Gay for Play: A Video Game Podcast

Hey! Listen! Our guest this week is Sam Weller! the host & creator of one of our favorite L.A. comedy shows, Super Dating Simulator . He joins us to discuss making queer-centric comedy out of anime/video game/nerd culture, before we launch into our MAIN topic of the week, where we'll be diving into a hot button issue for Nintendo-stans Why the **** won't Nintendo let us play as Princ...

Welcome to Rest Mode! Our Multimedia Culture Catch-Up Corner. Listennnnn... We play a lot of video games here at Gay For Play, but we also consume a lot of other media! The thing about video games is that they are long and sometimes it's fun to talk about other things, so this week, the two of us sit down to talk about the TV shows, books, music, and yes, video games, that we've been enj...

This week we're joined once again by our friend Sara Brown: an iconic comedian & cosplayer who you may have previously heard on our Persona 5 Royal episode! She's back to talk about yet another ATLUS game, the super stylish, puzzle horror RPG Catherine: Full Body .  And much like Persona 5 , this cult classic misses the mark pretty heavily in regards to how it handles LGBT representa...

Where we dropping, gays? This week, Laurence and Eric discuss the recent Ariana Grande Rift Tour Fortnite concert: the latest and most ambitious virtual interactive concert by the battle royale shooter-turned-multimedia social gaming hub(?) We don’t quite know how to describe what Fortnite even really is these days.  We talk about Fortnite’s history and what it has become: a massive multimedia glo...

~Awooo! Hi heroes, this week we're travelling back to Hyrule, joined by our show artist and bestie NICK ADAMS to revisit his (& Eric's) favorite Zelda adventure: 2006's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess   for the Nintendo Gamecube/Wii! We discuss the game's beautiful, melancholic world-building, queer-coded characters, Link's masculinity (not to mention his sexy s...

Hiii listeners! We're back from our summer vacation and ooh ooh OOH it's just so damn hot that we needed to cool ourselves off with a nice little retreat to the snowy mountains of... CELESTE! This 2018 indie platformer is considered by many (ourselves included) to be a modern masterpiece. It's themes of self-reflection, anxiety, and perseverance made for a story that queer and trans...

Greetings LGBTQs, Allies, et al.  Thank you for supporting this show for the past 7 months! It’s the beginning of summer, it’s Cancer szn, and the time has come for us two Cali boiz to take our first little vacation! In this unofficial “season 1 finale” episode, we’re once again in person together taking a look at the year in gayming so far- we talk our favorite games of the year up to now, our fa...

Well folks, E3... certainly happened this year! Whether it was a hit or not is greatly up for debate, but nevertheless, the famous gaming showcase returned to 2021 in an all-digital format.  Some hugely anticipated games were revealed & showcased for the first time, some press conferences were big flops, but you can't say there weren't games aplenty- from small indie devs and publish...

In honor of Pride Month, this week we’re taking our silly gay lil show back to its roots and celebrating queer-centric video games throughout gaming history! First, Laurence shares the stories of two of the earliest documented LGBTQ-centric video games -- Caper in the Castro and Gayblade -- exploring the stories of how these two landmark games came about as a form of protest and resilience during...

Hey squirrel-friends! It’s Pride 2021! And we’re kicking the month off with an HISTORIC crossover event. This week, we’re joined by Rawlins & Sam, hosts of the brilliant podcast Rawlins and Sam Watch Too Much TV , to talk about Nintendo’s queerest AND most TV-centric console: the Nintendo Wii U! We talk about why we love this dear little flop of a console, how it in many ways served as a proto...

After half a year of podcasting remotely, Laurence and Eric are FINALLY united in the meat space!  We’re celebrating the historic occasion by chillaxin’ in the LA summer sun and giving you a laid-back, grab bag episode! We share our predictions for E3, our takes on the Pride discourse, and talk about how the new Mario Golf game is named after a brand of poppers. Then we dive into our main topic, w...

This week, Laurence and Eric play and discuss MONSTER PROM, a 2018 multiplayer dating sim where you play as a monster at Monster high seeking a monster date to take to prom!!  We take a look at the game's total open approach to queer dating and gender identity options, explore the characters' monstrous chaotic debauchery,  and compare the game to our own (much tamer) high school prom mem...

