Game Theory Podcast

Game Theory
  • 3.6 (13)
  • VIDEO GAMES

Talk about video games.

  1. 05/22/2013

    Game Theory 20: Hiatus

    Recorded on May 21, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Brian, Jim, and Tom discuss their plans to put the show on hold for a while. Jim is taking a road trip (follow that here) and Brian’s got a new baby in the house. We intended to publish this right after Episode 19, but the reasons above contributed to extra delay. We’ll let you know via this website or the podcast feed when we start up again, but we don’t expect to record any episodes this summer.

    2 min

  2. 05/22/2013

    Game Theory 19: Streamlining

    Recorded on May 21, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Streamlining - the way the sequels of a game, or games in a genre are re-worked to be simpler, easier - sometimes even with a dramatically transformed core mechanic - is covered in this live episode. Brian also adds nostalgia to the discussion list. The group talks about the way we hold old, complicated games in reverence (as well as the resurgence of kickstartered ‘homage’ games). They also discuss what makes a sequel good or bad, and whether, as a rule, you should play the latest game in a series. Referenced items: World of Warcraft, Nerf, Community Building - Tobold, How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play - Wired, Eve Online, XCom UFO Defense, Isometric Game, Bioshock 2, Defender, Stargate, Halo, Jaws 2, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Jason Statham, Steve McQueen, Mass Effect, Desert Bus, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Madden NFL, Tiger Woods Golf, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, SSX Snowboarding, San Francisco Rush, The Walking Dead, Sam and Max, Monkey Island, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Star Wars: Episode 1, The Matrix: Reloaded, King’s Quest V, Space Quest, Maniac Mansion, Larry David, National Public Radio, Portal, Killzone, Gears of War, Legend of Zelda, Fallout, Everquest, Super Meat Boy, World of Tanks, Social Fabric - Tobold, Red Dead Redemption, Half Life, Goldeneye, Super Mario Bros., Doom, The New SimCity, Diablo Three.

    54 min

  3. 03/27/2013

    Game Theory 18: Marketing

    Recorded on March 26th, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Now that video games are big business - perhaps bigger than movies - they have advertising and promotional budgets to match. It is common to see video games promoted in a way similar to other mass media - billboards and television ads. The group talks about the way they learn about games, keep up on game news (or at least used to) and the way game reviews and metacritic scores are handled. They also discuss their game buying strategy, when (if ever) to preorder, and how they track game sales. Referenced items: PAX East 2013, Borderlands Two, Simcity (new), A Question of Competence - Tobold, Square Enix CEO Stepping Down, Indie Game: The Movie, Super Meat Boy, X-Com Enemy Unknown, Bioshock: Infinite, Diablo Three, Guild Wars Two, World of Warcraft, Spaceteam, Rogue WiFi at Super Bowl - Ars, Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fez, Minecraft, The Castle Doctrine, Steam Greenlight, Spy Party, Kickstarter, Planetary Annihilation, FTL, Planescape Torment, God of War, Gears of War, Jerry Bruckheimer, How Early Reviews Hurt Sales - Ars, Kill Screen Daily, GameSpy, IGN, Why We Avoid Metacraitic - Ars, The Verge, Engadget, Gizmodo, Tom Bissell - Grantland, Catherine, Daring Fireball, Joystiq, Kotaku, 1up, I’m sorry, Marcus - Quarter to Three, Steam Mobile, Humble Indie Bundle, When TED Lost Control - HBR, EFF, Child’s Play, Gabe Newell Left 4 Dead Sale- Shack News, Kingdoms of Amalur, Stephen King, Chromehounds, G4 Channel, e-Sports, Call of Duty is Making Us Dumb - PAR, Curling, PS4 Video Sharing, Counterstrike, League of Legends, Letterpress, Anno 2070, Red Dead Redemption, Why I Played Bioshock on Easy - PAR, SLI Graphics.

    1 hr

  4. 03/12/2013

    Game Theory 17: (Anti) Social

    Recorded on March 11, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Online games purportedly exist to bring us together and create memorable communal experiences. Few mainstream games actively cultivate positive interactions among their players. Players, particuarly when they are fired up and competitive, can get pretty rough. Tom reminds Brian and Jim that they are all elitist jerks, and Brian discusses his internal conflict when players use certain types of language while they trash talk. It is good to take a stand and to shift social norms, but it is not clear how to find an effective way to engage players in this context. Referenced items: World of Tanks, Halo, Skype, Ventrilo, Teamspeak, League of Legends, PA Report - Riot Games, World of Warcraft, Journey, Little Big Planet 2, Left For Dead, Valve Anti Cheating, EvE online, 4Chan, Stack Exchange, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, Not in the Kitchen Anymore (NSFW), Fat, Ugly or Slutty (NSFW), Tropes Against Women in Video Games, Barrens Chat, Counterstrike, Street Fighter Two, Farmville, Simcity, Copenhagen Game Collective Johann Sebastian Joust, Dark Room Sex Game, Guitar Hero, Rock Band.

