Author: Peter Spezia

Speaking into a microphone about nerd culture is a passion project for Peter Spezia, formerly known as SMYNYouko. Peter has been an Internet broadcaster since 2007, with past shows including Show Me Your News and WTF, Pokémon. His latest ventures include hosting The PowerSwitch - gaming's call-in talk radio show - and writing for RhymesWithAsia.com. A University of Michigan alum, Peter lives in the Great Lakes State with his wife Rachel as he works in video production for FCA US LLC. When he isn't keeping track of the latest video game industry news, Peter is either playing the guitar or staying fit.

February 2, 2016 Peter Spezia

Top 5 Favorite Games of 2015

From 2011 to 2014, I produced an audio extravaganza of a Game of the Year award show to note the best video games of the year. To not do one for 2015 in my break from podcasting was bittersweet. While those productions of the past were all fan-voted, I thought I would mix things up a bit in my return to video game media. Even though we’re a month into 2016, let’s take a look at my personal favorite games of 2015, along with my votes for the categories that would have been included in a 2015 award show! TALES

February 1, 2016 Peter Spezia

Top 5 Most Anticipated Games of 2016

In the video gaming world, we always look forward to what’s new, what’s next. We all have games that we look at when a new year arrives which make us say “I can’t wait to play that!” 2016 is no exception. While I have the most excitement for new hardware, such as Nintendo NX and PlayStation VR, these are the titles that get my heart racing. These are my most anticipated games of 2016. MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA Mass Effect is about the journey, not the end result. While many were bothered by how Mass Effect 3 concluded, but I was

December 17, 2012 Peter Spezia

Uncharted 2 and the Customized Video Game Experience

If you want to read about how gamers customize their own visual experience in a video game context, using Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as an example, there’s 26 pages of it here. Below is the paper’s introduction, followed by a link to the full paper. It may be called a toy at times, but video games have clearly become a media force to be reckoned with. With every passing year, games become a bigger part of the worldwide media culture. While the industry hits its high points in the cultural landscape during the holiday shopping frenzy, followed by the Electronic

December 3, 2012 Peter Spezia

Smashing the Text: Gaming Fan Practices

An audience’s passion for a work of media takes shape in many different forms. Some viewers show their devotion by taking in everything the work has to offer or creating their own works, based off of that text. In addition, it is also entirely common for these viewers to dress up as their favorite characters, while attending conventions where other fans meet up. Simply stated, fandom knows no limits. While the recent readings for class have echoed these sentiments, these analyses were primarily considered in a context based in television. My own personal media experience offers a unique insight, in

August 15, 2012 Peter Spezia

My Little Study: Ponies are Complicated

The original concept of this assignment was to spend about an hour in an environment that was “outside our comfort zone” and write about it. I think I may have gone a bit above and beyond the instruction, as there is a lot crammed in the five page limit. Many who hear the term “Brony” have a difficult time attempting to define it. This is not surprising, seeing as how the word has only gained relevancy over the last two years. At the same time, the rate of growth of “Bronies” in digital culture has been staggering during this period.

November 24, 2011 Peter Spezia

Thankful: Honesty Online

Moral panics exist about technology for a reason. These fears about how the latest communication methods will ruin the youth of the nation are typically conjectured by those who have very little experience with the technology. When this is studied further, new experiences help shape new opinions which may eventually become the norm over time. Internet communication is currently perceived as being dangerous because of its potential for diminishing social skills, increasing addiction, and separating parental control. However, the biggest moral panic still lies in the possible dishonesty that has occurred online, especially when trying to meet new friends. As

October 31, 2011 Peter Spezia

Gaming Violence and Guilt

When one studies communities that are forged as a result of competitive video games, the content of those games are an important variable. Not only that, but a critical portion of how those communities are structured is the way the game affects the player and his interpersonal relationships is. Hartmann, Toz, and Brandon analyze how a game may do this in their article “Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players” (2010). Since most competitive video games today employ an inherent level of violence, the factor of guilt can prove to be essential in affecting the player

September 28, 2011 Peter Spezia

Copyright in an Archive

Every individual who reliably uses the internet has something intriguing happen to them at one point or another. When someone loses hours of time, jumping from one video to another on YouTube, they can attest to the allure of the wide variety of content that exists in this massive video database. In all of those video tangents, however, it is likely that we all have encountered a video that has been removed or regionally blocked at some point. With the sense of vast archival footage that YouTube possesses, it was rather disappointing to see how little this week’s articles discussed

September 20, 2011 Peter Spezia

Cyberspace in Cartoons

It is difficult for a child to comprehend what the Internet truly is and how it really functions, even in today’s modern, web-driven world. So when the media that surrounds them tries to explain the concept, the process has to be basic and all sorts of jargon have to be removed. After all, it would be too complicated to tell a child that “When a packet comes in on a link, the router very quickly looks at the destination IP address, decides which outgoing link to use based on a limited Internet ‘map’ it holds, and sends the packet on

September 15, 2011 Peter Spezia

Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy

When we discussed the domestication of technology and the social shaping that goes along with it during the last class, the concept struck a particular chord with me. For one, a technology’s domestication is an idea that is widely understood, when explained as a phenomenon that occurs when technology which “once seemed marvelous and strange, capable of creating greatness and horror, is now so ordinary as to be invisible” (Baym 45). Many individuals can understand how machines in this day in age quickly reach a point where they lose their sense of wonderment. When it starts to reach that point