Blogger Life Update: Explanation of Hiatus

Readers will notice that posting has been extremely light and sporadic this year.  It's not that I've lost interest in games, or in writing.  It's that I've gained this:

Her name is Miranda Claire Cox.  I spent all of 2013 (and a little bit of 2012) growing her from scratch and she joined the world at 7:49 a.m. on Thursday, August 15.

The combination of pregnancy and finding and settling into a new job took up the bulk of my physical and mental energy over the past six months.  And the combination of recovering from (an unexpectedly surgical) birth and learning who this little person is (and how to keep her fed) is taking up all of my mental and physical energy now.

I do plan to return to sharing my thoughts on games and gaming.  There's a lot going on to investigate, question, and think about.  A new console generation is coming in a couple of months, and that changes the commercial landscape.  There's more than ever going on in art, experimental, non-commercial, and indie gaming.  And frankly, parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are changing my focus and perspective.  The dadification of games and Boobjam in particular have my attention.  I know plenty of men in gaming and writing with kids, but almost no women with kids, and there are reasons for that.  There are systems and narratives and prejudices that need poking into, and I plan to keep poking into them.

But not this week, or this month, or probably the month after.  This time's for my family, which I now have, and that is an incredible feeling.

Oh, my, it's quite dusty in here...

Oh, hello.  *blows the dust off the blog*  I, er, let things sit around here for rather a long time, didn't I.

So, I said back in February that I was going to try to do a monthly best-of link roundup to my work from Kotaku.  That promise very clearly fell by the wayside, and hard.  Sorry about that.  I just ran out of steam, most weeks.  But better late than never, right?

Anyway, a roundup is easier when you know where it ends.  It has been a privilege and a pleasure working with the team at Kotaku.  It certainly made 2012 interesting in a number of unexpected ways.  That particular adventure, though, has drawn to a conclusion; the site and I officially part ways on December 1.  It's time for a new adventure.

Meanwhile, I've got a veritable mountain of links after the jump.  It's not everything I posted at the site (most weekdays, I ran between 3 and 8 stories); just the ones I can remember as a best-of.  Criticism, impressions, and general essays are arranged by month, with all the full game reviews (all of 'em) afterward in alphabetical order.  Because I am nothing if not compulsively organized.

Major Blog News, 2012 Edition

First, the sad news: Updates here at the blog are about to become infrequent at best.

Now, the good news: It's because your critic did, indeed, find another castle.  Beginning Monday (February 6), I will be joining the staff of Kotaku as a full-time writer.  Rather than seeing me try to cobble together several updates per month around my day job, you are going to see me try to cobble together several updates per day as my day job.

I am thrilled with this opportunity.  It's an amazing chance to broaden my own skillset and audience, and with the time to research and write and the resources to expand my reach I hope to be able to investigate many ideas I would not have been able to before.  Likewise, I am one of several new staff who will be continuing to expand Kotaku's voice beyond where it traditionally has been.

I owe huge thanks to everyone who has been reading and linking my work over the last two years, and in particular, to those who have consistently championed this blog and my writing to the wider world, and who have been welcoming mentors.  In no particular order, I'd like to thank Alyssa Rosenberg, Alli Thrasher, Lesley Kinzel, Amanda Cosmos, Dennis Scimeca, Kris Ligman, Chris Dahlen, Emily Hauser, the entire staff of The Border House, everyone at Critical Distance, TNC's Horde, and of course my new boss Stephen Totilo, for offering me this new opportunity.

And last but most emphatically not least, I extend my sincere gratitude to all of my friends and family who have put up with my madness and passion (particularly my poor husband), and who always encouraged me to keep writing (particularly my parents).  The several dozen of you who I talk with daily on Twitter and G+, among other venues, give me constant inspiration and keep me on my toes.  Never stop: I'm going to need all of the discussion, inspiration, and encouragement I can get from here on out!

I will still be posting occasionally, when I have something to say that's not really appropriate for the new digs.  I also plan to stick weekly or monthly "best of" link roundups to my Kotaku pieces over here.  So the blog's not dead... just evolving.  :)

[ETA: Also HOLY SHIT thank you all for the immense outpouring of support and congratulations here, on Twitter, and in e-mail or over at TNC's.  It's incredibly appreciated, thank you.  <3 ] 

Blog News

Two things:

1.) Posting here will be slow-to-nonexistent this week.  However, I'm excited to announce that it's because I will be doing some guest-posting at Alyssa Rosenberg's blog, Tuesday through Friday.  I've got one or two ideas brewing / drafts a-going already but if you've got something you'd love to see me take to her audience, speak up. :)  (Oh, also, hello new readers!  Welcome.)

