Consumerist Hand-Wringing – Everybody's Talking at Once

When I interviewed Jack Lawrence Mayer for UChicago Arts back in 2102, he was about to launch Single Long, his seven-episode digital series for HBO. His latest project, LA Famous, follows the same basic format—but he’s produced it without the backing of HBO or, for that matter, any other network or studio. So this week, […]

Unproductively hating Macklemore: It’s not just for Kendrick Lamar fans anymore! Last week, we talked about the backlash against Macklemore in the hip-hop community—which meant we also talked about cultural appropriation, race, and the surprisingly slippery issue of who’s more mainstream than whom. This week, we talk about the backlash against Macklemore in the queer […]

The Heist is a really good album. good kid, m. A.A.d. city is a really good album. How did we get to the point where those two statements sound contradictory? In these next two episodes, Lucio and I will dig deep into the current, Internet-wide backlash against Macklemore, by which we’re more than a little baffled. […]

Richard Terrell of Critical-Gaming stops by to discuss something I wrote in response to something he wrote in response to something Ed Key wrote about whether Proteus is a game. (Still with me?) Just how much work should we be doing to decide what is and isn’t a game, and why? Where does an attempt […]

Alx Preston, Lead Designer of Hyper Light Drifter, stops by to discuss how limitations foster and enable creativity, how videogames could learn a thing or two from Ernest Hemingway, and how growing up with a treatable-but-undiagnosable illness has left him with zero patience for glib, oversimplified views of life, the universe, and everything. (“The stars […]

When last we left the saga of SteamOS, Lucio and I were envisioning a future owned and operated by Valve, and for the most part, we were comfortable with that idea to a degree that made us, well, uncomfortable. So this time around, we dig deep into the topic of DRM. We both hate DRM, […]

Steam wants into your living room, in the guise of a gadget that’s not quite a PC and not quite a console. That could have a moderately apocalyptic effect on the console market, not to mention the long-taken-for-granted dominance of Windows as PC gaming platform. In this moment between big announcements (and big Steam Sales), […]

Davey Wreden discusses life after the release of his vividly realized, genuinely unique first game, The Stanley Parable—the problems that come with success, the guilt that comes with admitting that success comes with problems, endlessly recurring impostor syndromes, oscillating egomania, all that. We also discuss the ongoing process of becoming an adult, our shared love […]

Game developer and graphic artist Jake Kazdal, who you might know from his work on Rez and Space Channel 5 Part 2, joins us for our inaugural podcast. He discusses the finer points of his studio’s first release, Skulls of the Shogun, and shares the (crazily ambitious) plan for their next game, a roguelike-alike space […]