Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #6: Why Adults Might Play Video Games

Eri­ca Spyres, Bri­an Hirt, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Ian Maio (who worked for mar­ket­ing for IGN and Turn­er in e‑sports) for our first dis­cus­sion about gam­ing. Do adults have any busi­ness play­ing video games? Should you feel guilty about your video game habits?

Ian gives us the lay of the land about e‑sports, com­par­ing it to phys­i­cal sports, and we dis­cuss the chang­ing social func­tions of gam­ing, alleged and actu­al gam­ing dis­or­ders, dif­fer­ent types of gamers, inclu­siv­i­ty, and more. Whether you game a lot or not at all, you should still find some­thing inter­est­ing here.

We touch on the King of Kong doc­u­men­tary, Grand Theft Auto, Over­watch, The Last of Us, Bor­der­lands, Super Mario, Cup­head, NY Times Elec­tron­ic Cross­word Puz­zle, and more. Be sure to watch the Black Mir­ror episode, “Strik­ing Vipers.”

Sources for this episode:

• “The eSports Phe­nom­e­non” by Jason Mok
• “For Men Who Hate Talk­ing On The Phone, Games Keep Friend­ships Alive” by Cecil­ia D’Anastasio
• “How Video Games Affect the Brain” by Han­nah Nichols
• “Sev­en Rea­sons to Play Com­put­er Games” by Ryan Ander­son
• “Play­ing Video Games Too Much Might Be Bad for Your Men­tal Health” by Jesse Hicks

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

Please go check out Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers at moderndayphilosophers.net and See You on the Oth­er Side at othersidepodcast.com.

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