First Wall Rebate

I was invited to appear as a guest on Episode 11 of the excellent Big Red Potion podcast. Friends of FWR Sinan Kubba and Joseph DeLia are the normal hosts, and Jennifer Allen also appeared as a guest. We settle in for a nice chat on how games age, parallels and differences between aging games and other forms of media, and some issues associated with archivism and access to the gaming corpus. I had a blast recording it and I encourage everyone to subscribe to their feed. Thanks to all involved with the podcast, and thanks to you for listening.

Just making a quick plug here for the brand new Critical Distance blog and podcast. Critical Distance isn’t another aggregator for games coverage, but instead offers up insightful criticism of the coverage itself. If you enjoy and care about the kind of conversations we have on FWR, give Critical Distance a listen.

In our second Book Club episode we are delighted to be joined by McKenzie Wark to discuss his networked book Gamer Theory. In our conversation we explore the book’s genesis as an outcropping of Wark’s influential 2004 offering A Hacker Manifesto; its unique gestation as an online text at the Future of the Book; the connections between reading + play and writing + design; and how agon is at the center of the banking crisis and resultant New Depression economy. We also manage to work in a few of the questions you sent us, so make sure to listen carefully for your glorious No-Prize when we call your name.

We’d like to thank all of you who read along with us, and especially those of you who contributed comments and questions. We’ll be announcing a new selection for the club within the next few weeks, and look forward to having you join us again.

Continuing our focus on iPhone/iPod Touch games, Episode 019 is centered around the recent remake of Wolfenstein 3D for that platform. We talk about the history of Wolf 3D, the impact that John Carmack and id Software have had on videogames, computer networks, and Shawn’s patience. In a future episode, we’ll discuss how to install Doom on your toaster. Stay tuned.

We’ll be recording our second Book Club episode next week for Gamer Theory, and we’re pleased as punch to announce that the book’s author McKenzie Wark will be joining us for the discussion.

If you’d like to participate in the conversation, you can post comments or questions to our Book Club page, Facebook group, or direct message us on Twitter. We’ll be recording the episode on Thursday, April 9.