Not Just A Game

In which we discuss how, when, where, and why we might quit a game. It turns out we’ve both quit a lot of games for lots of different reasons! Tyr spins this into a beautiful archaeological metaphor, and we work through our site abandonment – whether planned, drifting away or through sudden flood. We talk about a LOT of games.

We also haven’t heard any complaints about the new simple format so we’ll keep doing it that way, which is cheap and quick to do. Thanks Squadcast!

In which Tyr, an archaeologist, discusses the Antiquarians Guild in Elder Scrolls Online with Catherine, who is not an archaeologist.

Also: Baldur’s Gate 3, a crying baby, Hades, and why crunch sucks.

Also also: whether you can still enjoy a thing if you disagree with the creator of said thing.

James Acaster on the British Museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY

Jim Salter “I played 15 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 early access, and I want them back”: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/10/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-mediocre-rpg-amazing-rendering-engine/

Catherine speaking at PAX online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMnd-YYgk10&t=8344s

Black Lives Matter.

So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo

Black Game Developers. Hire them. Buy their stuff.

Never Alone.

Games by Black creators:

https://radmagpie.org/blog/2020/2/6/support-black-game-developers

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02/26/games-developed-by-black-developers-you-should-look-out-for

https://www.inverse.com/gaming/video-games-by-black-developers

Behind the Police podcast

We’re back!

No I can’t quite believe it either! Anyway, we are talking about travel in this episode. It’s very exciting. Also, I’ve had a baby (he’s now 1, and absolutely adorable), and Tyr has moved to another country! We talk about this a bit. We also talk about games that have travel in them, games we play that make us travel through time and/or space, and games that help us not travel (by allowing us to virtually play with others). We also reminisce about terrible travel systems and good ones. FFXI is only mentioned a few times.

We aren’t going to charge patrons for this one because a) we want you to remember who we are before we ask you for money and b) because it’s a right pain in the butt to deal with now that the VAT rules have changed again. Therefore this is a budget episode with very little editing. (We wanted to try out discord recording too, and it’s eh, okay but eh.)

In this episode, Tyr and Catherine have opinions. No, we have Opinions. Capital O Opinions. Some of them are probably unpopular. Some of them we would defend with our lives. (Maybe.) Bad words are said. Totally @ us. (@CatherineFlick and @FothergillTyr on Twitter!)

We are also going to PAX East this year! Please come visit us in the Diversity Lounge at Catherine’s “Ask an Ethicist” booth. We’ll be doing a talk on AI in video games as well, currently scheduled for Saturday morning. We may have swag.

Don’t forget that if you like our stuff we have a Patreon! Just $1/podcast episode would help us a lot. Thanks so much to our wonderful Patrons – don’t forget you can suggest topics for us to cover at $5+: https://www.patreon.com/notjustagame

We’re back! In this episode, Tyr and Catherine play The Return of the Obra Dinn, and talk about it!

Spoilers: It’s a very good game.

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In this episode we talk holidays! Why do we have certain holidays in games, and not others? Why is Christmas in games not quite Christmas, but a weird pagan version of Christmas? Is it only because game devs want to annoy right wing American Christians? Where do all these  in-game traditions come from anyway? (It’s probably Saturnalia.)

What about ad-hoc celebrations? Ugh, so much about holidays I almost can’t wait for the next lot of turkey I get to eat! Maybe with some traditional Halloween turnips.

Battlefield 1 tweet by Jan David Hassel

Tyria Pride

Like our stuff? Please help us pay for our editor at our Patreon – just $1/episode really helps offset costs!

In this episode we talk about pets! Particularly Fortnite Pets, being both dragon experts and not Fortnite players at all. We may or may not sing silly on-topic songs. We discuss taking cute things into battle, gender issues of pets, domestic animals as food vs pets, particularly guinea pigs, and Fortnite and parenting despite not being parents. (Though we’ve done some research on these things!)

We also may or may not have had to re-record this episode due to Audacity crapping out on us

The BBC article we are talking about! 

If you like our silly songs and dragon expertise, please support our Patreon! 

In which Catherine and Tyr wrangle another fascinating victim special guest at ETHICOMP 2018, Prof. Andrew Adams, to talk about Pokémon Go and augmented reality games more generally. (Yes, another Pokémon Go one. I think we’re almost all out of material on Pokémon Go now.)

We talk social norms about Pokémon Go in Japan vs. other places, and safety while playing these games, that came out of a paper Andrew wrote about augmented reality games and the issues with large uptake of such games (disruption, poor locations of Pokestops, etc.).

We get interrupted by a Polish war memorial ceremony in the park outside our hotel, which is ironic because we talk about fighting in gyms at war memorials, as well as churches (and particularly Quaker meeting houses) and the discomfort that augmented reality games can sometimes bring when data is not perfect, or not used appropriately.

We also look at some of the upsides of Pokémon Go too though, so it’s not all doom and gloom!

I would link to Andrew’s paper on this but he hasn’t finished it yet.

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Hello! In this episode I have to apologise for the sound quality; we were recording at ETHICOMP 2018 in Sopot, Poland and the room was a bit more echoey than expected (and noisier) and apparently I didn’t point the microphone in quite the right direction. The sound does get better as the episode goes on. But still, we have excellent content as we are with Dr Erica Neely, who gave an amazing talk about the ethics of loot boxes! We talk about loot boxes, paying for levels, paying for gear, cheating, catching up, reputation, and fairness for a bit, then Tyr comes up with an amazing song about Twinkle Ponies. (Apparently songs after the credits is now a Thing, so enjoy!)

We now have a Patreon, if you’d like to support us by kicking us a dollar or two per episode! We plan to have fortnightly episodes. $5/episode unlocks a space on our Patreon where you can suggest topics for us to talk about

You can also support us by writing a review on iTunes or Google or whatever it is that accepts reviews about Podcasts!

Links:

Dr Erica Neely

ETHICOMP 2018