Free Play Podcast

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be in a confined space with 70,000 of your closest friends nerding out over board games for four days in Indianapolis, Indiana… then you should go to Gen Con.  Because that’s exactly what it is. Over 600 games were shown and sold this year and we basically played and or bought all of them. There were more than a few that stood out to us and that’s wh...

This is it… buckle up, kids… we are doin’ a spoiler cast.  This week we are talking about Playstation’s Spider-Man and the hit Netflix original, Stranger Things. You’ve been warned… so do what you have to going forward, but we have all kinds of ideas about both of those and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Nintendo has officially figured out that nerds love the Switch.  We keep asking for every game to make its way to the console and they have answered our cries by ignoring them and offering us the Switch Lite. This console is a simplified version of it’s predecessor and, we think, it’s geared towards a completely different audience than current Switch owners. But who needs it?  Who is the actual ta...

Sometimes reality isn’t all it's cracked up to be.  If I want to travel to the moon or lift a car over my head it’s a whole lot easier to do it in digital space than to go through the trouble of exercising and all that. Augmented Reality, or AR, is on the rise and making both our gaming and actual lives a little bit more fun than they may have been otherwise.   But is it all about spotting pokemon...

Who doesn’t love being rewarded for playing a game?  I mean, when you look at all that hard work and dedication that we put into honing our craft it only seems fair to get a little something something on the back end.  But it doesn’t always go as planned.  Loot boxes have made their way back into the news and players are again talking about the ethics of both loot boxes an microtransactions as the...

It’s been a crazy whirlwind of dope announcements with this year’s E3. We covered the first half of press conferences on last week’s episode. Today we’re talking all about Nintendo, Square Enix, Ubisoft, PC Gaming Show, and the Kinda Funny Games Showcase and that’s what we want to talk about in the second half of our E3 coverage this week on the Free Play Podcast.

If there’s one thing nerds like, it’s learning all of the things about new games and consoles coming out in the now to near future.  Microsoft, Bethesda, EA, Devolver and Google have all had their press conferences and we couldn’t be more thrilled about some of it and that’s what we want to talk about in the first half of our E3 coverage this week on the Free Play Podcast.

In 1996, we were introduced to three lovable characters named Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Pikachu. These pocket monsters would change the gaming world forever. Fast forward to 2019, over 20 years later, and they are no longer content with consuming our every waking hour. Now, they also want the sleeping ones. The Pokémon company released an app and a companion device that trains your Pokémon while...

Wether you're crushing your friends in Super Smash Brothers on the Switch, or eradicating flesh eating bacteria in Pandemic, games are fun or at least they are supposed to be. They offer rest from the things of life that weigh us down while allowing us the opportunity to build relationships with the people around us. But is there a way to leverage both the fun and relationship building aspect of g...

Do you or someone you love suffer from Gaming Analysis Paralysis? Do you find it difficult and sometimes downright impossible to find a game to play when there are dozens to choose from in your console backlog or on your shelf of shame?  If so, you are not alone and we at Love Thy Nerd are here to help. Though we may not have a cure, per se, we do have some helpful tips to get you over that hump,...

Fandoms are the lifeblood of the nerd world.  Mess with them and you’ll probably get cut. Hollywood knows that… right?  Like… they should at least be able to learn from past experiences like Street Fighter, Doom and Super Mario.  Yet we still have our childhood’s altered every time a new video game movie comes out, and Sonic is the latest in a long line of artistic freedoms taken with beloved icon...

We’ve all been there.  It’s 2 am and you’re trolling around on the internet when a force beyond your control stops your scroll dead in it’s tracks.  That force’s name: Kickstarter. Suddenly it’s 4 am and you have backed dozens of things you never knew you needed. As great as kickstarter is, it’s taken a strange turn this past month by suspending several projects… some of which had fully funded to...