    52 min

  5. 02/21/2013

    Game Theory 16: Sex and Violence

    Recorded on February 20th, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Examples of sex and violence in video games are often trotted out as the root cause of many of society’s ills. Stepping away from the drama, are video games materially different than, say, movies? Brian laments the fact that we don’t have many interesting examples of love and romance in video games. Jim’s been playing available interpretations as they are released, and Tom optimistically reminds us that we’re still in early days as far as the medium is concerned. Referenced items: Thoughts About App Store Curation, Video Games and the Human Condition, Fifty Shades of Grey, Postal, Manhunt, Call of Duty, Top 10 Movies, Top 10 Games, Just Dance 4, NBA Jam, Madden NFL, Lego Batman, Call of Duty, Halo, Grantland - Spec Ops the Line, Sexposition, Mass Effect, Grantland - Mass Effect Three, Fable, Skyrim, Catherine, Karateka, Spec Ops the Line, Natural Born Killers, Bioshock, Doom, Cut the Rope, FarmVille, Infinity Blade, Mortal Kombat, Death Race, Peggle, Angry Birds, Minecraft, Clear Vision Two, Skinner Box, No Violence Please, We’re Gamers, Rethinking Mass Murder, Gears of War, Killzone, Mirror’s Edge, Heat, Kill Bill, Let The Right One In, Portal, Dating Sim, Leisure Suit Larry, Scenes From a Marriage, Heavy Rain, The Witcher, God of War, Duke Nukem, The Player, The Mummy, G.I. Joe, Girls Gone Wild, Two and a Half Men, Anna Anthropy, Proteus, Dear Esther, Thirty Flights of Loving.

    1h 5m

  6. 02/12/2013

    Game Theory 15: Design Innovation

    Recorded on February 11th with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. This is not the oft-promised indie episode - it is something much better! When thinking about what he liked about indie games, Jim realized the aspect that he wanted to discuss was the innovative design elements in many of his favorite games. Innovative games often represent a thought experiment or a deliberate isolation or exaggeration of a specific game mechanic or component. This means that often, short form and indie games are the right format for this investigation. Brian also finally gets to complain about pixel art, and Tom startles the group with a shocking (ok, mildly interesting) confession. Referenced items: Match Three Game, Portal, Pong, Doom, Outsider Art, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Dune Two, Literature of Exhaustion, Memento, Tower Defense, Bejeweled, Limbo, Fl0w, Osmos, Ingmar Bergman, Stephen Merchant, Electroplankton, Biophilia, Sonic the Hedgehog, Alien vs. Predator (FPS), Journey, Left 4 Dead, Halo, Hundreds, Galcon, ToeJam and Earl, Earthworm Jim, Battletoads, World of Goo, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Kinectimals, Kinect Party, Mario Party, WarioWare, Kongregate, Raving Rabbids, Mirror’s Edge, Dungeon Keeper, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman, Hoard, Starcraft, Sim Life, Spore, Eve Online, Red Dead Redemption, World of Tanks, Half Life, Counter-Strike, X-Com: UFO Defense, X-Com: Enemy Unknown, 10,000,000, PixelJunk, Ni No Kuni, Studio Ghibli, Dishonored, Mass Effect, Dungeon Raid, Pinball Arcade, Medieval Madness, Cirqus Voltaire, Pin*Bot, Black Knight 2000, Waking Mars, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Lili, Letterpress.

    1h 1m

  7. 01/22/2013

    Game Theory 14: Distribution

    Recorded on January 21st, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal and Thomas Westberg. Tom runs through a brief history of video game distribution, starting with arcade consoles and ending with digital distribution stores. A number of trends are identified: transition from physical (resellable) objects to software licenses, certification programs driven by the game distributors and the gradually lowering bar for distribution that now supports ‘indie’ game development. Links to referenced items: Super Missile Attack, Missile Command, Atari, Nolan Bushnell, Sente Technologies, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Midway Games, Namco, Burning Wheel, Atari 2600, Activision, Imagic, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Gamestop, EA, Deadly Towers, Floppy Disk, CD-ROM, Copy Protection, Infocom, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Blizzard, Diablo Three, Sim City, Final Fantasy, Blockbuster, iOS App Store, Stardock Central, Steam, Amazon Kindle, Wal-Mart, Humble Indie Bundle, Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, World of Tanks, XBox Live, PSN, Nintendo eShop, Geometry Wars, Sega Channel, Atari Gameline, Temple Run, Square, Chaos Rings, Nintendo DS, PS Vita, How long should a game be? - Tobold Google Play, Sideload, Androminion, Ingress, Endgame: Syria Elder Scrolls Online, App Store Curation - Jonathan Blow, Angry Birds, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Smurfberry Affair - GigaOM, Zynga, Farmville, Popcap, Mafia Wars, Rovio, Cow Clicker, X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Ten Million, Dungeon Raid, Puzzle Quest, Letterpress, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect, Halo Four, Assassin’s Creed Three, Dishonored, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

    1h 2m

  8. 01/08/2013

    Game Theory 13: Game of the Year

    Recorded on January 7th, 2013 with Brian Fife, James Fingal, and Thomas Westberg. Jim, Brian and Tom start the new year with new audio equipment, a stack of new games to play and a summary of the top/memorable games of 2012. When forced to summarize the year in gaming, the group talks about the development of conceptual / experimental indie games in the vein of Journey and Unfinished Swan, as well as a rash of kickstarter games and retro-remakes. Links to referenced items: Assassin’s Creed Three, X:Com: Enemy Unknown, Halo Four, Dishonored, The Walking Dead (Video Game), The Walking Dead (Hardcover), Dog Slippers, Comet’s Tale, Gotye, PAR’s Gaming Canon, Ars’ Games of the Year, Beverly Hillbillies, Journey, thatgamecompany, World of Tanks, Diablo Three, Super Hexagon, Fez, Mark of the Ninja, Letterpress, Words with Friends, Killzone Three, Kinect Party, Just Dance Four, Waking Mars, Pikmin, Nihilumbra, Indie Game: The Movie, The Unfinished Swan, Narbacular Drop, Nvidia Shield, Nintendo Land, ZombiU, Big Picture, FTL, Fever, Mega Mano-a-Mega Mano, Reeder, Sony RFID - Ars, New Siracusa County Bros. U.

    45 min
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Ratings & Reviews

3.6
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Talk about video games.

Information

  • Creator
    Game Theory
  • Years Active
    2012 - 2013
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Game Theory Podcast