Gay for Play: A Video Game Podcast

HAPPY PRIDE 2022! We are back for an all new season of Gay For Play, and we're kicking it off by talking about Queer & Queer-*Coded* Villains in video games. Queer coding the bad guy is a trope seen in media for ages, dating back to old Hollywood censorship laws & really entering our generation's collective consciousness through the villains of the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s...

It's our season finale! We'll be off for the next month, but before we take a little slumber in our memory recovery pods, we're back for one more episode to take another look at one of our favorite video game franchises that we simply cannot stop talking about: KINGDOM HEARTS. The beloved Final Fantasy / Disney crossover JRPG series has been back on our minds lately. It celebrated i...

This week, in honor of the new Sonic movie hitting theatres this weekend, we’re doing a deep dive on the blue blur himself: the hog, the myth, the legend– Sonic the Hedgehog!  It's Sonic! The cool blue hedgehog who runs fast and loves chili dogs! You know the guy! In this episode we discuss the loveable blue guy's origin, our first exposure to this gaming icon, and discuss his history as...

This is a preview for our new bonus episode on Jane Campion's THE POWER OF THE DOG, available now on our Patreon page! (the bonus episode, not the movie. That's on Netflix!) In it we dive deep into the movie & discuss its themes of masculinity, longing, and queer cowboy culture. We also touch on the 2022 Oscar winners  (but worry not, we don't spend much time on *that* Discourse...

Full transparency: we're still just playing Elden Ring / experiencing video game burnout from playing too much Elden Ring , so we figured this week would be a great opportunity to catch up on other video game & pop culture moments that have been in the zeitgeist! Aside from an obligatory Elden Ring corner, topics the employee walkouts at Disney over the company's ongoing financial su...

Around once a year, a game releases that seems to completely dominate the gaming cultural conversation (by which we mean it's massively popular and men get really testy about it online). This year the game in that spotlight seems to be ELDEN RING - a new open world RPG from FromSoftware (creators of Dark Souls , Bloodborne , & Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ), directed by studio head Hidetaka...

Yer a wizard, podcast listener! This week we are here to discuss the Harry Potter franchise, its various video game adaptations, and our complicated relationship with the franchise as queer & trans individuals whose childhood fondness for this series has turned sour in our mouths like a bad Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean in light of JK R*wling's dangerous and repeated transphobic c...

On today's episode, we are joined by our dear friend Devon, aka Ms. Blueberri Mary, to discuss one of our favorite video game genres: the humble JRPG! (Japanese Role Playing Game) And more particularly, how the fashion and design sensibilities of games like Final Fantasy X & X-2 have influenced and entire generation of queer designers and drag artists. We get into the character designs an...

***Timestamps for Spoilers*** (Spoiler discussion for The Forgotten City runs from 50:15 to 1:03:00) Salve friend! Believe it or not, this is our 50TH EPISODE OF THE POD!!! We wanna thank y'all up top for helping us make it to half of a hundo. Here's to at least 50 more! For our 50th episode, Daddy Nintendo gifted us an anniversary gift in the form of a juicy Nintendo Direct to discuss!...

To paraphrase one Ms. Gia Gunn "This is a place for (Pokémon) Legends, okay?" This week, we're joined by our friend (and composer of our theme music) Connor Marsh (he/him) to discuss Pokémon Legends: Arceus — the latest entry in the Pokémon franchise that brings a much needed breath of fresh air to the long-running series of loveable monsters. A prequel to Pokémon Diamond & Pear...

All month long January has been FILMUARY here at Gay For Play. This week, we're ending the month by discussing a queer cult classic, the 1999 satirical romantic comedy: But I'm a Cheerleader And the boys are not alone this week! We're joined by dear friend of the pod Becca Rowland, who last joined us on our The Last of Us (Part 1) episode last March! Becca's the one who recomme...

FILMUARY continues here at Gay for Play this week!     In today's episode, we dive deep into a discussion of The Matrix and its newest installation, The Matrix Resurrections ! One of us is a lifelong fan of this iconic sci-fi trilogy, and one of us is a total newcomer to the franchise (& hadn't even seen the original until like, last week!). But we both have a LOT to share about Kean...

