Welcome!

When I started out as a game studies scholar, back in the early years (2000!), I had hoped to study the cool, small, 'indie' games that were out there. But they weren't out there, at least as far as I could tell. Sure there were some small downloadable games for the Mac and PC, but nothing that grabbed my attention. So, I turned to consoles, and got appropriately hooked on Final Fantasy.

However, it seems like it's gotten harder for me to find time to play on a console these days, and this summer while taking breaks from writing, I started poking around the web, and found what I had originally sought, 8 years ago. Now, I'm choking in small, cool games created by professionals as well as amateurs. Downloadable, flash-based, virtual worlds, whatever- there are now too many out there to count. Numerous sites have also sprung up to review these games, but they mostly approach them from the position of a games reviewer, and don't bring in analyses that a game studies scholar might provide. So, welcome to this blog. My goal is to post at least once a week with a report on a game. I'll talk about its play style, and the normal review-ish features, but I'm also going to link things back to game studies, and see where that gets me. Not many game studies scholars have tackled the subject of casual games, so we'll see how the theories and models apply. For now, I should get back to playing games. A preview of game analyses to come: Corpse Craft, Dream Chronicles, and maybe The Great Tree. Happy gaming!