Videogames and Sociology: Twitter's pic of the day summary (16-20)

This is the fourth round of Pic of the day RECAP (16-20). To understand what all of this is about, check out the original entry. 16 - The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: The stars were right, and this is the day The stars were right. Is he referring to those who are famous and popular or to those massive celestial bodies? For those like me who have an open definition of agency, which includes humans and non-human as agents alike, it may get...

Why is it never a cheese sandwich? On the lock-and-key logic

I'm in the middle of some stuff related to securing the funding for next year - I´ll tell you about this at another time - but I wouldn't like to leave the blog without a new entry for too long. I invite you to check the following video (WARNING: Some spoilers about the video game Penumbra: The Black Plague): What I want to point out here are the remarks made by Clarence on certain logic in video games (around 1:47). Clarence, one of the best...

Videogames and Sociology: Twitter's pic of the day summary (11-15)

This is the third round of Pic of the day RECAP (11-15). To understand what all of this is about, check out the original entry.  11 - Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery EP: Home is where the hearth is If we understand hearth as the floor of a fireplace in a house, we might be inclined to consider that home is just either a cold and dusty place or a warm and smoky one. Like most social relationships, all depends on whether...

Long live to the three-headed monkey!

The other day I was watching Tim Schafer in the special PBS Game/Show on humour in video games and something suddenly shocked me: the famous line that gives name to this blog  - Look behind you! A three-headed monkey! - could have not existed. Schafer was working in Monkey Island writing a dialogue in which Guybrush needed to distract the villagers and came up with that line, but he immediately thought it was stupid and...

Diaries from The Forest (vol.1): senseless brutality

In my efforts to experiment with new research techniques in social sciences, I will create two new regular sections: diaries and flash sociological reviews. You can read about the latter here. But at this moment, I'd like to focus on diaries. What is a diary? You'll probably have already seen those articles on magazines and posts on forums in which the author describes what they've done and experienced during a specific gameplay. It's not a review...

Videogames and Sociology: Twitter's pic of the day summary (6-10)

This is the second round of Pic of the day RECAP (6-10). To understand what all of this is about, check out the original entry.  6 - The Secret World: The end of the world waits for no man The end of the world is the passage of time and what it comes with it: decadence, death, oblivion. Furthermore, only the signs of ageing prove the existence of the passage of time. The statement is partially wrong nonetheless:...