Reading Resources
Collection of online resources to find readings, articles, and blog posts relating to avatars, video games, art, and more.
Week 1 – Avatars & Psychology/Self Representation
- Beyond Identification: Defining The Relationships Between Player and Avatar
- Can You Really Be Addicted To Video Games?
- Controlling vs “Being” Your Video Game Avatar
- I apologize for the host of this channel. I find him just as annoying as you do.
- Aspects of the Self (Ch.7 of Life on the Screen (1995))
Week 2 – Avatars & Ethics/Ownership
- College Football Video Games Are Done. Here’s Why.
- Hollywood’s Post-Biological Future: Where Actors Can Perform After Death
- ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ — A New Hope (For Deceased Actors)
- Avatar Acts: Why Online Realities Need Regulation
- The Render Ghosts
Week 3 – Avatars & Gender
- Internetting With Amanda Hess – Welcome Our New Fembot Overlords
- Video (4 min)
- How Video Game Breasts Are Made (And Why They Can Go Wrong)
- Men Are Working Out Their Issues By Playing As Their Lovers and Exes in RPGs
- My First Virtual Reality Groping & Dealing With Harassment in VR
- Content Warning: descriptions of sexual assault
- TinySex & Gender Trouble (Ch.8 Life on the Screen (1995))
- PDF download link
- Don’t need to read the whole thing
- For these queer gamers, the Sims franchise is a safe haven
Week 4 – Avatars & Violence (Content Warning: vivid descriptions and simulated images of violence)
- Confronting the “Shocking” Virtual-Reality Artwork at the Whitney Biennial
- To All The Sims I’ve Killed Before
- GTA V Has A Big YouTube Scene Dedicated To The Most Brutal Kills
- The Truth About Video Games and Gun Violence
- The frustrating, enduring debate over video games, violence, and guns
- Modders Keep Finding Ways To Make GTA V’s Violence More Intense
Week 5 – Avatars & Race
- Inside the Tumblr Groups Making Beautiful Black Sims
- Internetting with Amanda Hess – Episode 5: The White Internet’s Love Affair with Digital Blackface
- Grand Theft Auto V and the Problem of Privilege
- Why White People Don’t Use White Emoji
- These Influencers Aren’t Flesh and Blood, Yet Millions Follow Them
- Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Post-Racial High Fantasy
- A World in Which Race Matters
- Response article to Dragon Age…