Hades, the First Video Game to Win a Hugo, and the Roguelike Genre — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #117

in Podcasts, Video Games | March 3rd, 2022

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Super­giant’s Hades is now the first video game ever to have won a Hugo award for sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy fic­tion, and has set a new stan­dard in the Rogue­like genre, which fea­tures rel­a­tive­ly short “runs” through a ran­dom­ly-gen­er­at­ed dun­geon (or some equiv­a­lent) with per­ma-death, i.e. you die, you go back to the begin­ning. Gen­er­al­ly, these games are very hard.

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by three return­ing Pret­ty Much Pop guests: Psy­chol­o­gist of games Jamie Madi­gan, writer Al Bak­er, and musi­cian Tyler His­lop. In addi­tion to Hades, we talk about The Bind­ing of Isaac, FTL, Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Dark­est Dun­geon, Curse of the Dead Gods, Way­ward, Risk of Rain, and more. What dis­tin­guish­es a Rogue­like from a Rogue-lite, and does it mat­ter? How are they dif­fer­ent than old-style arcade games? What makes Hades unique in the genre?

Read about Rogue­likes on Wikipedia. See IGN’s list of best Rogue­likes and TheGamer’s list of most dif­fi­cult Rogue­likes.

A few oth­er rel­e­vant arti­cles include:

Fol­low @JamieMadigan, Al @ixisnox,  and Tyler @sacrifice_mc.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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What Is “Queering” in Video Game Design? Naomi Clark on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #103

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | September 2nd, 2021

While LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in video games has been improv­ing (as with oth­er media), Nao­mi Clark (who designed games for LEGO, Game­lab, Fresh Plan­et, Rebel Mon­key, et al) has some­thing more dis­rup­tive in mind when argu­ing for game “queer­i­fi­ca­tion.” The pro­to­typ­i­cal video game includes a more-or-less lin­ear pro­gres­sion through a pre-defined sto­ry to a defined win con­di­tion, and any­thing that chal­lenges that tra­di­tion to allow more self-expres­sion is a step in the direc­tion of queer­ing. Many pop­u­lar games now include a sand­box aspect that allows play­ers to make their own deci­sions, and this ges­tures at a con­tin­u­um of free­dom in play­er-game rela­tions, with the extreme being a game that just pro­vides a plat­form for play­ers to cre­ate their own games.

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er and guest co-host Tyler His­lop engage Nao­mi about top­ics like how games train us, char­ac­ter cre­ation, glitch­es, speed runs, gam­i­fy­ing  tasks, and eco­nom­ic and indus­try pres­sures in game design. Some games we touch on include The Sims, The Last of Us, Cyber­punk, and Mass Effect.

Read Naomi’s pre­sen­ta­tion on “Queer­ing Human-Game Rela­tions.” Get involved with the NYU Game­cen­ter where Nao­mi works. You can also play her ear­ly game Sis­sy­fight 2000 free online. A cou­ple of her oth­er cre­ations that come up in our dis­cus­sion include Won­der City and the card game Con­sen­ta­cle. Read her wis­dom on Quo­ra and fol­low her on Twit­ter @metasynthie.

Some sources reviewed to pre­pare for this episode include:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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The Psychology of Video Game Engagement — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #94 with Jamie Madigan

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Psychology, Video Games | June 4th, 2021

Why do peo­ple play video games, and what keeps them play­ing? Do we want to have to think through inno­v­a­tive puz­zles or just lose our­selves in mind­less reac­tiv­i­ty? Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Dr. Jamie Madi­gan, an orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist who runs the Psy­chol­o­gy of Video Games pod­cast, to dis­cuss what sort of a thing this is to research, the evo­lu­tion of games, play­er types, moti­va­tion vs. engage­ment, incen­tives and feed­back, as well as the gam­i­fi­ca­tion of work or school envi­ron­ments. Some games we touch on include Don­key Kong, Dark Souls, It Takes Two, Retur­nal, Hades, Sub­nau­ti­ca, Fort­nite, and Age of Z.

Some of the episodes of Jamie’s pod­cast rel­e­vant for our dis­cus­sion are:

Check out his books and arti­cles too. Here are a cou­ple of addi­tion­al sources about engage­ment:

The site Eri­ca men­tions about dis­abled modes in gam­ing is caniplaythat.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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“The Last of Us” Franchise: Can Video Games Be Cinema? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#64)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | October 15th, 2020

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Bri­an Hirt, and Eri­ca Spyres all played both The Last of Us, and more recent­ly immersed them­selves in the length­i­er The Last of Us 2, which has been gen­er­at­ing a lot of acclaim but also con­tro­ver­sy. Actu­al­ly, Eri­ca just watch­es her hus­band Drew Jack­son play these things, but he showed up to this dis­cus­sion too. Yes, these cre­ations of Neil Druck­mann with the Naughty Dog team are ground­break­ing, and riv­et­ing, but by design not nec­es­sar­i­ly “fun,” or there­by involv­ing much “play­ing.”

