One day in October 2012, I happened across this YouTube video with a top-down view of PSY’s concert in Seoul. Over 80,000 people were in attendance, with the crowd spanning entire city blocks. Every member of the audience was singing along in unison with PSY who was on stage addressing the crowd as if he …
Almost exactly ten years ago, I finished for the first time The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was that moment when I first identified as a gamer and felt a devotion to video games that I was at the time too young to understand. But over the next ten years, that devotion grew …
In the farthest reaches of the Smithsonian, at the end of a dark corridor, was a large screen indicating the entrance to the Art of Video Games exhibit. On the large screen were snippets of video game cut-scenes from various video games, old and new, from Pac-Man to Heavy Rain. What really caught my eye …
I think it is fair to say one of the biggest fears we all share is that we will be unable to finish what we started; that we will die before our dreams can ever come true. I know that fear is always at the back of my mind. When …
Most video game franchises have one character in common: the damsel in distress. From Pauline to Peach to Zelda (in her early days), gamers wonder why these women don’t invest in some pepper spray or better security in their lavish castles. Game after game, players reassume the role of hero and rescue said damsels by …
The belief that the media we consume affects us negatively is not a new idea. The debate that arose twenty years ago when the Entertainment Software Rating Board (or ESRB) was created to inform consumers of the violent content of video games was far from the beginning. It started with the advent of organized society. …
A close friend of mine, Jireh Chua, once told me how he was moved to tears upon learning that “Baba Yetu,” the theme song from 2K Games’s Civilization IV is The Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. He said the song taught him that, “The story of the human race is not the pride of achievement but …
“Elle regarde bien,” said an unnamed character in the French version of Final Fantasy VII. Non-French speakers will input that line into Google Translate and find out it means, “She looks good,” probably referring to the attractiveness of Tifa or Aeris. French speakers, on the other hand, will know immediately that this sentence is embarrassingly–both …
Most of us non-Miley Cyrus fans are tired of hearing the song “Party in the USA.” From the clichéd opening rift to the seemingly simple lyrics, I hope that it is a fad that will soon die out. But still, people young and old scream at the sound of those opening notes and belt the …