This week on Gaming With the Moms we have a very special guest: Amy Lang, of Birds and Bees and Kids! Amy is a writer and speaker who offers webinars on how to start talking to kids about sex, and she really has some great advice. With us she talks about the rules that she sets for her kids: yes, she advocates using monitoring software to see where they go online. She also has a great strategy for making sure her 15 year old son really works to play Grand Theft Auto V. It's worked so well that he actually hasn't played it yet.

We segue into discussing online safety as well, and what it means to be in an online friendship. In the news, we discuss Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (yeah, that's its real name) and the upcoming Minecraft Story Mode.

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This week on Gaming With the Moms we talk about the new Apple announcements from their September Event. Namely, the Apple TV is going to have games on it! Simone has her doubts that this is going to reach the right audience, but she still wants to new Apple TV.

We also discuss the upcoming Pikmin game and Ubisoft's theme park that will be built in Malaysia. Then Christy Weckner of Geocaching HQ takes it away to tell us about a game that gets people outside and exploring their neighborhoods.

Write us at [email protected] if you have questions! We love reading them.

We just got back from PAX Prime, and only Simone contracted the dreaded PAX Pox. After a sound berating, we get into the news from the convention.

Nicole got a chance to try Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 and loved it, but not as much as she loves new MOBA Gigantic. Courtney has some disappointing impressions about Star Fox Zero, but she and Simone played basically the best VR game on Oculus Rift ever: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Simone shares her impressions of the new Skylanders SuperChargers Racing for the Nintendo 3DS, and Linda talks about the ID@Xbox event she attended.

And that barely covers half of our PAX news! Check out pixelkin.org for the full details.

Remember that you can write in to us at [email protected] and we'll answer your questions on the podcast.

Hello hello! This week we have a lot of news to go over. First, we discuss the upcoming toys-to-life game LEGO Dimensions, which everyone feels pretty cynical about. We also talk about YouTube's new hub, YouTube Gaming, which curates video game-related YouTube channels. Pixelkin has one! It's pretty awesome.

Most of all we're excited and terrified about PAX Prime coming up. This is Seattle's big gaming convention, and we'll be covering it a lot this year. After a dive into that, we talk with Lisa Jaech about how she grew up watching her big brother game. We also talk about the ways that kids game imaginatively. Lisa used to do some pretty whacky stuff with Diddy Kong Racing.

As always, email your questions to [email protected], and check out pixelkin.org for our PAX updates!

Former Senior Advisor for Digital Media for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Mark DeLoura joins us to talk about educational video games and how the industry can succeed.

First, we have to go over the news. Skylanders BattleCast is coming out next year and Simone is really, really... not excited, for once. There's also the Serious Games Showcase and Challenge, which is accepting entries now. Nicole is also really excited about Hearthstone, as usual.

Then we get into the meat of discussing games for education, and how the Xbox Kinect deserved better.

If you have any questions for us, email them to [email protected]! We'd love to answer them on the show

Linda, Nicole, and Simone are joined by the hilarious Meredith Bland, who writes at pileofbabies.com!

First we talk news. Linda recaps the finale of The International, which is the big DOTA 2 tournament that just happened in Seattle. The handheld Steam Machine, aka the Smach Zero, will go on sale this November, and Simone has to explain every little thing about it. Then we bash our heads against the Oculus lawsuit, trash learnification, and talk about Halo 5's shiny new "T for Teen" rating.

We've been putting Meredith through the wringer, making her play games with her kids and write down the hilarious results. She talks about her challenges, her successes, and what she learned from the experience. Also we laugh a lot. She's hilarious.