The fran­chise is osten­si­bly about a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse and an immune girl that might be its cure, but it’s real­ly a drawn-out dra­ma about loss, fam­i­ly, and the cycle of revenge… You know, in between run­ning around look­ing for scraps to craft weapon upgrades and skulk­ing around dri­ving shivs through the necks of numer­ous mon­sters and peo­ple.

We com­pare The Last of Us to oth­er zom­bie media like Walk­ing Dead, address the shift­ing points of view in the game (playable flash­backs!), rep­re­sen­ta­tion, fan and crit­i­cal reac­tion, the effec­tive­ness of the game’s mes­sage, and more.

This con­ver­sa­tion should work both for lis­ten­ers who’ve actu­al­ly played the games and those who are just curi­ous about what the fuss is about. There are some plot spoil­ers about the end of the first game and events near the begin­ning of the sec­ond game nec­es­sary to dis­cuss the nar­ra­tive.

Lis­ten to the offi­cial Last of Us pod­cast. For anoth­er play­er per­spec­tive, check out the Besties pod­cast.

Oth­er resources:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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You Can Play the New Samurai Video Game Ghost of Tsushima in “Kurosawa Mode:” An Homage to the Japanese Master

in Film, History, Video Games | July 17th, 2020

Video games are start­ing to look and feel like movies: even those of us who haven’t gamed seri­ous­ly in decades have tak­en notice. Nor has the con­ver­gence between the art forms — if, unlike the late Roger Ebert, you con­sid­er video games an art form in the first place — been lost on game devel­op­ers them­selves. While the most ambi­tious cre­ators in the indus­try looked for inspi­ra­tion from cin­e­ma even when they were work­ing with rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive dig­i­tal tools, they can now pay prac­ti­cal­ly direct homage to their aes­thet­ic sources. Take Suck­er Punch Pro­duc­tions’ Ghost of Tsushi­ma, released this week for the Playsta­tion 4, which fea­tures a selec­table audio­vi­su­al mode “inspired by the movies of leg­endary film­mak­er Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.”

An ambi­tious pro­duc­tion set on the tit­u­lar Japan­ese island dur­ing a 13th-cen­tu­ry Mon­gol inva­sion, Ghost of Tsushi­ma casts the play­er in the role of a young samu­rai named Jin Sakai. “All the aes­thet­ic and the­mat­ic con­ven­tions of samu­rai films are present and cor­rect,” writes The Guardian’s Keza Mac­Don­ald, includ­ing “a sto­ry cen­tered on hon­or and self-mas­tery; dra­mat­ic weath­er that sweeps across Japan’s spell­bind­ing land­scapes; stand­offs against back­drops of falling leaves and desert­ed towns; screen wipe and axi­al cuts; quick, lethal katana com­bat that ends with ene­mies stag­ger­ing and spurt­ing blood before top­pling like felled trees.” Kuro­sawa Mode presents the game’s hyp­not­i­cal­ly lav­ish visu­als in a “grainy black-and-white,” and its dia­logue in Eng­lish-sub­ti­tled Japan­ese — just how many of us remem­ber pic­tures like Sev­en Samu­rai, Throne of Blood, and Yojim­bo.

Of course, some of us had no choice but to first encounter the work of Kuro­sawa and oth­er 20th-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese auteurs in ver­sions dubbed into Eng­lish. In an uncan­ny rever­sal of that awk­ward­ness, the Amer­i­can-made Ghost of Tsushi­ma’s Japan­ese-lan­guage dia­logue comes out of mouths clear­ly syn­chro­nized to an Eng­lish-lan­guage script. West­ern crit­ics have tak­en the devel­op­ers to task for that short­com­ing, but Japan­ese crit­ics have proven com­par­a­tive­ly unre­strained in express­ing their admi­ra­tion. Accord­ing to Kotaku’s Bri­an Ashcraft, not only did pop­u­lar gam­ing site Denge­ki Online “praise the game for its under­stand­ing of the peri­od (as well as his­tor­i­cal Japan­ese movies), it also laud­ed the game for how it brought the land­scape and scenery to life.”

While Mac­Don­ald calls pro­tag­o­nist Jin Sakai “stiff even by sto­ical samu­rai stan­dards,” Ashcraft points to a review in Japan­ese pop-cul­ture site Aki­ba Souken which calls him not “the typ­i­cal samu­rai of for­eign cre­ation, but rather, a real Japan­ese 侍 (samu­rai),” using “both the Eng­lish ‘samu­rai’ and the word’s kan­ji to high­light this dis­tinc­tion.” Any Kuro­sawa fan will have a sense of the dif­fer­ence, and of the impor­tance of one thing the game does­n’t get right. In a review head­lined “There Is No Sense Of Dis­com­fort In This For­eign-Made Japan­ese World,” gam­ing mag­a­zine Week­ly Famit­su does note the game’s lack of “paus­es in con­ver­sa­tion that are typ­i­cal of peri­od pieces. That pause and that silence are key; in Japan, what isn’t said is just as impor­tant as what is.” Suck­er Punch’s Ghost of Tsushi­ma team must already know they should retain Kuro­sawa Mode for the inevitable sequel; all they need to work on is the unspo­ken.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai Per­fect­ed the Cin­e­mat­ic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