We're back with our first episode of 2022! Except here's the thing... January is famously a slow month for video game releases. We also haven't been playing that many games lately, but we have been watching a lot of movies! (They're kinda like video games except you can't decide when people jump). So we've decided to make January a month of talking about cinema!!! Bec...

Happy New Year y'all! Our first full year of video game podcasting is drawing to a close and We're closing out 2021 with a just a chill, good ol' discussion of 10 of our favorite games of the year. We're not tryna to decide on some sort of "definitive", "OFFICIAL",  "G4P 2021 GOTY!" or anything like that, but rather, just taking the time to each sh...

Coming to you LIVE from the Red Carpet, it's us! We are here to host and present the first ever VIDEO GAME POP CULTURE AND BEYOND Awards, where we will honor the best and brightest of 2021's video games, pop culture moments, (and beyond!) Move over, Game Awards, because it's our time to shine. Spanning 33 prestigious categories including  "Best Indie", "Biggest YASS o...

Studio Pixel Punk's Unsighted is a Queer, Zelda/Metroidvania-like indie game with engaging gameplay, an emotionally-rich narrative, and some really inspired game mechanics. It's a real hidden gem that has quickly become a late-contender for one of our favorite games of the year! And speaking of our favorite games of the year, we recorded this episode pre-Game Awards, but we have a specia...

It’s the 1-year anniversary of GAY FOR PLAY!!! We’re celebrating by taking it back to the game that started it all for us: Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which fittingly, recently received a massive 2.0 update and DLC expansion with Happy Home Paradise . We discuss what’s new about the game, what the game has meant for queer players over the past year and a half, and how to get back into the game...

Greetings Swifties and Swifties-in-the-making... This week, ahead of our 1-year(!) anniversary next week, we're back with another edition of "Rest Mode" where we catch up on the video game and pop culture news that we've been digging into! There is truly SO much to discuss this week: The Game Award nominations are OUT! GTA remasters are buggy as hell! Corporations like Meta and...

For the Glory of Podcast-kind! This week we  discuss NieR: Automata , the 2017 Action JRPG from the visionary mind of director Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames that has us a bit divided! The game tells a rich story about a post-apocalyptic future where sexy battle androids are still fighting in the name of their ancient human creators. The game explores themes of identity, humanism, and philosophy thro...

Hey y'all! This week, between travel plans and the distraction of the Animal Crossing 2.0 update, we didn't have time to record a brand-new episode this week, but fear not! We're re-releasing our favorite Patreon-exclusive bonus episode here onto our main feed! In it, we pick 5 pieces of media (a TV show , Book , Movie , Album , and of course, a Video Game ) that hold a special mean...

BOO! Surprise! we’re back for yet another HALLOWEEN-y episode of Gay For Play! This week, we’re talking all about the video games that scared us; from recent titles like Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye , to classic childhood haunts like underwater levels in N64 games, creepypasta video game urban legends, and indie horror game titles that have chilled us to the bone. We also discuss a bit of news,...

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃  To celebrate the spooky season, this week we're discussing Night in the Woods (2017) - a story-driven, sidescroller adventure game where you play as Mae Borowski, a 20 year-old recent college dropout who has returned to her hometown of Possum Springs; a quaint autumnal town in decay along the American Rust Belt -- reconnecting with her family, neighbors, and her queer...

Happy October, listeners! The autumn air is crisp, Halloween is approaching, and we are smack dab in the middle of the fall video game season. There are just so so so many video games to play and discuss at this juncture in time, so this week, we're taking a look at two recent video game releases that we've been enjoying! Eric talks about his spooky space adventures with Metroid Dread ,...

The Bugsnax are out of the bag, and we're FINALLY here to talk about them! This week we're discussing last year's smash indie hit Bugsnax , and how this cute Pokemon Snap inspired collect-a-thon about Grumpuses snacking on weird half-bug/half-snack creatures surprisingly has some of the most heartfelt queer representation we've seen in a video game in years! Before that though,...

It's-a us! We weren't planning on releasing this episode this week, but after last week's Nintendo Direct presentation, we simply HAD to get on the mic and weigh in with our reactions to the incredibly chaotic cast reveal of the Super Mario movie. Aside from that, there were also some cool announcements in this week's direct! We go over our favorite announcements from the event...