Furidashi Game Design Academy

While Lauryn is deep behind enemy lines (i.e. quite sick), Nicholas is busy organizing things back home in Mother Base, while trying not to bore all the new recruits with lectures on Maoism vs. Marxism-Leninism. In this rare solocast, he'll dive into Metal Gear's Cold War revisionism, discuss the effects that a more technologically constrained platform in the PSP has on gameplay mechanics, and wra...

In comparing Death Stranding with its sequel, we come to a dichotomy of two gameplay experiences: a lonely one that matches what the games say about their protagonist and one in solidarity with other players that seems to confuse what the story has to say about what is happening in Kojima's world. We look at two conflicting narratives, then: the story of gameplay, where the game shines, and the st...

Now that our boy Kojima has been taken out of Konami and Metal Gear, we have to wonder whether you can take the Metal Gear out of the boy. In this episode, we consider what it means to start a newly independent studio that can't help but rehash all the good and the bad of the games that made you who you are. Is Kojima trapped in a kind Metal Gear samsara? Listen and find out! Patreon: https://www....

Here we are at the end... or, at least, an end. One of many ends, as it turns out. We explore what it means for a whole series of games to end up being about alienation despite trying to be about identity. A game that can't escape its own structural sexism. A game that has genuinely refined combat and stealth mechanics but is so bloated it can never quite cohere into a well-defined vision. It's a...

[Content Warning] In this episode we discuss sexual assault and all the ways in which Kojima handles it VERY BADLY. We do try to pry out the good as well, but in many ways this relatively brief game is a dark premonition of where things will end for Snake... and it ain't good. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/furidashi Lauryn: https://bsky.app/profile/espressocat.bsky.social Nicholas: https://bsky...

In this episode we not only learn that Nicholas has a day job but also that it is immediately relevant to questions surrounding video games and digital preservation. We discuss four modes or vectors for how this can work, none of which are mutually exclusive. All this to get at why preserving games is important and why people have conflicting ideas about how to do that. Patreon: https://www.patreo...

In this episode, we go back in time to the height of the Cold War, to discover the origin of the Snake/Boss dichotomy in Metal Gear Solid's third installment. Also on the docket: fan service scars, our boy Ocelot, and why it kicks ass to do martial arts with a motorcycle. Oh, and Nicholas tries to be nicer this time... Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreo...

In this episode Nicholas tries to be fair to a game he very much did not enjoy, and Lauryn makes sure they cover something important, how the series is now leaning more heavily into its MANY combat mechanics and perhaps moving away from its origins as an anti-war war game. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/furidashi Lauryn: https://bsky.app/profil...

This month, we finally discuss a game people have actually played: Metal Gear Solid. We also take a look back at Kojima's notion of creativity as a memetic/genetic process and how this game maybe complicates the somewhat rosy picture he paints in his memoir and interviews. Also! The premiere performance of "Liquid Snake and the Konami Code," with its hit song, "Genome Soldier!" Substack: https://g...

In this episode we discuss Kojima's response to Konami's attempt to make a Metal Gear sequel without him and how, in so doing, established the baseline for what "stealth games" would become. We also compare its gameplay to the more expansive Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to show how it tries to force the player into a near paranoic sense of hyperawareness. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.subst...

Lauryn and Nicholas take you back to the Cold War, to the '80s, when hair was big and everyone was worried about nuclear winter. We begin with the very first Metal Gear game and discuss what it means to try and make an anti-war war game. We reckon with all the ways the game teaches you how to play that were in many ways anathema to how video games were played at the time but nevertheless became th...

In this, the first episode of season 6, our YEAR OF METAL GEAR, we dive into the Kojima lore, why you shouldn't always take it at face value, and what it means to think of one's creative output as a kind of genetic legacy. ALSO: a mysterious message from an enigmatic stranger... Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/furidashi Lauryn: https://bsky.app/...

For our final episode of Season 5, before THE YEAR OF METAL GEAR, we look at the seminal Studio Ghibli film, Kiki's Delivery Service. We discuss what it means to come of age in a context where you are a literal outsider and how the film indirectly meditates on what it means to doubt your creative powers, lose them, and ultimately get them back. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ P...

In which we argue that Halo represents a genuinely novel approach to shooter design at a time when the video games industry was becoming but had not yet turned into what we know it to be today. Join us as we delve into the complex narrative and gameplay relationship between Master Chief and Cortana and ask... is Halo a tragedy? Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://w...

In celebration of Pride month, we take a somewhat unusual look at Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell as an allegory of trans becoming. We look at how trans individuals have read the film against their own experiences and how this highlights a queerness in Kusanagi's character that Oshii likely never intended yet is still palpably there. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: h...

In this episode, we think about games as a complete composition of many artforms and how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 withholds the kinds of information that normally aid gameplay in order to get the player to treat the game as much as a work of art to be appreciated as be immersed in. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/furidashi Twitter: https://tw...

Following up on our discussion of Cyberpunk 2077, we consider the Netflix series and what it means to be bodies in spaces, how we lie to ourselves and each other, and how the anime aspires to say something profound but ultimately get too caught up in its own romantic tropes to truly grapple with what it's trying to show. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patr...

After several years we return to Cyberpunk 2077 to discover that it's a very different game! In this episode, we focus on how the game's environments blend the broad visual and aural aesthetics of the game with a really tight sense of encounter design and worldbuilding that inscribes little incidental narratives onto the streets of a fully realized city. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.subst...

In this month's free episode, we take a look at the visual and narrative aesthetics of 2024's Look Back, based on the manga of the same name by Fujimoto Tatsuki. We consider how mirroring, doubling, and reflection work not only as visual metaphors but as way of thinking about the overall narrative structure in this gut-wrenching coming-of-age story. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.c...

This month we tackle the topic everyone loves to hate: violence in video games. But with a twist. We discuss how Slay the Princess uses a form of narrative violence, breaking the conventions of how story gets mapped onto gameplay, to show how love, hurt, loss, and existential dread can all be thought of as facets of a greater whole in the human experience. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.sub...

In this episode we make a deep dive into Kon Satoshi's 2003 Christmas romp (?), Tokyo Godfathers. We focus especially on the dramatic tension between what characters imagine themselves to be and the reality of who they are--and how, sometimes, reality has a weird habit of slipping into fantasy. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/furidashi Twitter:...

In this episode, Lauryn and Nicholas go all in on Bioware's Dragon Age: The Veilguard. We talk about core combat not from the perspective of mechanics but in both thematic and narrative terms. Mostly, though, we discuss the companion system, and why many of the frustrations with DA:TV stem from how the game isn't really about you as the super special hero but rather how you fit into a whole that i...

Welcome to Season 5, where we'll be focusing on game and media aesthetics! We wanted to started things off with a game/anime crossover in the form of Delicious in Dungeon. In this episode, we discuss how media narratives can reflect game narratives and aesthetics, as well as how to envision a narrative structure that enhances characterization. Substack: https://gamedesigndiscourse.substack.com/ Pa...

Just a brief check-in during our hiatus month to give you a taste of what we'll be talking about in the coming year.

In this episode, we consider how to make your game stand out from the others, the importance of a clear hook or appeal to the player, as well as how to translate the sense of innovation you might find more easily in solo projects back into larger, collaborative efforts. Download the Sympathetic Memories demo for free on our Itch.io site: https://furidashipod.itch.io/sympathetic-memories Substack:...