Video Games – Michael Iantorno

12 hours ago

If You Don’t Like the Game, Change the Rules: Alternative Modes of Videogame Production

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04October

In the fast-paced world of video-game development, grueling crunch and toxic work environments have long been a problem. If You Don’t Like the Game, Change the Rules: Alternative Modes of Videogame Production is a research project facilitated by Game Arts International Network that studies how worker co-ops, unions, and other alternative working arrangements have emerged in response to...

9 months ago

Background Checks: Disentangling Class, Race, and Gender in CRPG Character Creators

By Michael

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07January

I am happy to announce that a journal article I co-authored with Mia Consalvo has just been published in Games & Culture! Background Checks: Disentangling Class, Race, and Gender in CRPG Character Creators is now available as an open access article, and represents months of research we conducted on Dragon Age and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. The paper is one of many outputs of...

August 16, 2022

A Trio of Game Boy Workshops

By Michael

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16August

This past summer, I had the privilege of working with Alex Custodio and lee wilkins on a trio of Game Boy workshops, leading up to our Solar Game (Boy) Jam on August 26th. The work was completed as part of the Milieux Solar Media Project, which explores the affordances of solar energy for digital communication systems. The three workshops invited guests to tinker with different aspects of the...

May 17, 2022

Volatile Memory: How to Replace Your Game Boy Cartridge Batteries

By Michael

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17May

Last week, Alex Custodio and I had the opportunity run a workshop titled Volatile Memory: How to Replace Your Game Boy Cartridge Batteries, which we put on as part of an exhibition at Concordia University. We invited folks down to the Makerspace to learn about videogame maintenance and showed them how to swap the battery on a Game Boy cartridge – extending its lifespan by allowing certain...

March 1, 2022

Power Bombs and Glass Cannons: A Reflection on Metroid Dread

By Michael

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01March

This is more of a personal reflection on Metroid: Dread rather than a review. I mention this off the top because I’m not claiming any sort of objectivity — my critiques of the game are firmly rooted in my ongoing love for Super Metroid and Metroid: Fusion. To put in bluntly: I’m judging Dread in comparison to two of the series strongest entries, which is unfair for innumerable reasons. As most of...

February 4, 2022

It Comes In Waves

By Michael

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04February

Over the last few years, I have been lucky to be a part of the ongoing Class and Games research project at Concordia University. These sorts of long-term media studies endeavours are delightful, amorphous things — one day you might find yourself working on a paper about working-class videogame heroes and the next you’re delving into Twine to tell a story about the early days of the pandemic. It...

December 20, 2021

ROMchip – See You Next Mission: An Analysis of the Super Metroid VARIA Randomizer

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20December

I’m excited to announce that my journal article See You Next Mission: An Analysis of the Super Metroid VARIA Randomizer has just been published in ROMchip. I have long been fascinated with videogame randomizers, and this piece conducts an in-depth analysis of the popular VARIA Super Metroid randomizer – an online application that remixes the game. “In order to play games in new...

October 20, 2021

Class and Games Writing Catch-up

By Michael

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20October

It’s been a while, so I took some time this week to update the research and writing sections of my website. Although my overall pace has slowed a bit this year due to obvious reasons, I have been slowly pumping out work for the ongoing Class and Games research project I’m part of alongside a number of cool and talented people. I already posted about All in a Day’s Work: Working-Class...

CategoryVideo Games