sensibility, however, the attitude of kusoge fandom has been commonly misinterpreted as ironic, or bad, humour. This misunderstanding became influential in the establishment of a widely popular online participatory culture movement – kuso culture. This paper consists of three sections: the first charts the rise in popularity of kusoge, the second describes the modes of appreciation in the subculture and the third discusses how confusion regarding fan attitude has given kusoge a bad reputation.

Video Games and KUSO culture

“Hurry Up and Die So I Can Play”: so reads the headline of article on women in the games industry printed in Electronic Gaming Monthly in the mis-90s. At a moment when very public conversations are being had regardi... more abstract“Hurry Up and Die So I Can Play”: so reads the headline of article on women in the games industry printed in Electronic Gaming Monthly in the mis-90s. At a moment when very public conversations are being had regarding the gender inequities in gaming, this paper looks back to gender-related discussions that took place in 90s issues of Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Monthly. An exercise in what Jennifer Jenson and Suzanne de Castell (2013) call ‘feminist forensics’, I explore how gamer rhetoric may or may not have changed.

Cultural History, Gender Studies, Video Games, Gender Equality, Feminism, and 2 more