Oh no, your family has been abducted and your village burnt to the ground! Better start a bloody vendetta…or so the story of many video games starts out. Our guest, Dr. Thomas Spies, argues in favour of more complex and differentiated trauma representations. Here’s our conversation about titles such as Max Payne, Distraint, The Last…

Seeing beyond what seems to be real, seeing a ‘truth’ obscured from others—there seems to be a proper fascination with this exclusive gaze. We explore the notion of true sight in video games such as The Cat Lady and Fran Bow with Dr. Sarah Stang, Assistant Professor of Game Studies at Brock University in Canada. Shownotes Madness as True…

Gaming communities can be a lovely place of bonding and encouragement. However, and in no contradiction to the former, they can also be excluding, pervaded by extremism, and profoundly hostile towards anything ‘different’. Why is that so and what can we do about it? – Those are the questions we ask Dr. Rachel Kowert, renowned…

From Assassin’s Creed to Civilization and from The Oregon Trail to Valiant Hearts—video games are profoundly fascinated with history. But how can we analyse those representations of history without simply ‘fact checking’ the games? We are joined by the historian and long-running high school teacher Dr. Jeremiah McCall for a conversation about his framework of…

Most of us have done it at some point, possibly without any awareness of the harm it might cause. After all, piracy has for a long time been an integral part of video game culture. To discuss whether there is any moral angel from which piracy can be justified, we collaborate with Shlomo Sher, Philosophy…

Have you ever made a spiritual experience when playing a video game? Some downright lend themselves to it, such as Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture or Journey. But how would you know whether any experience is spiritual and aren’t video games with their technological foundation pretty much the opposite of transcendental? We discuss exactly such questions with Dr….

Understanding the workings of computers, coding, and technological infrastructure is one of the most imperative skills of the 21st century. Even more important then is to introduce children to such concepts. But how? – With the award winning children’s book series Hello Ruby, our guest Linda Liukas rethinks how to convey computer education in an approachable yet equally…

The swastika is certainly one of the most affective historical symbols. Under its banner, terror, hatred, racism, and profound crimes against humanity have been committed. In Germany, video games were not allowed to display the swastika for a long time at all, which has only changed in recent years. Together with the cultural historian Dr….

We might nostalgically look back at the beauty of game boxes and fail to realize how strongly they are linked to the economization of games. With our guest, game studies scholar Claudius Clüver, we trace how games got into the box and how, with the advent of digital distribution, they made their way back out….