This week, it’s just the two of us for the first time in a minute! We share our thoughts on New Pokémon Snap & Super Mario Party ’s incredibly belated new online mode before diving into our main topic of the week: WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH Developed by Giant Sparrow Studios and published by Annapurna Interactive, this 2017 narrative adventure game explores the story of Edith Finch, a young w...

Simple and Clean is the WAY that you're making US feel tonight, dear listener. Why? Because this week, we’re finally diving into one of our favorite game series of all time: KINGDOM HEARTS! An incredibly fun, beloved, and at times, convoluted series of action RPGs with killer gameplay, truly gorrrrgggge music, and an emotionally compelling story that blends the anime-style storytelling of Fin...

*TIMESTAMPS Below* This week we’re joined by our friend Jasmine Mosebar (she/her) to discuss Irish indie dev. Dreamfeel’s hit 2020 visual novel: If Found… : a coming of age story about a trans girl named Kasio returning to her small Irish hometown one fateful December in 1993. We talk about how refreshing it is to have queer/trans stories that aren’t centered around romance or coming out, the game...

Well, we’re FINALLY doing it. We’re joined once again by friend and show composer Connor Marsh (he/him) to tackle one of the biggest games of 2020: Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II  for the Playstation 4. (A quick note on ** SPOILERS **: This is one of those games that are impossible to talk about without going deep into the plot, so please note that we will be fully discussing spoilers from 1...

Laurence and Eric are out this week, but fortunately they’ve entrusted the show to their (totally real) friends Larry and Erick, who are here to talk to you, dear listener, about video games from a what? HETEROSEXUAL perspective. We know you usually come to this show for queer, diverse perspectives on video games, but the thing is: Straight voices these days are so often overlooked (& even sil...

Y'all, it's been a whole year since we first locked down in our homes last March with nothing but Animal Crossing to keep us company. It's been a tough couple of weeks, & we're all feeling some type of way about this Panniversary, so we decided to take things a bit more casual this week. Instead of focusing on one game, we're joined by our good friend: actor & comp...

Craft your med-kits and molotov cocktails, because we’re tackling a big game on our list this week! We’re joined by our dear friend, Chicago-based actress Becca Rowland, to talk about Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (Part 1!) Widely considered by many to be one of the best video game narratives of all time, this post-apocalyptic action-adventure game explores the relationship between Joel & Ellie...

Our Patreon page is finally here!!! You can support us at www.patreon.com/gayforplaypod at our $1, $3, or $5 tiers Please indulge us for 10 minutes as we explain to you why you should consider giving us your money! (if you can & want to, obvi. truly super chill if you don't! we still luv u <3) If you *do* subscribe, we'll have bonus content, a Discord server, and some more cool pe...

Happy 25th Anniversary, Pokémon Trainers! Can you believe it's been a whole quarter century of catching-them-all? This week we're taking a deep dive on one of the most beloved video game franchises of all time (well, for one of our hosts at least.) We discuss all of the Pokémon-related news from the last week including the surprisingly delightful Pokémon Post Malone Virtual Concert and t...

Hey all you cool cats and kittens! It’s just us (Super Mario) bros this week, coming at y’all with a super Nintendo-centric episode. We’re sharing our thoughts on last week’s Nintendo Direct announcements, talking about Animal Crossing theatre-making, and then warp-piping right into our game of the week: SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD + BOWSER’S FURY! This latest Mario outing on the Switch is a polished-up...

You feeling the love in the air? It's probs because THIS week, we’re joined by playwright, actor, and self-identifying weeb Carlos-Zenen Trujillo (they/them) to dive deep into the world of DATING SIMULATORS! A game genre we've *flirted* with multiple times on the show before that we've now decided to go steady with for a whole episode. We take a look at why these simple, innocuous v...

Hey! Listen! This week, we are joined by actress, gamer, and delightful friend of the pod Hannah Berg (she/her) as we cover our first (but certainly not our last) Legend of Zelda game on G4P! We’re talking 2011’s The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Nintendo Wii! Despite its reputation as the “black sheep” of 3D Zelda games, we discuss our fondness for it as we reflect on how it still succee...

Hey oomfs and besties!! This week we're joined by Super Dating Simulator's Sara Brown to talk about PERSONA 5 ROYAL: Atlus's critically-lauded JRPG about living the life of a Tokyo high schooler who moonlights as a monster-fighting "phantom thief" crusading against injustice. (It's very anime.) It's a game all 3 of us love dearly... even though it misses the mark...