Author: Bronson O’Quinn
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Video Game Haiku #18: Picross
Boxes make pictures arranged by calloused fingers attached to no one. Originally published during Lexington Poetry Month 2023
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Video Game Haiku #8: The Last of Us
Stray too much off-path, game over. The makers want their story, not yours. Originally published during Lexington Poetry Month 2023
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Video Game Haiku #6: Pac-Man
To chase and be chased. Even if you catch your ghosts, they always come back. Originally published during Lexington Poetry Month 2020.
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The Mausoleum of Gratuitous Fear
a FictionWhat is this? The Mausoleum of Gratuitous Fear is an homage to EC Comics, like Vault of Horror or Tales from the Crypt. A story is told through three different perspectives, much like how those books would have a “Crypt Keeper” or a “Vault Dweller.” The main difference is that my story is extremely mundane, taking place on a…
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How to Tell a Story: Don’t Look Back & Narrative Gameplay
Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back is a masterpiece by telling an emotionally resonate story without text, voiceovers, or cinematics.
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What’s Your Favorite Video Game?
I conducted an informal survey among attendees at the Kentucky Fried Zine Fest and among my Facebook friends. The question I asked was simple: what’s your favorite video game? The responses were varied and insightful. Some people left one-word answers while others gave elaborate responses. I have compiled this into a printable zine that you can download…
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Breitbart Leaks & the Terrorism of GamerGate
Joseph Bernstein’s article at Buzzfeed News — “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream” — includes larger implications for the video game community. Bernstein creates a narrative from a series of leaked emails from Breitbart which show Steve Bannon giving directions to Milo Yiannopoulis regarding their white nationalist agenda. They also “out”…
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How Hate Speech & Video Games Created the Alt-Right
In 2005, Steve Bannon got Goldman Sachs to invest $60 million in a World of Warcraft Chinese gold farming company. 1 Bannon eventually took control of the gold farming company, Internet Gaming Entertainment. Even though IGE flopped, Bannon said that these gamers were the pre-cursor to the alt-right. “These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power… It was…
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Hate Speech in Online Communities
Last week, we examined how hate speech can be used as a way to intimidate and upset opponents. We looked at Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg’s use of the n-word as an example of how, even though he was playing a competitive video game, he wasn’t using it this way. It’s important to look at the reasons…
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Hate Speech in Video Game Culture
Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg recently said the “n-word” on a stream of the popular online shooter Playunknown’s Battlegrounds.1 For those who follow Kjellberg’s “antics”, this is no surprise; earlier this year, he paid two men in India to record themselves holding up a sign that said “DEATH TO ALL JEWS”. In a half-hearted apology, he placed a lot…
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Spoiler Alert: A Story Summary & Analysis for Metal Gear & Metal Gear 2
Hideo Kojima’s creative insanity began in the overlooked MSX Metal Gear games with themes expanded in the Metal Gear Solid extended universe.