In the forty-third episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I discuss the history and ideology of the classic board game, Monopoly. In this episode, we present the original intentions behind the board game as being meant to teach socialism — and most definitely not greed. We trace the history of the game…
Category: Digital Games
Pop Culture Lens: Dungeons and Dragons
In the twenty-fourth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I welcome friend of the podcast, psychologist in training, and long-time gamer Steve Discont to discuss the classic table-top role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. In this episode, we each recall our experiences with role-playing games, from Dungeons and…
On the Issues of Disagreement Becoming Censorship
The conversation I had one night and into the next morning with the GamerGate supporter (i.e. a ProGGer) was long. It started off with my comments on Twitter about the need to not censor texts and instead use them to create dialogue. But the problem is that people too often don’t want to talk about…
Conversations of GamerGate and Fractured Fandom
One of the things I have been doing this year (i.e. 2015) is trying to better understand what I mean when I say “fractured fandom” and how it manifests in the world. I’ve been writing about it for a couple years now, I have done an online interview study to gather people’s stories, I have…
Ghost Whisperer’s Ghost in the Machine
This essay was originally posted as part of my work for the Virtual Worlds Research Group at Roskilde University. This essay reflects my interest in how pop culture represents new media technologies, such as virtual worlds, as part of the process whereby a society / culture comes to determine what will be the acceptable and…
Categorizing Fractured Fandom
Defining Fractured Fandom According to the discipline of fan studies, at this point in history, being a fan is considered a positive for any individual. Being a fan helps people discover their identities, and to determine what they like and do not like. Being a fan helps people find friends, establish communities, and develop a…
Women self-identifying as digital game addicts: Their interpretations of power
[This paper comes from 2007 and was completed for a qualitative methodology course at Ohio State University under the amazing Patti Lather. She encouraged us to try different methods of communication research results; so I did a comic book, which you can see here.] What is digital game addiction? A number of approaches, theories, and…
Experiences of Hobby Game Players: Motivations Behind Playing Digital and Non-Digital Games
Based on a large online data collection effort back in 2006, the collaboration of GAMA, Ohio State University, and that other website, resulted in a pretty robust dataset that yielded a variety of interesting explorations. By: CarrieLynn Reinhard and Brant Guillory, 20 April 2014 ABSTRACT Central to our understanding of why people play digital games (either video…
What Women Don’t Want — LadyBits on Medium
What Women Don’t Want — LadyBits on Medium — Medium. So here we have another wonderful breakdown of a breakdown in the progress of bringing women across gendered lines. This summer — and maybe even this year thus far — has been one in which we really start to address the realities of what has…
Digital game players’ preferences: Concluding thoughts
(Part one of this paper can be found with the literature review here, while part two with the method and analysis sections can be found here. The full paper, with references, can be found here.) DISCUSSION In undertaking this study, our purpose was to address several questions in regards to our understanding of players’…
