Episode 20: Travel

We’re back!

No I can’t quite believe it either! Anyway, we are talking about travel in this episode. It’s very exciting. Also, I’ve had a baby (he’s now 1, and absolutely adorable), and Tyr has moved to another country! We talk about this a bit. We also talk about games that have travel in them, games we play that make us travel through time and/or space, and games that help us not travel (by allowing us to virtually play with others). We also reminisce about terrible travel systems and good ones. FFXI is only mentioned a few times.

We aren’t going to charge patrons for this one because a) we want you to remember who we are before we ask you for money and b) because it’s a right pain in the butt to deal with now that the VAT rules have changed again. Therefore this is a budget episode with very little editing. (We wanted to try out discord recording too, and it’s eh, okay but eh.)

Episode 17: It’s beginning to look a lot like Saturnalia!

Pride parade in GW2

In this episode we talk holidays! Why do we have certain holidays in games, and not others? Why is Christmas in games not quite Christmas, but a weird pagan version of Christmas? Is it only because game devs want to annoy right wing American Christians? Where do all these  in-game traditions come from anyway? (It’s probably Saturnalia.)

What about ad-hoc celebrations? Ugh, so much about holidays I almost can’t wait for the next lot of turkey I get to eat! Maybe with some traditional Halloween turnips.

Battlefield 1 tweet by Jan David Hassel

Tyria Pride

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Not Just A Game Episode 8: Things We Like

This week we talk about things we like! (Though “Halloween around the corner” implies this was recorded before Halloween… which is true. I’ve been very busy. Sorry! Also the voice levels aren’t great this episode. Sorry!)

We’re so used to being critical that we think it’s important that we also talk about nice things and things we like in games.

We talk costumes, avatars, hair cuts, Conchita Wurst, doing all of the tutorials, getting embarrassed in front of NPCs, working together in big social worlds, emergent community codes of conduct within games, societal beginnings, octopuses, stories that surprise us, and more!

Games mentioned:

  • Final Fantasy XI/XIV
  • Elder Scrolls Online
  • Guild Wars 2
  • an unnamed game where female dwarves can have beards
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Everquest 2
  • Octodad: Dadliest Catch
  • Spec Ops: The Line
  • and more that I’ve forgotten…

Not Just a Game Episode 5: Relaunch – Pit People!

This week I relaunch the podcast and introduce the new co-host of the show, Dr. Tyr Fothergill! She has graciously agreed to sit and chat with me every couple of weeks about games and stuff!

This week we are talking about Pit People, how it’s OK to be critical of stuff that you like, colonialism in games, and what we’ve been playing recently.

We’ll be experimenting with the best way to record this so please let me know how it sounds.