Research
I am currently finishing my PhD in Media Studies at New York University where I have taught for the past 5 years. My research spans over numerous topics in the videogame world. As a cultural critic, I approach the ways in which games function in our daily lives: socially, politically and economically. My dissertation focuses specifically on how all these aspects converge on the videogame subculture known as Machinima. As an extension of both hacking and modding culture, machinima presents a unique form of transformative play and a new way of understanding gamers as cultural producers. With the expansion of what has become known as Web 2.0 Culture, we increasingly live in a world defined by tool sets that enable consumer production. As a decade old phenomenon, machinima’s appropriation of videogame engines as filmmaking tool sets represents a precursor to this trend that offers a rich historical insight ripe for investigation. In addition, I am also very interested in how the videogame medium functions as a potential tool of political communication in either its traditional interactive game or machinima forms.
If you create machinima and are willing to be interviewed as part of my ongoing research, please feel free to contact me.
