On last week’s episode of The Arena, Janelle Malagon, Daniel Marques, Dave Stanely, and I played Super Smash Bros: Ultimate. This week’s show is a continuation of “Fighter Month” where we’ve played Street Fighter V and will play other competitive… Continue Reading
On this week’s episode of The Arena, Erik Kersting, Daniel Marques, and I played Street Fighter V. This week, we continued our tour of the games featured at the Intel World Open, slated to lead up to the 2020 Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo. Nation-based… Continue Reading
The difference between “traditional” sports and Esports has been a long-debated subject. What defines an “Esport”? This week on Erik Kersting’s excellent Twitch show The Arena, he, along with guest hosts Janelle Malagon and visiting Fulbright Scholar Daniel Marques, probed… Continue Reading
[Cross-posted to Doubt is an Art.] This past Wednesday, the Lunch Zone explored Parallax, a stark and yet somehow intimate puzzle game. The resolute black and white imagery, the abstract and icon-marked shapes, and sense of containment from being apparently… Continue Reading
As Nathan begins the latest foray into Yooka-Laylee (his 3rd for The Lunch Zone,) he muses aloud: “I was struggling on whether or not to play this again because I’m not sure what else there is to say about it.”… Continue Reading
Serious Play August 16, 2019 In the room: Nathan Humpal (playing), Kelly Brajevich This week, the Lunch Zoners played Playtonic Games’ 2017 platformer Yooka–Laylee, which borrows off nostalgia from the developer’s previous experiences creating the cult classic N64 title, Banjo-Kazooie… Continue Reading
Serious Play August 7, 2019 In the room: Nathan Humpal (playing), Kelly Brajevich, Josh Rivers, Thomas Malaby; online: Serious_Play, GameScholar, ludologue, and one other. It’s August and the academics are warming up for the start of seminar season three weeks… Continue Reading
Serious Play was born from minds with mixed sets of interest. Between us we are librarian, anthropologists, media scholars and creative writers. We are interested in games and play, analog and digital, indy and AAA, puzzles and adventures, E-sports and… Continue Reading
While watching Nathan’s latest foray into the world of The Witcher III, I’m struck by the game’s expansive space. This last session opens with Geralt standing at a crossroads: a seemingly apt metaphor for the genre of open-world games. “What… Continue Reading
[Cross-posted to Doubt is an Art.] Nathan, Kelly, and I were joined by Kelly’s sister Caitlin for July 3rd’s episode of the Lunchzone, where we continued our playing through of The Witcher III (find Stuart’s write-up of our Jun19th session… Continue Reading