Scholars At Play

Feed Drop!! In this new podcast, Derek, Zach, and friends talk through games and media, together.

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Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-n3ieq-11a3b2e

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0e6LX1a3MmR7nJkza5Pi49?si=1e7648dd3ca74a92

In this first episode, we talk about Zelda's newest open-world game, Tears of the Kingdom, and what it's themes and narrative mean for us, right now.

Derek and Kyle sit down to talk about Derek's recently-completed dissertation "The Work of Nonfiction: Simulator Games in Germany." Derek talks about the history of simulator games, the specific simulators he studies, and what we can learn from games all about machines and work.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

4:11 - Theory, text, and context in research

8:30 - Origins of the project and how it developed, brief history of simulator games

20:12 - Theories and methods of the project

37:33 - Examples of popular simulator games from the mid-2000s

45:05 - How do these "newer" simulator games break from or continue in the tradition of older simulator games?

58:11 - How do simulator games respond to contemporary transformations of work in the 21st century, and why did the simulator game genre become popular in German-speaking contexts?

1:17:50 - The limits of critique/suspicion in research, and a brief discussion about how gender and class under-gird simulator game realism.

Subscribe to Dodging Hollow on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dodging-hollow

Edited intro music is "Day Bird" by Broke for Free, Creative Commons by attribution. Check out their music here: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Broke_For_Free/Directionless_EP

The scholars may be physically distant, but that won't stop them from talking about all their quarantine gaming! Join us for an EXTRA long "What's In You System" where we talk about how our gaming has changed during the ongoing pandemic.

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Games Discussed: Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Animal Crossing, Link Between Worlds, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Deep Space D6

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Hosts:

Derek Price: twitter.com/digital_derek

Terrell Taylor: twitter.com/BlackSocrates

Kyle Romero: twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

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Contact:

email: [email protected]

twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

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Music:

"We Can Do It" by Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic)

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Terrell leads Kyle and Derek on an exploration of the politics of failure and FromSoftware's Bloodborne (2015). They reflect on their own experiences with this challenging game and discuss how the game intersects with narratives of success and failure from different perspectives. Is the imperative to "git gud," common among hardcore fans of FromSoftware's games, an exclusionary, bootstrapping narrative all about personal success, or can we imagine a different politics (of success or failure) arising from FromSoftware's "harsh but fair" design paradigm? You'll have to listen to find out!

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Objects Discussed

Game

- Bloodborne (FromSoftware, 2015)

Texts

- Hudson - "In Bloodborne's brutal world, I found myself" (2015, Offworld.com)

- Juul - "The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games" (2013, MIT Press)

- "The Arts of Failure: Jack Halberstam in Conversation with Jesper Juul Moderated by Bonnie Ruberg" (2017, in: Queer Game Studies)

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Hosts

Terrell Taylor - twitter.com/blacksocrates

Derek Price - twitter.com/digital_derek

Kyle Romero - twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

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Contact us!

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

scholarsatplay.net

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Special thanks: Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic) for the use of their song "We Can Do It," and our Distinguished Colleague Patreon supporters, including: Carol R.

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Support us on Patreon!

patreon.com/scholarsatplay

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Derek, Kyle, Curtis, and Sabeen have a conversation about the opportunities and challenges in using digital games to teach history. This episode was recorded live at "Learning at Play," a 1-day symposium on games for learning and social change which took place at Vanderbilt on 8 November 2019. For more on the event, see: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/play/

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Objects Discussed

Games

- Assassin’s Creed 2 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009)

- Attentat 1942 (Charles University, 2017)

Texts

- Gilbert - “‘Assassin’s Creed reminds us that history is human experience’: Students’ senses of empathy while playing a narrative video game” (2019, in: Theory & Research in Social Education)

Objects Mentioned:

- Komel: "ORIENTALISM IN ASSASSIN’S CREED: SELF-ORIENTALIZING THE ASSASSINS FROM FORERUNNERS OF MODERN TERRORISM INTO OCCIDENTALIZED HEROES" (2014)

- Sisler: "Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games" (2008)

- Sisler: "Contested Memories of War in Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination: Designing a Serious Game on Contemporary History" (2016)

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Hosts

Derek Price - twitter.com/digital_derek

Kyle Romero - twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

Curtis Maughan

Sabeen Ahmed

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Contact us!

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

scholarsatplay.net

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Special thanks: Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic) for the use of their song "We Can Do It," and our Distinguished Colleague Patreon supporters, including: Carol R.

