Gamers with Glasses Podcast

In Episode 17 of The Gamers with Glasses Show , we talk about flow, immersion, horror, power, dating sims, and more! What do we mean when we say we’re “immersed” in games? Who gets to be immersed, or what makes it possible for some people to get into the flow, while others can’t? What are the politics of flow and immersion? Why do we like horror games ? Can we really get immersed in them? Do table...

We’re joined by Professor Se (Seth) Young Kim , an expert on Korean and Japanese cinema and games, to discuss the Netflix television hit Squid Game (from director Hwang Dong-hyuk). We discuss how the show reinvents the genre of the battle royale, how it responds to capitalism and the financial crises of the 1990s and 2000s, translation issues, what the show has to say about education, why children...

In Episode 16 of The Gamers with Glasses Show , we debate the virtues and vices of Arkane’s Deathloop (love the banter and the powers, not so much the thin storyline), discuss how Wario World does what Kena doesn’t, wish that the beautiful pixel art of Eastward were matched by some innovative gameplay, sing the praises of Sable’s beautiful desert world (though not without acknowledging its glitchi...

It’s the Gamers with Glasses Psychonauts 2 spoilercast ! We talk about how the game got developed, our favorite levels (the cooking level, the acid trip level), how the platforming in the sequel compares to platforming in the first game, the ethics and politics of diving into minds, how we feel about the collectables and character powers, the successes and failures of the story, how Double Fine in...

No special topic this week, but much of the episode ends up revolving around entropy : everything falls apart (at some point)! We discuss whether the cyberpunk genre is played out, if Souls and Souls-like games have exhausted themselves, and what makes for an interesting post-apocalyptic game when it seems like the post-apocalyptic wasteland is almost a default setting. Don’t worry, though, there’...

We interview Shane Denson (Stanford University) about digital culture and technology, video games, film, streaming services, and his excellent scholarly book, Discorellated Images . We discuss how digital images and technologies change what it means to be human, whether or not we live in an age after the death of cinema (are movie theaters ancient history?), and what all of this has to do with the...

It’s the final episode of our three-part Disco Elysium spoilercast with our special guest, Jamie Woodcock ! Not only we do talk about the game’s ending but we also discuss how the game handles money, plot structure, character development, and world-bulding. We discuss what makes a game political and how Disco Elysium squares its leftist politics with its protagonist being a cop. We work through th...

We discuss the games we’re playing , including Psychonauts , Demon Souls , Dorfromantik , 12 Minutes , Road 96 , and Death Stranding . We then turn to our special topic, deckbuilding games : Are deckbuilding games really just math in disguise? What’s the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity in deckbuilding mechanics? Can deckbuilders tell moving stories? Do players weave their own stories...

In this episode, we spend a little time talking about the games we’re playing, like Scarlet Nexus , Super Metroid , Pikmin 3 , MLB: The Show 21 , and Lenna’s Inception , before we do a deep dive into The Legend of Zelda series. We talk about what makes a Zelda game so Zelda-like: Is it the puzzles? The exploration? The characters? The combat? We debate who the best NPCs in the series are (obviousl...

We interview Scott Brodie , co-founder and creative director of Heart Shaped Games , the indie studio behind Brave Hand and Hero Generations . We discuss their latest game, We Are The Caretakers , which is currently in early access. We Are The Caretakers is a tactics game, like XCOM or Darkest Dungeon , but it’s set in an Afrofuturist universe and the goal is to protect the animals and the environ...

In this episode of The Gamers with Glasses Show, we’re joined by special guest Dr. Amanda Licastro , Emerging & Digital Literacy Instructional Designer at University of Pennsylvania. Most of our discussion is focused on accessibility, virtual reality, and alternate reality games (ARG), but we do manage to squeeze in some conversation about Subnautica: Below Zero and Superhot. We spend a lot of...

In the second episode of our Disco Elysium mini-series (full of spoilers! ), we talk about communist and neoliberal hustler character builds, branching narratives (can you play the game wrong?), optional locations (don’t miss the hidden cache of revolution-era weapons!), the coastal region of the game, Berlin club culture, communist policing, labor organizing and awkward conversations, gentrificat...

