Sam & Beth Ann discuss the evolution of player freedom in games, examining sandbox games, open world games, and RPGs with branching narratives.

In this episode Sam Armstrong looks at how games are used to tell stories by taking a dive into the various ways that games have been used to tell stories such as in Uncharted, Undertale, and the Persona series which are well beloved for their stories. Sam also be looking at games that tell stories in less traditional ways such as Journey, Fire Watch, and Braid. Sam interviews two avid gamers, one who plays a lot of story driven games and one who does not: hear two diverse perspectives on why they like these kinds of games and why they do not like these kinds of games.

Video games are bringing new life to folklore in their digital interactive reiterations, and games are definitely a platform that highlights folkloric aspects well (personal horror, disorienting strangeness, interpretative play, humanity-centrality). Whether or not video games are truly "saving" folklore, they're certainly exposing a new generation to these types of stories and opening up a new chapter of possibility so they can continue to live and breathe.

Why is a librarian making a podcast about video games?

(Apologies about the audio quality of this episode.)