Episode 23: Quitting

In which we discuss how, when, where, and why we might quit a game. It turns out we’ve both quit a lot of games for lots of different reasons! Tyr spins this into a beautiful archaeological metaphor, and we work through our site abandonment – whether planned, drifting away or through sudden flood. We talk about a LOT of games.

We also haven’t heard any complaints about the new simple format so we’ll keep doing it that way, which is cheap and quick to do. Thanks Squadcast!

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 19 Capital O Opinions

In this episode, Tyr and Catherine have opinions. No, we have Opinions. Capital O Opinions. Some of them are probably unpopular. Some of them we would defend with our lives. (Maybe.) Bad words are said. Totally @ us. (@CatherineFlick and @FothergillTyr on Twitter!)

We are also going to PAX East this year! Please come visit us in the Diversity Lounge at Catherine’s “Ask an Ethicist” booth. We’ll be doing a talk on AI in video games as well, currently scheduled for Saturday morning. We may have swag.

Don’t forget that if you like our stuff we have a Patreon! Just $1/podcast episode would help us a lot. Thanks so much to our wonderful Patrons – don’t forget you can suggest topics for us to cover at $5+: https://www.patreon.com/notjustagame

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

Like our stuff? Please help us pay for our editor at our Patreon – just $1/episode really helps offset costs!

Episode 14: Twinkle Ponies – with Erica Neely on Ethics of Lootboxes

Loot box picture

Hello! In this episode I have to apologise for the sound quality; we were recording at ETHICOMP 2018 in Sopot, Poland and the room was a bit more echoey than expected (and noisier) and apparently I didn’t point the microphone in quite the right direction. The sound does get better as the episode goes on. But still, we have excellent content as we are with Dr Erica Neely, who gave an amazing talk about the ethics of loot boxes! We talk about loot boxes, paying for levels, paying for gear, cheating, catching up, reputation, and fairness for a bit, then Tyr comes up with an amazing song about Twinkle Ponies. (Apparently songs after the credits is now a Thing, so enjoy!) ✨🦒✨

We now have a Patreon, if you’d like to support us by kicking us a dollar or two per episode! We plan to have fortnightly episodes. $5/episode unlocks a space on our Patreon where you can suggest topics for us to talk about 😀

You can also support us by writing a review on iTunes or Google or whatever it is that accepts reviews about Podcasts!

Links:

Dr Erica Neely

ETHICOMP 2018