In this episode of The Gamers with Glasses Show, we talk about what we mean when we say games are political, AA vs. AAA games (mid-budget vs. big-budget games), why sometimes lack of polish in a game can be a good thing (who doesn’t like a little jank?), the politics of game reviews, entertainment as escapism, and so much more. We also make jokes about the Clash and the Ramones, take Ubisoft to ta...

In this spoilercast, Roger Whitson and Christian Haines are joined by Jamie Woodcock (author of Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle ) to discuss Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (ZA/UM). We talk about the game’s blend of gritty political realism and psychedelic fantasy; what happens when conversation replaces co,bat; our different character builds (2 communists and 1 ultralib...

In this special episode of The Gamers with Glasses, we do a spoilercast of NieR: Automata. We discuss the 5 different playthroughs needed to reach the true ending; how androids manage to emote so intensely; Yoko Taro’s fashion proclivities (why is there always a character in lingerie?); existentialism (hell is other people); aliens vs. machines vs. androids; war (what is it good for? absolutely no...

In this episode, we’re joined by special guest Alenda Chang (author of Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games ) to talk about nature, wilderness, and environmentalism in video games! We debate whether or not the Monster Hunter series really has an ecology, ponder the ethics of eating Pokémon, recollect the pleasures of hiking through the worlds of Oblivion , Everquest , and No Man’s Sky , and thin...

In Gamers with Glasses Episode 9, we discuss the trend of time loops in recent games ( Loop Hero , Deathloop ), the sexy robots of Yoko Taro ( Nier: Automata ), the neoliberal hellscape of subscription services (or is it a new golden age?), what happens when an indie-loving PC gamer gets a Switch (thanks, Biden!), surreal point-and-click adventures ( Genesis Noir ), how Control plays on new consol...

In this interview, we talk to Jesper Juul , a scholar of video games and a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He’s written books such as A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and their Players , which looks at how mobile games have changed where, when, how, and even why we game, and The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games , which grapples with the pa...

In Episode 8 of The Gamers with Glasses Podcast , we discuss the games we’re playing: Bowser’s Fury , The Medium , Ghosts & Goblins Resurrected , Buddy Simulator 1984 , Kentucky Route Zero , Fights in Tight Spaces , and Plead with the Mountain God ! Our special topic this episode is platforming games : Why are platformers such good entry points into video games? What makes for a great platform...

In this special episode of The GwG Show, we have a spoiler-filled discussion of Remedy Entertainment’s 2019 game Control . We (John Ferrari, Christian Haines, Brian Rejack) talk about Jesse Faden’s strange adventures in the Old House, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, as well as the more general history of Remedy Entertainment games, especially Alan Wake and the Max Payne games. We al...

In Episode 7 of The Gamers with Glasses Podcast , we discuss the games we’re playing , including Blue Fire , Red Dead Online , The Medium , We Know The Devil , Olija , and the 10mg collection. Our special topic is a continuation of our previous episode’s discussion of mental health , this time focusing on how video games represent (sometimes successfully, oftentimes poorly) mental illness. We talk...

In this special episode of The Gamers with Glasses Show, Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago), Christopher Breu (Illinois State University), and Christian Haines (Penn State University) discuss the GameStop stock market drama and its social, political, and economic contexts! They debate whether or not the short squeeze of GameStop stock is viable political strategy, the class conflict dimensions...

In Episode 6 of The Gamers with Glasses Podcast, we discuss the games the games we’re playing , including Hitman 3 , Cyber Shadow , No Players Online , Pendragon , and more. The topic of the week is mental health , so we discuss how games have helped us cope with loss and anxiety but also the limits of gaming as therapy. Please note: We are not mental health professionals and we're not trying to o...

Interview with the Denmark-based indie studio Triple Topping, creators of Welcome to Elk.

In Episode 5 of The Gamers with Glasses Show, Roger Whitson, Christian Haines, Nate Schmidt, and Don Everhart discuss the games they’re playing , including Yakuza: Like A Dragon , Outer Wilds , Risk of Rain 2 , Super Meatboy Forever , and more. The topic of the week is what makes an indie game indie . We also introduce a new segment - soon to become its own podcast - “Dark Souls Corner,” in which...