Tag Archives: Mortal Kombat

Heart of Darkness: E3, Violence, and Context for Outrage

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Adam Maresca

by Adam Maresca To everyone who has been finding some of the content from this year’s E3 to be pushing the boundaries of sexual politics and highly graphic violence: what kept you? In case you think that question was rhetorical, I’ll give you my best guess. It’ll scare your mom! It’ll scare your little sister! It’ll SCARE YOUR DOG. (And also the ESRB.) As a particularly new medium, video games have been the target of moral fervor since the introduction of gory violence, with plenty of memorable flashpoints along the way. Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were hounded by Senator Joe Lieberman, David Grossman demonized imaginary Doom levels in the aftermath of the tragedies of Columbine, Jack Thompson led a failed two-pronged crusade against Grand Theft Auto, and Breivik’s self-implicating statements have name-dropped Call of Duty. We were fortunate in many ways that the vocal opponents of these games chose to resort to Continue reading →

Posted in Features | Tagged Adam Maresca , Call of Duty , Call of Duty: Black Ops II , Crysis 3 , Duke Nukem Forever , E3 , Gaspar Lewis , Grand Theft Auto , Halo 4 Gears of War: Judgment , Hitman:Absolution , Irreversible , Jack Thompson , , Marilyn Manson , Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance , , Randy Pitchford , , , Watch Dogs | Leave a comment

Genre and Girl-on-Girl Action: Feminism and Skullgirls

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Meg Townsend

You know that joke where a boy walks into his parent’s bedroom and catches them having sex? The one where the punchline is something like “What you’ve seen you can never unsee?” I’m not even sure if there is a joke like that but it pretty much sums up my experience with day-to-day things after my liberal arts education exposed me to many facets of feminism. I can see sexism. I can never unsee it. I’m not imagining it and it’s everywhere. I’m glad I see – I am a politically aware, socially active woman – but damn, it ruins shit for me that I used to enjoy.

So when I volunteered to write an article on Skullgirls it was not without an amount of trepidation or masochism. The game could very well enrage me.

Now, I don’t take myself too seriously and I like a good off-colour joke. But it really depends on the context of that joke. It’s the difference between, say, Chapelle’s Show and Fox News. It’s about awareness: of your art, of your medium, of your audience — most of all, of your genre. Continue reading →

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Round One: Brazzers versus the Fighter Game Industry

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Kaitlin Tremblay

By Kaitlin Tremblay Brazzers’s offer of potential sponsorship for fighting games to break into the world of spectator sports has caused the old arguments of porn as either a feminist or anti-feminist industry to resurface full-force. What’s interesting to me … Continue reading →

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