Cranky T-Rex's Blog

"Well excuuuuse me, princess." If we’re not hearing about some kid who was corrupted by violent video games, we’re hearing about how it’s an industry dominated by creepy misogynist males. Yesterday, I read an article by Jeopardy! winner Arthur Chu that somehow manages to link both things together. He uses the latest killer psycho as a springboard into a discussion about “nerd culture” and misogyny. His argument wanders a bit between various media, but the crux of it is this: But the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well. So what happens to nerdy guys who keep finding out that the princess they were promise...

I’ve written previously about why involvement in gaming culture is important and worked through an example of how video games can help us explain political concepts to the youth of America . Now let’s talk about how the video game industry can teach us how to fight the culture war directly. The gaming world operates very much like our political system. Thanks to new technologies, the whole industry goes through cycles where consumers “re-elect” the existing brands/franchises or hop on board with the inevitable newcomers.  Instead of political parties and ballot boxes, rabid fans will line up along battle lines and try to drag moderates into their camps, and their vehemence makes hardcore Democrats and Republicans look like posers. After all, nothing quite compares with the stream of obscenities that can come from a 9 year-old that disagrees with your opinion of the latest Call of Duty game.  So if you want to learn about swaying entrenched supporters, there are fe...

We T-Rexes are familiar with this problem. Wreck-It Ralph is not really a video game movie, or even a movie about video games.  It is instead a movie about finding your place in life, and how the simple connections we build with others can really make the difference between feeling like you're a meaningless cog in a wheel and feeling like the hero of your own story. So what is the story with Ralph? Well, Wreck-It Ralph is the bad guy in an 80's style arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr. His job is to smash up an apartment building, which the titular hero Felix uses his magic hammer to repair until Ralph is defeated and summarily tossed off the building by its tenants. It's basically Donkey Kong meets Rampage . Since he's the villain, Ralph is completely ostracized by the denizens of his game, and after 30 years, he's tired of being the bad guy. The last straw for Ralph is finding out he wasn't even invited to the 30th anniversary party for the game,...