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Episode 3 of Game is a 4 Letter Word is up, and I really dig this one, probably because I had little to do with it! The word is CULT and we talk to a film historian about what makes a cult film and how that could apply to games. We attend an Earthbound/Mother convention and explore gender roles, the happy blue cult, translation aspects, and more. And Don't Die's David Wolinsky talks to Merritt Kopas and Gita Jackson about being famous in a particular subculture and what that means rss: gameisa4letterword.libsyn.com itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/game-is-a-4-letter-word/id1021130095

The USA did have an evil, grotesque political puppet show! It was called DC Follies It scared the shit out of me as a tiny kid Highlights include Betty White stripping for Nixon and Carter and of course guest starring in the Genesis video world of confusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pkVLqSaahk

well, give a listen and let me know what you think. Each episode is going to be a bit different as we find out style

please do! Got some weird stuff planned. per usual if you like it, tell a friend, subscribe, rate on itunes, etc thanks

Hi! I made a podcast about video game. Yeah, I know. But it's not a roundtable, it's a produced show a bit like This American Life or 99% Invisible. It's called Game is a 4 Letter Word, and each episode we take a a real 4 letter word for fuel. Episode 1 is PINK and we talked to a lawyer, a musician, a producer, a curator, and some movie monsters Itunes RSS SoundCloud

Hi! I made a podcast about video game. Yeah, I know. But it's not a roundtable, it's a produced show a bit like This American Life or 99% Invisible. It's called Game is a 4 Letter Word, and each episode we take a a real 4 letter word for fuel. Episode 1 is PINK and we talked to a lawyer, a musician, a producer, a curator, and some movie monsters Itunes RSS SoundCloud

quick thoughts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_%28Julio_Cort%C3%A1zar_novel%29 Hopscotch is a novel with new game plus and it's from 1963. Read it linearly, then re-read it choose your own adventure style (well no choices, but it tells you what chapter to read next.) Context is king. Anyone read austin grossman's You? That's a text adventure being constantly remade, with the dna of the text adventure still in it. Austin worked on Dishonored and the cover art is by superbrothers, not as good as Soon I Will be Invincible, but still worth the read.

quick mention about Inkle studios, one of it's founders is Jon Ingold, who made some amazing interactive fiction games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Ingold All Roads, in particular, is well worth playing.

G_d, I love when the thumbs talk UI. What about a yearly UI special podcast where they just blow through a bunch of games' UIs?

picked up Wolf in White Van. It's fantastic. Like a sense of an ending, should probably be read in one, or two, goes as it spirals so much into itself, it allows you to get more out of it. It's weird that the lit creep in me was fighting the game creep in me. Trace Italian sounds like something I'd love. Even when he names it, I know that Christmas Morning sorta feeling you get. Also, it made me watch the first hour of Gor on Amazon streaming. Not very good.

ah, on my to read list. heard it would make a great animated film

Another famous Russian ampersand novel would be Fathers & Sons. The origin of nihilism, some would argue.

It's really good and so splintered. But in a good way. Also, I think he really hates Magic the Gathering. You'll learn a lot about the Dominican Republic, too.

re: Mordor Anyone read The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao? There's one particular passage this episode reminded me of: “He read The Lord of the Rings for what I’m estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and comforts since he’d first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favourite librarian had said, Here try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line “and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls” and he had to stop, his head and his heart hurting too much.”

Did anyone ever bring up the cooly hat in Ridiculous Fishing here? I know it struck a nerve for some: http://fucknovideo games.tumblr.com/post/45444454224/casual-racism-in-ridiculous-fishing

steve should talk about Xiu Xiu with Chris.

Hey Chris, you breaking yr lease? Need to sublet?

Nah, things are definitely better than the old Rogerian traps of Eliza. To inverse what we're talking about, look at the natural language programming options for Inform (the premiere text adventure programming langauge) It's insane. Oh, Idle Thumb guy that works at telltale, I heard you guys employ Baf from Baf's guide to interactive fiction! Rock on!

Well, natural language parsers with mics (Molyneux's Milo) could be interesting.

Adam Cadre's Varicella does some interesting stuff with conversation pieces, and yes, it's a text adventure http://adamcadre.ac/if.html Quote: "It's like juggling 24 things, eight of them being axes, and eight being live kittens."—Jennifer Earl That's a good quote. There's was a great puzzle in an IF Comp game about a decade ago where you had to communicate with someone who spoke a different, fictional, language. you had to decode the grammer and nouns and verbs by demonstration, pointing, and other gesticulations. Pretty great. Infocom's detective games had you ferreting out morsels of info with threats, lies and interrogation. But does information become an invisible item in your inventory? Scrying games through the lens of games can be a little distracting. The idea of conversations as mazes is pretty accurate. Even storytron, I see more as a neural network, with weights and nodes that open and close passages in the maze. It's less transparent. A neural network would be more granular and hyper, but could still be viewed, plotted, as a mechanical maze. If anything, it's those "good" and "bad" brownie points that frustrate and the idea of "winning." Binary choices are a bit blase as well. I'm all for black boxes, let the narrative feedback tell you, not the mechanical feedback on an inventory screen. Alas, people like being boxes of stats. Conversations are mazes. Hard to escape. P.s. what's the thing Akira has?

Adventure with a dash of RPG is one of my favorite genres, sadly it's usually more RPG with a dash of adventure. I never got into Meretzky's Superhero League of Hoboken, but always seemed cool. Raising cholesterol has a superpower was humorous as well. The first and fourth (bug filled as it was) Quest for Glory games. I never got to play the fifth one, but I loved the divergent paths based on class resulting in more adventure variance than RPG. Also, the fact I was a thief with magic and also a paladin because i brought my character across was pretty sweet, since I felt like all the options were open to me for my due diligence (and borderline obsessive loyalty to the Coles.) Anyone play Lands of Lore? Beside Patrick Stewart, there were adventure hot spot screens to explore. Few and far between, but still pretty cool, and immediately what I thought of when they showed the 'adventure' side to Starcraft II.

Dwarf Noble political intrigue in the palace stuff made me think of Adam Cadre's excellent Varicella http://adamcadre.ac/if.html "It's like juggling 24 things, eight of them being axes, and eight being live kittens." The whole hidden picture thing was interesting. I read a short story in some science fiction magazine a long time ago, think it was called "Pictures of Jesus" where someone does a magic eye puzzle and it opens a whole hidden world of dragons living within the framework of our reality. They get scared and run into the street and are hit by a car. The end. edit ew. just googled around, it was Science Fiction Age magazine and the story was by Piers Anthony. Ugh. What we didn't know when we were 12...