The Marvel Cinematic Universe smash hit WandaVision might have something insightful to say about grief, hope, and harmful ways of coping — but critics haven’t been responsive to such stories in the past. Why is that? — The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is a staple of our popular culture. Despite the endless stream of online trolls who dare to discuss it in any non-contemptuous context, the franchise that started as a remarkably well-done, witty superhero film in 2008, back when superhero films were only “surprisingly common” and…

So, when I was young and impetuous and somewhat more invested in arguing about tabletop roleplaying games online, I decided the tabletop roleplaying game forum I posted on just wasn’t cutting it. I needed my own forum. …

Fictional Violence, Aesthetic Genre, and the Illusion of Safety — Being queer is scary, and 2020 is a particularly scary time to be queer. When I was still deeply in the closet in 2005, a friend and I went to see “the new Wachowski film,” by which we meant the Lilly and Lana Wachowski-produced, James McTeague directed Alan Moore adaptation…

One of my earliest exposures to data science research, or really any research at all, when I was growing up was SETI@Home, which when I was 11 promised a tantalizing possibility: what if you could potentially be the person to (have your computer) discover a signal from alien life. SETI@Home…

When I was young, I was basically certain I would become a computer programmer. I loved everything about computers, and not just games — I loved doing the things we had to do on Windows systems in 1997, like configuring CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and like so many kids of that…

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind for anyone who pays attention to video game journalism. Essentially daily a new piece attacking some element of The Last of Us Part II is released by a major outlet. As someone whose primary takeaway from the game was not “wow, there’s…

Almost a year ago I wrote a Medium blog post which I tweeted about to my following of, at the time, about 2,000 Twitter followers, entitled Night in the Woods: A Rebirth of Graphical Adventure Games, and Trumpian Propaganda in Disguise. This piece, much like my very first piece on…

A lot has been said recently about how so-called “AAA” video games are moving into the same cultural space that major Hollywood studio releases occupy — they are becoming places where we spend our time, mental energy, and, well, money, as a culture. Less has been said, and more should…

E3 is a gaming event where for about three days, the biggest studios in the gaming industry (and many of the smaller ones as well) announce new titles, systems, and paradigms. It’s the conference in the video game industry and is often a weather vane for predicting trends in games…