The Gold­en Age of Ancient Greece Gets Faith­ful­ly Recre­at­ed in the New Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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What Is a “Casual Game?” Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #46 Talks to Nick Fortugno, Creator of “Diner Dash”

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | June 3rd, 2020

Famed game design­er Nick joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to con­sid­er fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the activ­i­ty of gam­ing (Nick calls games “arbi­trary lim­its on mean­ing­less goals”) and what con­sti­tutes a casu­al game: Is it one that’s easy (maybe not easy to win, but at least you don’t die), one meant to be played in short bursts, or maybe one with a cer­tain kind of art style, or just about any game that runs on a phone? Nick­’s most famous cre­ation is the casu­al Din­er Dash, which can be very stress­ful. Vast­ly dif­fer­ent games from very hard but very short action games and very involved but sooth­ing strat­e­gy games get lumped under this one label.

Our con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on every­thing from cross­words to Super Meat Boy, plus the rela­tion between psy­chol­o­gy and game design, whether casu­al games real­ly play less than hard­core gamers, the stig­ma of an activ­i­ty that was for mar­ket­ing rea­sons at one point brand­ed as being just for ado­les­cent boys, and even heuris­tics for beat­ing slot machines.

Some sources we looked at include:

Just so you don’t have to write them down, our rec­om­men­da­tions at the end were:

You can fol­low Nick @nickfortugno.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Are Video Games an Effective Vehicle for Storytelling? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #35 Featuring Don Marshall

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Video Games | March 18th, 2020

Do you play video games for the plot? Giv­en that most peo­ple don’t actu­al­ly fin­ish most games, it would be unex­pect­ed if sto­ry­telling were the most impor­tant ele­ment. On this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast, your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by for­mer video game pro­fes­sion­al (and cur­rent TV devel­op­ment exec­u­tive) Don­ald E. Mar­shall to talk through types of plots (lin­ear, “string-of-pearls,” and branch­ing), ways of weav­ing sto­ry into a game, bal­anc­ing game­play and nar­ra­tive, and more.

We touch on Death Strand­ing, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Skyrim, Fall­out, Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, Eri­ca, Bioshock, Tell­tale Games, Jour­ney, Ban­der­snatch, Days Gone, Por­tal, and more. (That casu­al game Mark jokes about is Simon’s Cat Pop Time.)

Some arti­cles and oth­er sources:

You can also read some lists of games that sup­pos­ed­ly have the best plots at Games­Radar, Ranker, and The Gamer.

Don is also a pod­cast­er, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been a host of Geek­sOn and now on The Big Fat Gay Pod­cast. Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show. One rel­e­vant Geek­sOn episode is #102.  Here’s info about the Wheel of Time TV show.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

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36,000 Flash Games Have Been Archived and Saved Before Flash Goes Extinct: Play Them Offline

in Archives, Video Games | February 4th, 2020

Adobe has announced that the Flash Play­er will come to the offi­cial end of its life on the last day of this year, Decem­ber 31, 2020. News of the demise of an obso­lete inter­net mul­ti­me­dia plat­form pre­sum­ably both­ers few of today’s web-surfers, but those of us belong­ing to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion feel in it the end of an era. First intro­duced by Macro­me­dia in 1996, Flash made pos­si­ble the kind of ani­ma­tion and sound we’d sel­dom seen and heard — assum­ing we could man­age to load it through our slug­gish con­nec­tions at all — on the inter­net before. By the ear­ly 2000s, Flash seemed to pow­er most every­thing fun on the inter­net, espe­cial­ly every­thing fun to the kids then in mid­dle and high school who’d grown up along­side the World Wide Web.

Though now deep into adult­hood, we all remem­ber the hours of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry we hap­pi­ly whiled away on Flash games, rac­ing cars, solv­ing puz­zles, shoot­ing zom­bies, dodg­ing comets, fir­ing can­nons, and pilot­ing heli­copters on class­room com­put­ers. We could, in the­o­ry, find many of these games and play them still today, but that may become impos­si­ble next year when all major web browsers will dis­con­tin­ue their sup­port for Flash.

“That’s where Flash­point comes in to save a huge chunk of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen. “Flash­point uses open-source tech to allow folks to down­load and play a large list of games and ani­ma­tions. The full list con­tains just over 36,000 games and you can sug­gest new games to be added if some­thing you love isn’t on here.”

On Flash­point’s down­load page you’ll find its full 290-giga­byte col­lec­tion of Flash games, as well as a small­er ver­sion that only down­loads games as you play them. “While Flash games might not be as impres­sive today, they are still an impor­tant part of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Zwiezen. “These small web games can be direct­ly linked to the lat­er rise of mobile and indie games and helped many cre­ators get their feet wet with build­ing and cre­at­ing video games.” In oth­er words, the sim­ple Flash amuse­ments of our school­days gave rise to the graph­i­cal­ly and son­i­cal­ly intense games that we play so com­pul­sive­ly today. Now we have kids who play those sorts of games too, but who among us will ini­ti­ate the next gen­er­a­tion into the ways of Crush the Cas­tle, Age of War, and Bub­ble Trou­ble?

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the flash video game archive on this FAQ page.

via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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