Moving Pixels Podcast

This week we have a special interview for you. We'll be doing more interviews as time goes on, talking with people who're not just gamers, but people who've been genuinely moved by their love of games.

Holly Conrad is a costume designer and an avid gamer. And by costume designer, I mean sculptor, engineer, seamstress, and designer. She recently became a minor internet celebrity with her audition video for a Joss Whedon produced documentary about Comic Con, in which she showed off the impressive set of Mass Effect 2 costumes that she's been creating.

She took time from her busy schedule to talk about games and how they inspire.

Warning: There are some spoilers for Mass Effect 2 in theis discussion.

Coming off a really solid half year of gaming and in the wake of E3, the Moving Pixels podcast considers the upcoming titles that publishers and developers have just given us a taste for. Based on screenshots, teasers, and gameplay demos we discuss titles that look exciting, disappointing, and just plain intimidating (I'm looking at you Portal 2 gameplay demo).

Playing the role of prophet is a tradition as old as video game criticism, so look no further for a heap of prognostication and plain ol' guesswork.

Turn around, walk away, blow town. That would have been the smart thing to do. Guess I wasn't that smart.-Max Payne

I guess the Moving Pixels crew isn't that smart either. Rather than bask in the warmth of the summer sun, our podcast crew revisits the darkened, snowed-in streets of Noir York City with a discussion of Max Payne.

Arriving in 2001 with stylish bullet time gunplay and an attitude boiled harder than any novel by Dashiell Hammett, Max Payne remains a significant influence on this decade's games. We consider why and whether it holds up nearly a decade after its release.

Last week Nick, Tom, and Rick discussed the world and game play of Red Dead Redemption in a spoiler-free episode.

This week, Chris is back with the posse, and we delve into the storytelling and overall plot of Red Dead Redemption. We look at the motives of John Marston, as well as those of the cavalcade of characters that make up Rockstar's western. Spoilers abound, so consider yourself warned.

This week we're a man down, but there's no stopping us now that we're hot on the trail. Nick, Tom, and Rick take on the world and game play of Red Dead Redemption in this spoiler-free episode. Does this Grand Theft Auto-influenced open world Old West extravaganza live up to its gaming pedigree? Or does it maybe exceed all expectations? Or does it depend on who you ask? As always, we don't all quite agree, but we've all got a lot to say about the world of Red Dead Redemption.

This week the Moving Pixels podcast explores the American Nightmare that is the Capital Wasteland. We consider how Bethesda merges a retro American ideal with their post-apocalyptic vision of an America "after the bomb" in Fallout 3.

From the birth of the player character into this American wilderness to the role of the first person perspective in seeing this new world, our regular podcast contributors analyze the quirks and curiosities of this kind of game world.

The town of Bright Falls is a pretty creepy place made creepier by the imagination of author, Alan Wake, but also by the player's own fears.

This week we discuss how effectively terror and fear are generated in the game Alan Wake and how the player is complicit in authoring such horror as well.

The worlds of the Assassin's Creed series are layered ones. Simulations of historical times and places are nested within a near future world of corporate intrigue and a broader vision of history defined by an ages old battle between templars and assassins.

Our podcast contributors spent this week unravelling these worlds within worlds as well as exploring their interelatedness. Join the Moving Pixels podcast for a discussion of simulations within simulations, historical recreations, and the presentation of worlds both familiar, mysterious, and most often brutally realized.

After last week's look at the vast reaches of outer space, we decided to change the focus of our discussion from the heavens to the depths of the ocean. Arguably one of the most fully realized spaces in contemporary gaming, Rapture is almost less a city than it is a mood, a tone, an atmosphere.

Our crew discusses our responses to the latest iteration of the terrifying but often sublime undersea city as it appears in Bioshock 2.

This week our discussion of game worlds moves from the claustrophobic halls of the asylum to the vast reaches of space.

Continuing our consideration of game worlds and their effect on our experience playing games, we consider both the broad galatic maps of Mass Effect as well as the narrower confines of intergalatic ports of call and the bridges of starships and how they impact on Bioware's collection of characters.