by Melissa Brinks | Jun 15, 2022 | News, Video Games
Happy Wednesday! May your inbox be blessed and clear, I say, with a weekend’s worth of new game announcements clogging mine up. I love a new game announcement as much as the next person, but imagine a world where we get a neat little digest instead of roughly 800 emails at a time. No, let’s go a step further and imagine a world without email. Ah, bliss.
Anyway, here’s what’s been happening in the world of games this week! (more…)
Melissa Brinks is Sidequest’s editor in chief, co-creator of the Fake Geek Girls podcast, author of The Compendium of Magical Beasts, and an aspiring beekeeper. She once won an argument on the internet, and tweets at @MelissaBrinks.
by Kael Langdon | Jan 25, 2022 | Features, Video Games
The dawning horror that I’ve doomed a galaxy is the defining feature of my Mass Effect experience.
Last time on Diary of a Hardline Shep, I covered Shepard’s super-judicial might and how it came at the cost of politically weaker species’ self-determination. Here at the end, only humanity is safe. And it all feels remarkably familiar. (more…)
A genderless eldritch beast bound to mortal flesh. Interests include games, gardening, magical realism, and the complete restructuring of America’s political and economic systems. Frequently orders too much food at restaurants. Tweets @unnnez.
by Sara Davis | Jan 18, 2022 | Lists, Video Games
Oh, Mass Effect, my problematic love.
As an entirely new audience discovers the joy of the original trilogy via the Legendary Edition, I’ve been thinking about what drew me back to the series again and again. Sometimes when we talk about this series, it’s easier to focus on what we don’t love about it. As Kael’s Diary of a Hardline Shep points out, Commander Shepherd’s “extrajudicial space cop” status sure hits different in this decade. It’s worth thinking critically about why even Shepherd’s diplomatic duties typically involve guns. It’s certainly worth thinking critically about how (and why??) sexual dimorphism in aliens is represented—not to mention human and alien sexuality, and the mysteriously limited romantic options for a gay male Shepherd. And as Zainabb said in last August’s roundtable, the pleasure of exploring the discoverable universe is interwound with the pleasure of controlling and/or colonizing it: the space cantinas are Shepherd’s to raid, the space crates are Shepherd’s to loot, and the Krogan coming-of-age ceremony is simply waiting for Shepherd to crash. (more…)
Sara Davis is a recovering academic and marketing writer who lives in Philadelphia. Her PhD in American literature is from Temple University. She blogs about books, games, climate change, and other obsessions at literarysara.net.
by Zainabb Hull | Dec 30, 2021 | Roundtables, Video Games
No matter what, if anything, you celebrate this time of year, there’s just something nice about gift giving. We may give or receive games as gifts (and what greater joy is there than the gift of playing a game together?), but today, we’re talking about gifts in games. Who’s good at it? Who’s bad at it? Is gift giving as intrinsic to romantic relationships as games would have us believe? Let’s find out.
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Zainabb Hull is an editor at Sidequest, a freelance writer and videographer, and sort-of artist. They’re also a trans, queer, and disabled brown femme. They tweet into the void at @ZainabbHull.
by December Cuccaro | Nov 10, 2021 | News, Video Games
Welcome to this week’s Get Your Game On! I am December, and it’s time to FALL BACK into some gaming news! (Yes, my name does give me permission to make bad seasonal puns). Let’s see what’s happening this week: (more…)
December Cuccaro (she/her) is an MFA graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno and a member of the 2021 Clarion West cohort. When not rambling about video games, she writes about sapphic werewolves and sad necromancers searching for friendship.
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