February 10, 2010 – 10:53 am
I posted a blog piece called “Transgression and Kink” at my NSFW blog. I’m linking it here, to tie it in with the transgression and liminality posts I’ve made here. It’s not here because 1) it’s more personal, and 2) it’s about sexual practices. It’s not explicit in anyway, but it felt like it belonged [...]
February 9, 2010 – 9:15 am
I’ve had Overlord 2 for a while, but hadn’t played it (as it lived at Girl’s house for some time). I recently borrowed it, and began playing it. This isn’t strictly a First Impressions post, but I’m about that far into the game.
Girl and I played the first game fairly differently. One of her favorite [...]
January 28, 2010 – 10:30 am
There is a lot to say about sexuality in video games, from character models to treating romantic partners like vending machines. The transgression series is primarily interested in player action though, so this post is about sexual actions the player can take. This is a much smaller subset of actions in games, and I share [...]
January 27, 2010 – 9:15 am
When I first thought about writing the transgression posts on killing, Assassin’s Creed was foremost on my mind. In the games you play as an assassin (first Altair, and later Ezio), who is discovering a plot by Templars to control humanity. The assassins are cast as people who love peace and freedom, and use [...]
January 26, 2010 – 9:40 am
Here’s an interesting thing about today’s commandment. The proper translation of it is probably “You must not commit murder.” Murder is different than killing, even if humans are your target in both places. The current Catholic Church (according to Wikipedia) translates this commandment as one against killing, which is a broader term than murder.
The idea [...]
January 25, 2010 – 10:20 am
The rain it raineth on the just
and on the unjust fella.
But chiefly on the just, because
the unjust steals the just’s umbrella.
–Lord Bowen
It was fifteen or so years ago, and my roommates, Ginger and Jason, and I were talking about role playing games. We’d recently discussed the recent announcement that someone was making a graphical MUD [...]
January 24, 2010 – 9:15 am
This week I’m going to delve back into my ideas around Transgression. To recap a bit, transgression is the breaking of a boundary, usually a moral or social one. Sins, therefor, are transgressions and we’ll be looking at some of the commandments this week. I’m not a Christian, though I was raised as one, and [...]
January 18, 2010 – 10:05 am
By virtue of the magic circle, all games can be said to exist within a liminal space. But liminality is a mental state, you have to have the buy-in of the player to get them into the space. It requires that choice to transgress out of their normal space and into the new one. Otherwise [...]
January 15, 2010 – 9:15 am
A liminal space is an other space, one which exists within the world, and separate from them. I’m interested in these spaces and much of what I practice and am attracted to are about being in them. In a pagan ritual, we “cast a circle” which creates a space in the world and separate from [...]
January 13, 2010 – 9:35 am
Here’s a thought that occurred to me as I was writing yesterday’s post.
If Tetris came out today, it’d be a casual game.
So, why isn’t it considered a casual game? It’s success on the Game Boy was a lot like other Nintendo successes since then, many of which have garnered them derision for pandering to a [...]