2.) Your Critic has a voice!  And although I am of course sure it sounds nothing like me, in actuality I suspect it rather does.  You can hear me and several brilliant writers and editors of The Border House in the inaugural episode of their podcast!  This episode focuses on romantic arcs and diversity issues in BioWare's Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises.  To have a listen, clicky clicky.

Blog Admin, September Edition

Just a few notes.

• I had a blast being part of The Border House's inaugural podcast recording session last night, and I look forward to that going live whenever it does.
• I helped out my friend Liz at Liz Tells Frank again... I'm sure everyone here knows what game I was describing.  ;) 
• "Let's Talk About Sex" was reprinted at GameCritics and at The Border House. 
• A version of "On Gaming Death" has been frontpage featured at Bitmob.
•  The busiest time of the entire year for me at Day Job is the last two weeks of September and the first two weeks of October.  I've been working overtime and having weekend obligations (weddings far away, etc) and so there's been very little gaming or writing time.  Apologies.  I hope we can return to our regularly scheduled programming in mid-October.  I like blogging much more than I like doing my day job, but only the latter gives me a steady paycheck and health insurance.  ;)
• That said, I'm working on a piece for myself about Bastion that's more fun than I thought (like the game and its soundtrack), and I'm working on two pieces for other outlets as well.  Stay tuned.

Sorry!

To anyone who's reader feed still shows an incoherent half-paragraph of babble, sorry!  I was throwing some ideas into the editor for storage and later retrieval / posting this week, and fat-fingered a keystroke combination that makes it go straight to publish.  (I did not know such a combination existed.  Now I do.)

Please disregard, unless you're that deeply invested in one blogger's thought and writing process, in which case... please disregard extra hard.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Blog Admin, July Edition

FYI: Your Critic is on vacation with roughly thirteen thousand of her in-laws.

I am enjoying some writing time, I do plan to blog this week, and I am hoping to get some tricky pieces done while enjoying the beach view.  But I won't be on my normal M/W/F or my amended summer M/W schedule, as many have noticed by now. ;)

In the meantime, I was a participant in the most recent Bitmob Community Roundtable discussion, where five of us talked about narrative, dialogue, and dissonance in games.  My sympathy to Layton Shumway, who edited that piece, because not a one of the five of us who participated particularly practices brevity.

I also guest starred at Liz Tells Frank, where I helped old camp buddy Liz tell Frank what happened in Mass Effect.  (That involves Saren's evil eyebrows, sexytimes with Liara, and Kaidan's excessive sweat.  Also mass effect fields.)

Blog Admin, June Edition

This is just a quick note to say that Your Critic's brain has melted.

Or at least, that it's about to.

We will be out of town or otherwise unavailable for roughly a week, in transit on Friday and on Monday, and this trip coincides nicely with my need for a few days away from writing.  Thus, we'll be on hold for roughly a week over here; you can expect the next post on Wednesday, June 29.  I can moderate comments fairly easily on the road so feel free to carry on relevant discussions while I'm away.

If I can, I'll get part 2 of the Gamer's Gaze up this afternoon or evening, but in the midst of packing and preparing for a buttcrack-of-dawn flight some things don't happen.  If I don't, it'll be first up when we're back.

Meanwhile, enjoy your summer.  (Or, for the surprising number of my Australian readers, your winter.)  I shall be eating too much, drinking too much, and making just the right amount of merry this weekend.  When I get back, I'll be discussing my opinions on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, finally starting L.A. Noire, and wondering just how the Fallout: New Vegas DLC could be so story-great and gameplay-poor.

Also when I get back, I'll be starting to post occasionally at GameCritics.com, which should be fun for us all I hope! 

In conclusion, Guybrush the cat likes Fallout 3 as much as I do, and bobbleheads rather a lot more.

I freaking hate bobbleheads. But the lunchbox is cool.

A Brief Interruption in Blogging

Your Critic had really wanted to play Portal 2 last night.  I'm in Chapter 5 and thought I might be able to get near the end of the single-player game.

Remember this little guy?

Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood Cox, Evil Mighty Pirate Cat.

He has a lot of teeth in that no-so-innocent little kitty mouth.  Several days ago he managed to sever the plug end of the gaming headset (but luckily, only the mic cable, so at least I still had headphones).

And yesterday, we got home from work to find that he'd made neat work of my mouse. 

"THE CAT ATE MY MOUSE," I angrily tweeted, and was immediately asked, "That's not a thing a cat can do, that's a terrible pun!!  Does your cat understand how reality works? That it is not in fact pun-based??"

Well, no.  Our cat is indeed pun-happy.  When Your Critic's spouse left for work this morning (an hour after I did), he reported that cat was going to town on my PC speaker wire.  *sigh*

Meanwhile this is on its way (for less than that) to Your Critic via Amazon and local express shipping.  I'm a PC gamer forever, even as I slowly learn to use our PS3, but I'll admit -- wireless controllers have never looked so tempting.  Too bad the wireless Razer cost more than three times the one I ordered.

So, a slight delay in game completion; I'll probably have something to say about Portal 2 next week, and we've just started Mass Effect 2 as well.

One Year In...

A few days ago I woke up to find the following in my Droid's overnight Twitter alerts:

I was, as you might imagine, ecstatic.  Blog love from a complete stranger, with no mutual friends!  I followed it through and came across the following conversation:

I've left everyone's names off because I genuinely don't intend to call anyone out -- rather, I would like quite sincerely to thank these two gentlemen.  First and foremost, for reading!  It is a writer's greatest pleasure to find that she has an audience.  *bows*  Second, for leading me to this post today.

It's been exactly a year since I first started this blog -- and I'm happy to report that I've moved well beyond Roger Ebert.  I started with him, though, because for between six months and a year I'd been saying to myself, "One of these days, I really need to start writing about games..."  That moment provided impetus to make "someday" become "now," and I was happy to run with it.

I feel that on the one-year anniversary of this blog, I get to do a wee bit of navel gazing -- and I'm going to explain what started me writing critically about games in the first place.

In the fall of 2004, I was still working on my Film Studies MFA, and that semester I was enrolled in one of my favorite classes.  It was called something like "International City Film," but it was a great course that really looked at how space inside of film and space outside of film worked together, and also talked a lot about the rise in and perceptions of urbanization in the 20th century.  Trust me -- it was much less dry and more interesting than I make it sound.

Near the end of the semester, the professor excitedly brought in a DVD-ROM that would allow us to navigate interactively through the Ambassador Hotel.  He explained what was innovative about it, and how it connected the viewer to the space, and how it worked as experimental art, and some other things.

But what I remember most clearly is that another student and I both raised our hands, and nearly in sync asked, "Um.  Haven't you ever heard of Myst?  This is an old kind of gaming you're talking about..."

And just like that, sitting in Roy Grundmann's class, the connection was made.  I finished up grad school with a thesis on David Lynch films (I know) but sat at my computer the whole time thinking, "games?  It's like a game.  How is it like a game?  Everything applies to games!  Game game game game game game."

But as much as I enjoy writing and talking about games, games haven't always wanted me.  And that's where we come full circle: part of the reason it says "K. Cox" in the sidebar there and not my full name is because of the culture and assumptions out there.  Gender representations in games and gamer culture became a flag for me to wave because it's a flag stapled to my back anyway.  By being here, by talking, by playing -- I'm part of that system and part of that solution.

For what it's worth, the Tweeter up above figured out that Your Critic was a she pretty damn fast after reading other posts, and said so.  I don't exactly hide it!  But I don't go around shouting it from the rooftops, either.  (This blog never has been and never will be themed in pink.)

And all of that is why I write.

PAX East, here I come!

Your Critic is boarding a flight to Boston at 6:00 this evening, and leaving for the airport at 3:00.

(Actually, Your Critic hopes to be boarding a flight to Boston at 6:00 this evening.  The FAA and NOAA currently indicate this may be unrealistic, and that a midnight arrival time in Boston is not out of the question.)

Here's a fair warning: you can expect a constant stream of nonsense from me via Twitter, possibly even live-tweeting some panels, and you can also expect occasional short-form blog posts, sometimes with accompanying photo or video.  My still-new phone is cool like that.

