In this conversation, Mr. Wes Schantz and I are joined by Dr. Jason Hawreliak, PhD, Assistant Professor of Game Studies at Brock University in their Centre for Digital Humanities. Dr. Hawreliak, Wes, and I consider (1) ideology, death-anxiety, and the relationship between "shooters", game-play mechanics, and the relationship between shooting games and times of war; (2) we consider video games as a vessel for narrative compared to literature and film, and (3) we consider to what extent a hero is a cultural construction, and how the image of a hero evolves over time and across media.

Below are a few sites which Dr. Hawreliak has helped start or been a part of and a link to one of his books:

https://brocku.academia.edu/JasonHawreliak

http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/johan-huizinga-in-the-shadow-of-tomorrow/

https://brocku.ca/humanities/digital-humanities/faculty-and-staff/

https://www.routledge.com/Multimodal-Semiotics-and-Rhetoric-in-Videogames/Hawreliak/p/book/9781138065734

http://twinery.org/

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KarenSchrier/20180124/313566/Using_Games_to_Inspire_Empathy__Pros_and_Cons.php

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us

https://www.amazon.com/Playing-War-Military-Video-Games/dp/147980522X

https://gonehome.game/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17euo2DzBZI (the infamous Virtual Boy)