It’s been a while since we’ve really proven our validity as a gaming media outlet.  So long, in fact, that we actually almost didn’t do this one… but too much has happened in the nerd world to not talk about at least some of it.  We have a few thoughts about things like Disney +, Ubisoft and the PS5, and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

Part of what we do here at Love Thy Nerd is go out into the world of nerddom and meet new people, make new friends, and love on every nerd as best as we can. We’re kicking off convention season this year with Phoenix Fan Fusion, the first “comic con” type convention we’ve been to, and we can’t wait to experience it and tell you how you can get involved. That’s what we want to talk about this week...

Bubba, Matt, and Kate are out this week because that’s what happens when two of you work for a church and it’s Easter week. So they’ve decided to treat you, beloved listener, to an unreleased episode from Season 1 featuring Love Thy Nerd supporter Justin Bowers as well as dark confession from Matt Warmbier about his departed horse Horpens and Kate getting distracted by bread slime. Enjoy!

The 90’s were a seriously tubular time in history.  Everything about the 90’s was loud and cutting edge.  The colors, the synthesizers, and more importantly… the games.  Vanilla Ice wasn’t the only cool thing to hit the shelves during this decade.  Games that have shaped the way we interact with the media came from the 90’s and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Freeplay Podcast.

Games are a big part of our lives for those of us that really really love them. When you love something, people know about it. We at the FreePlay Podcast are Christians who love games. And we’ve had experiences, both good and bad, with how they’ve affected our faith and relationships with other Christians.

Times are a changin’!  Things that were once thought impossible are becoming a reality.  Technology is moving us forward at an alarming pace, and Skynet is imminent… and we, at the Free Play podcast welcome our new robot overlords. For real though… the video game scene is constantly changing.  Carts to discs to downloads… and now to streaming. Enter: Google Stadia, a brand new gaming platform from...

Playing games is a big part of the hobby.  Some would say that the other part of it is collecting games.  Looking at you, Backlog… but there is a side of the hobby that we may not think about nearly as often.  A side that makes playing these wonderful games possible. I’m talking about game creation. Whether it’s board games or video games, these things take time, creativity and passion to see the...

This past week, Stonemaier games’ retail release of Wingspan wasn’t met with the response they might have hoped. Only 5,000 English copies of the game went out to game stores worldwide with far more than that pre ordered by nerds who didn’t get their copy. Though part of the story, supply and demand isn’t the main character. Jamie Stagemaier’s response to the public outcry is a master’s class on p...

You know what they say… “They just don’t make them like the used to.” For us… that thing is “games.”  They used to be harder , you know?  It used to take you WEEKS to beat a game. Now, you can get a game from RedBox and have it beat and back in the machine faster than you can say, “Cattails.  Woo ooo.” Why is that?  What’s changed in the gaming industry and sub culture?  Well, that’s what we want...

Games have all kinds of inherit value that they rarely get credit for. They can help us understand the best way to act in any number of situations… one of which would be when not to throw a flash bang… the answer is into a door frame… at your team mates. There is really no end to the things we have and could learn from both video and tabletop games and that’s what we want to talk about this week o...

Sometimes, our bros over at Nintendo know what they are doing when they drop things on us during their YouTube directs.  Other times they completely miss the mark by not giving us the Metroid and Animal Crossing we so rightfully deserve. Nintendo had one of those directs this past week with all of the ups and downs we’ve come to expect and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Pl...

Matt is still in mourning over the loss of his Red Dead horse, Horepens and is also frustrated with the lack of common sense of his replacement mount, Dude. Despite the emotional vulnerability, Matt continues on along with Kate and Bubba to talk about the games they have played this week. Kate also leads the community discussion about what games can be considered "groundbreaking" and why.

As members of the nerd community we are sadly not strangers to the negative press that our favorite past tends to get. "You are wasting your life!", "You will become violent!" are just some of the criticisms we hear on a regular basis. However, what if we could help people understand that video and board games are not wastes of time, but can actually make you a better person to be around at work a...