What you can't expect: for me to reply to comments in any depth.  I can moderate on-the-go thanks to the Disqus app (so feel free to talk amongst yourselves) but I won't be able to have any two-page discussions until I get back, which will effectively be on Tuesday (March 15).

Have fun.  Play good games.  I know I will!

Busy Critic

Housekeeping info:

1.) Your Critic and her spouse, as many gamers do, have acquired a cat.  He is, naturally, the best cat in the whole wide world; doubly so as he is named Guybrush.

 Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood Cox, Mighty Pirate Cat.

2.) The PAX East 2011 schedule is out and ready.  I've been putting together my schedule, and if all goes well (i.e. if the lines aren't too long), I'll be at the following (as well as probably some others):

• Friday, 10:30: Jane McGonigal Keynote
• Friday, 3:30: What The Heck Is A Community Manager?
• Friday, 6:30: Game Design is Mind Control
• Saturday, 3:00: Females on Female Characters
• Saturday, 6:30: The "Other" Us: If We're All Gamers, Does Our Gender Matter?
• Sunday, 10:00: Girls' Meetup
• Sunday, 12:00: One of Us

I was pleased to find that in fact there is not a panel on gender issues in gaming; there are three!  As this is Your Critic's beat, I am most pleased and hope to come home with interesting insights.  Also with the live-blogging, and you can follow my Twitter feed.  Which, I am forced to admit, may be more along the lines of "I am by the Nintendo booth where are the rest of you?" than anything entertaining.

3.) Our year-long "Beyond the Girl Gamer" series is starting this week.  In that vein, there is a new site out there which has gotten a lot of attention in the last two days: The Mary Sue.  I'm not sure how I feel about it really, and I suppose it's too early for judgement.  I do think their "why this, why now" statement has a few ideas worth hearing, though:

We know the point at which you would be satisfied is to just be able to geek out with all geeks, of any gender, without feeling like your femininity is front and center for scrutiny.  To not feel like you have to work harder than guys to prove that you’re genuinely into geek culture. We want simple things, like to be able to visit a comic book store without feeling out of place.  To be able to buy a video game without getting the sense that the cashier thinks we’re buying it for someone else.

But mainly we just want to be able to pursue our hobbies with the other people who share them.  We want to play with the boys.

So there are two reasons why there should be more out there devoted specifically to the female geek.

Because even if we want to play with the boys, there is a value to having our own space.

 So there's that.  We'll see.  They seem to have good intentions at least.

4.) We haven't had an Open Thread in a while.  The last one was fun.  So: get to it, if you like!

P.S. The meditation on genre and adventure games is still coming.  It's long, convoluted, and problematic, and Your Critic has been required to do actual paid work at her day job lately.  When it's not 2100 words of ugly, it's coming here.

Admin Note II

Comments made prior to this past Sunday (the URL conversion) still exist in the system, but are failing to show up on the blog.  I'm working on it, I promise.

Edit: Aaaaaand we're back.  The fault wasn't with the comment system; it was with Your Critic, who was too foolish to figure out that the "migrate threads" button would migrate the threads.  Carry on!

Admin Note

I'm currently working to redirect this site through a custom URL that I bought through a cheap registrar, rather than a hand-holding one.  I seem to have gone mildly stupid with web stuff in the last 3-4 years, so if this site goes offline or disappears for some stretches during the next few days, just know it's temporary.  We'll be back online whenever Your Critic can make Google's instructions match the registrar's.

Edit: And we're live!  Woo-hoo!  This  blog can now also be found at your-critic.com.

Threaded Comments!

I've just installed Disqus comments on a trial basis.  I know the format has its problems, but I desperately needed a threaded commenting system (where replies can actually be to a comment rather than to just the original post) and I know that about 85% of this site's visitors and readers already have a Disqus account.  So let's see how this goes...

(Huh.  It appears that installing the widget has rendered all previous comments invisible.  Ah, well.  They were still awesome and so are you.)

(Aha!  I made previous comments visible again.  Woohoo!  Threaded conversations for all!)

(My next trick will be to get the [X] Comments / Comment link visible on the blog front page but in the meantime, click the title of any blog post to get to the page where you can comment.)

Quick Admin Note...

Posting will be light in October; the day job, business travel, and personal travel will be taking up an astonishing amount of Your Critic's time until the last week of the month.  So if you see me being slow, I haven't abandoned the joint.  And I'll be starting Fallout: New Vegas as soon as I get back from all these trips. ;)