In Episode 009 we team up with Shawn Rider from GamesFirst! for a conversation on Braid and Little Big Planet. We also talk about the social potential of gaming, web games journalism, multimodal art, and some of the other titles we’ve been playing recently.
Check out Shawn’s social networking project, CrashBomb, where you can track and compare games with your friends. As always, thanks for listening.
In this episode, responding to Spore and Little Big Planet, we discuss user-created content and how it relates to questions of ownership and authorial distribution. We also drool over our new MacBooks, get excited about unnamed upcoming guests, and talk over the haunting sounds of barking dogs. Thanks for listening.
We are joined this episode by Nick Montfort for a discussion of interactive fiction. We get his takes on the role of interactive fiction, resistance to the form by members of the gaming and literary communities, and the Apple IIc he keeps in his office.
Nick is the author/programmer of Book and Volume, around which we anchor our conversation. Be sure to visit his website at nickm.com, and look for his upcoming book with Ian Bogost on the Atari VCS called Racing the Beam. Thanks for listening.
We turn this episode over to Selena Salihovic and Jeff Hutchins, friends from the Writer’s Edge, for their report on the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. They braved legions of sweaty nerds, long lines, and snot-nosed little kids to bring us this ground level view of the conference. Listen as they narrate their experiences with Princess Peach cosplayers, the free-form tournament system, and Game Boy chiptuning rock stars.
As usual, get in touch and keep checking back for new episodes. Thanks for listening.
This epsiode was produced in conjunction with our friend Mez Breeze via her wonderful site, Augmentology.
She elegantly writes:
“This podcast is the first in a series of rolling podcasts which will discuss issues relevant to synthetic ecologies. In this pocast, Trevor Dodge and Shane Hinton chat about First-Person Shooters and what it means to inhabit and play within these types of synthetic environments.
In this podcast, central issues under discussion by Shane and Trevor include:
Thanks to Mez for the opportunity to contribute, and keep your ears peeled for more episodes soon — both here and in the growing Augmentology canon.
Our first FWR Book Club episode is now complete. As some of you already know, the selection for this episode was Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, edited by Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg. This episode is composed of responses that we collected from friends and listeners both here at the site and in our Facebook group. Many thanks to those of you who took time to write in.
Our next Book Club selection is Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark, available for reading both online and in the traditional dead-tree format.
Some of the best commentary about games and gaming culture to be found anywhere on ye ol interwebs is produced by Michael Abbott. We’re big fans of both his Brainy Gamer blog and podcast, and excited to see he is ramping up his Vintage Game Club to go a few rounds with a little game called Deus Ex. Shane and I are both tracking down copies of the game (which, apparently, is available to play *for free* over at Gametap) next week, and looking forward to jumping on the VGC discussion board for some high-octane playin and prattlin.
Tangentially: McKenzie Wark dedicated a full chapter of Gamer Theory to Deus Ex. Bet your bottom dollar we’ll be flipping through that soon as well.
In Episode 005 we talk Grand Theft Auto IV in a noisy hallway, wandering through such topics as:
The narrative structure of the game and comparisons to Edgar Allan Poe’s vision of story crafting.
Graphical representations, the timelessness of game space, and fear of art overtaking reality.
Troubling characters based on stereotypes and Three’s Company.
More episodes are coming soon. Thanks for listening.
Shane and I will be recording the Book Club episode of FWR within the next week or so and would be delighted to have you participate. If you’ve already picked up a copy of Corneliussen & Walker-Rettberg’s book Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft reader, please post your thoughts here on our blog or in our Facebook forum and we’ll incorporate them into the show. If you haven’t read the book but would still be willing to share your WoW thoughts/observances/experiences, we’d love to have you chime in as well.
More than anything, we are way more interested in facilitating a conversation about WoW and issues raised in the book than “reviewing” or critiquing. If you are even passingly interested in World of Warcraft, we want to hear from you.
Cheers!
The dust has settled on the personal interferences, vacation plans, and marathon sessions of Grand Theft Auto and Metal Gear Solid that have blocked our podcast progress for the last few weeks. We invite you to explore FWR Episode 004, in which we:
Record in a tiny closet during the Writer’s Edge conference in Portland, Oregon, and forget to introduce ourselves.
Discuss the portrayals of war in games in reference to the Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid franchises.
Think about the labor issues involved with the recent controversy regarding voice actors in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Look for our GTA Blowout episode soon, and thanks for listening.