I wrote a blog post on the Warframe website on Fashion Frame and my community. This is but a stepping stone for exploring the gaming fashion world as a whole.
You can read the whole post on the Warframe website here: https://www.warframe.com/news/fashion-frame-not-just-end-game
A brief history and look into the future of kpop’s complex relationship with eSports in Korea and around the world. I discuss the hallyu wave, kpop performances at esports events, games with kpop elements and kpop songs about gaming.
Some of you may be aware that I have recently expanded my Youtube content for more than just short form let’s plays. Here is the first of many planned Warframe videos I plan on releasing in the next few weeks. I took care with this video to summarize and condense the assault of information out there on starting this addicting F2P game. I hope to take the same approach in upcoming video essays and other tutorials for this kind of complex content.
Stay tuned for more tutorials and fun videos and catch my streams for more Warframe action.
First and foremost: Did you know I’ve been working on a video series dedicated to Deus Ex?
No?
Well then stop reading here and check it out right now
And for the rest of you: Part 8 Hong Kong is out now!
First presented at CGSA 2016 Calgary on June 3rd 2016.
I’m going to be talking about the proliferation and boyband-ification of all-male professional gaming, or, esports teams. And in the sentiment of our keynote this week, I am not going to bother explaining why people who play video games professionally or the esports industry is worth studying. I will be speaking not only from the research of esports scholars but also my own personal experience in the esports industry as a player.
Firstly, I’d like to make it clear that there is a huge challenge when discussing esports teams when thinking about what we consider to be an “average” or “textbook” example what an esports team looks or behaves like. While there can be some generalizations that can be made about particular scenes based on genre, teams and even more so, individual players are surprisingly diverse (minus gender of course).
It’s been several months of streaming on Twitch. I’ve hit just over 1000 views and 250 followers which is, quite frankly, not that many is the grand scheme of Twitch progression but yet significant to me and my efforts thus far. I hope to take some time in this post to reflect critically on streaming on Twitch and the community of people I’ve met along the way.
Update for the update: I have officially migrated streams to a new account: twitch.tv/AlexandraLive
Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing two of the English casters for the League of Legends: Ladies Battle in Korea. We talked about women in e-sports, the job of a caster and cultural differences and challenges that come along with the job. You can watch Bil and Josh in action on the Ladies Battle AfreecaTV channel where you can also find more details on the league. I talked with Bil and Josh separately on Skype text chat on July 30th 2015.
Currently in Technical Alpha, Rising Thunder is already set to be the next big thing in the fighting game industry. It’s also probably the closest thing we have to a Pacific Rim game minus the destruction of environments (can this be in the game please?). What truly sets the game apart from other fighting games is the simplicity of the controls (without being as simple as Divekick) and the emphasis on keyboard controls. But is the game really as newbie friendly as it’s design makes it out to be?
Many League of Legends players will claim that the results of a match are determined during the champion select screen. A successful team will boast players with high APM (actions per minute) and vast knowledge of not only their own champion mechanics, but also how they function between their teammates and enemy champions. The developer of League, Riot Games, is a strong proponent of supporting the game as an e-sport and in general, to have the game be played competitively. An element, or more so, a requirement of a successful e-sports team is to master the inner workings of the game, not only the rules, but how your opponents and teammates work within the affordances of the game.
In Western game studies, we are seeing an emergence of a “canon”, games which scholars consider to to be essential playing for understanding the medium. But is this really the case, and are these games worthy of canon? Sure, people will always write about the latest games to keep up with the trend but in academia, are seeing a prominence of certain games written and presented on in the last few years. Social games (World of Warcraft, Second Life…) and e-sports games (Starcraft, League of Legends) aside, it is often Western RPGs which become objects of close reading. Popular series’ such as Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed along with Bioware and Bethesda’s newer games are mainstays of the field, but why?
Alexandra Orlando 