Not Just A Game

Back to our regular schedule! In this episode, we had a loadddd of technical issues which meant that we lost a bit of discussion, sadly (my poor old laptop couldn’t cope with a browser window being open while recording. Let’s just say old laptop has now gone to the “backup machine” pile now

Grrrr arrrrrghhh! We have risen from the (summertime busy-ness) dead and feasted on brains responded to all of your questions from our PAX East panel on our video!

Our plans for this podcast are growing as well – we now plan to do recordings more frequently, have actually put a standing two hour block of podcast recording time into our diaries, and have enlisted some editorial/production support as well. So we are taking this rather seriously now! Stay tuned – we hope to launch a patreon in the coming weeks to help cover the costs of running the podcast.

Video and slides of our PAX East talk

You may have seen our talk at PAX East on the Ethics of Pokémon Go – either live or via the YouTube video available at: https://www.notjustagame.eu/2018/05/07/video-interlude-pax-east-2018-ethics-of-pokemon-go/

In this episode we follow up with some of the questions we didn’t get to in the talk – it’s a bit longer than our usual episodes, and we’ll go back to normal after the second of these on zombies and brains, following up the other talk we did on archaeology and philosophy of zombies in video games!

 

Tyr and I are off to PAX East again, this time we will be talking about zombies (and Pokémon Go!)!

We were so excited we  invited some special guests to come play Left 4 Dead 2 with us (yes, they are our very patient and lovely husbands, Martin and Ray). Listen in to some of the shenanigans we got up to, and some thoughts about zombies, realism, decay, and why zombie games are so popular!

We have never played this game before and we are not very good at FPSes, so enjoy our attempts to TPK too!

Our talk on zombies at PAX East is on at 4:30-5:30PM on Saturday: BRAAAAAIIIIINS: Archaeology and Philosophy of Zombies in Games

Our talk on Pokémon Go! is on Friday 5:00-6:00PM: Ethics of Pokémon Go!

Music excerpts in this episode are from the Left 4 Dead 2 soundtrack – we use them for academic purposes!

Games mentioned:

* Left 4 Dead 2

* Last of Us

* Half Life (2)

Many thanks to Ray and Martin for putting up with me axing them in the back.

Happy New Year!

We take this episode to look back at some old skool gaming. What were our first computers, consoles, and games? Do you remember any of these games? What are your first gaming memories? Caution: spoilers for Return to Zork.

This one took a while to edit due to some technical difficulties, sorry!

Systems mentioned:

* IBM PC 286

* Atari

* BBC Microbee

* Apple II

* PlayStation 2

* Nintendo Entertainment System

* Pentium 90

Games mentioned (some downloadable for free!):

* Castle Adventure

* Adventure

* Nethack/roguelikes

* Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (with the Almanac and Book of Facts)

* Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

* Alpine Tram Ride

* Granny’s Garden

* Prince of Persia (which you can now get the source code of from github!)

* Prince of Persia Sands of Time

* Monkey Island

* Might and Magic II

* Heroes of Might and Magic

* Doom

* Myst

* Simon the Sorcerer

* King’s Quest VI

* Call of Duty

* Elder Scrolls Online

* Space Invaders

* Legend of Kyrandia III: Malcolm’s Revenge

* Zork

* Return to Zork

* Super Mario Bros

* Star Wars Rebel Assault

* Descent