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Support us on Patreon!

patreon.com/scholarsatplay

Episode 14 - Metagaming

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Derek, Kyle, and Terrell finally get it together and have a long, winding conversation about Dr. Stephanie Boluk and Dr. Patrick LeMieux's book "Metagaming" and the kinds of games we like to play with games.

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Objects Discussed

Texts:

- "Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames (Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux, 2017)

(Meta)Games:

- Heat Signature, Hitman (2016), Divinity Original Sin 2, FTL: Faster Than Light, The Pokemon Trading Card Game,

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Hosts

Derek Price - twitter.com/digital_derek

Terrell Taylor - twitter.com/BlackSocrates

Kyle Romero - twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

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Contact us!

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

scholarsatplay.net

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Special thanks: Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic) for the use of their song "We Can Do It" and our Distinguished Colleague Patreon supporters, including:

Carol R.

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Support us on Patreon!

patreon.com/scholarsatplay

In a special episode, Derek sits down with Pascal Wagner (Language At Play, Polyneux, GAIN Magazin) to talk about their experiences at A MAZE 2019, an independent festival for games that happens every year in Berlin. They talk about the great games and talks they saw, as well as some games they had some more critical reactions to. See below for a more detailed list of what they talked about, and when.

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Timestamps

4:50 - A MAZE in general

11:20 - "The Game: The Game" (https://angelawashko.com/home.html)

25:18 - "Fantastic Fetus" (https://cyangmou.itch.io/fantastic-fetus) and other AMAZE talks

42:57 - Death Trash (http://deathtrash.com/)

44:10 - The Fermi Paradox (http://fermi-paradox.com/press/sheet.php?p=fermi%20paradox)

51:52 - Curious Expedition (https://curious-expedition.com/)

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Recommended Texts

-Dom Ford ““eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate”: Affective Writing of Postcolonial History and Education in Civilization V” (http://gamestudies.org/1602/articles/ford)

-Johan Höglund - Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter (http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/hoeglund)

-Soraya Murray: “The Work of Postcolonial Game Studies in the Play of Culture” (https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.285/)

-Souvik Mukherjee - “Playing Subaltern: Video Games and Postcolonialism” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412015627258)

-Pascal Wagner - "Civilization, colonialism, and the misunderstanding of history" (https://languageatplay.de/2017/07/31/civilization-colonialism-and-the-misunderstanding-of-history/)

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Hosts:

Derek Price: https://twitter.com/digital_derek

Pascal Wagner: https://twitter.com/indieflock

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Contact:

email: [email protected]

twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

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Music:

"We Can Do It" by Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic)

The Scholars are back! After traveling through time and space, Derek has finally reunited with his stateside counterparts, Kyle and Terrell, to catch up and see "What's In Your System?" We talk about what we've been playing over the last few months, especially Heat Signature, Castlevania (the games and the show), the diverging narratives of Warhammer, the (divisive) idea of proxies in Warhammer and Magic: The Gathering, and The Power 9.

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Hosts:

Derek Price: twitter.com/digital_derek

Terrell Taylor: twitter.com/BlackSocrates

Kyle Romero: twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

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Contact:

email: [email protected]

twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

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Music:

"We Can Do It" by Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic)

Content Warning: discussions of sexual abuse and assault

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Sabeen Ahmed returns to join us for an important discussion about the way Persona 5 handles sexual assault, abuse, and power, and how it feels to play Persona 5 in the middle of the #MeToo movement in the U.S.

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Objects Discussed

Texts:

- Against Interpretation (Susan Sontag, 1966)

- The Predator and the Jokester (Lauren Berlant in “Where Freedom Starts: Sex, Power, Violence, #MeToo”, 2018)

Games:

- Persona 5 (Atlus, 2016 Japan, 2017 International)

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Hosts

Derek Price - twitter.com/digital_derek

Terrell Taylor - twitter.com/BlackSocrates

Kyle Romero - twitter.com/E_Kyle_Romero

Sabeen Ahmed

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Contact us!

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/ScholarsAtPlay

scholarsatplay.net

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Special thanks: Visager (twitter.com/visagermusic) for the use of their song "The Plateau at Night," The Curb Center at Vanderbilt, HASTAC, and our Distinguished Colleague Patreon supporters, including:

Carol R.

Rebecca P.

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Support us on Patreon!

patreon.com/scholarsatplay