Welcome to Meaningful Play, a podcast where we talk about video games, new or old, light or serious, controversial or inspiring, and everything in between with ...
In this episode, Sian and Heather reflect on the past few busy months and discuss their favourite games of the year. From the psychological horrors Mouthwashing and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley to the action-RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard and visual novel STOP BURYING ME ALIVE, BEAUTIFUL!, it certainly has been an eventful 2024....Continue reading »
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Episode 37 – Archiving Games
In this episode, Sian and Heather reflect on the complexities of archiving video games. We discuss the way that formal archiving is often difficult and tied up with ideas and judgements about cultural value. We also reflect on the importance of fan preservation, and the discussions around ownership, accessibility, licencing, backwards compatibility, remixing, and more....Continue reading »
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Episode 36 – Queer Games
Queer games? For pride month? Ground-breaking. This episode Sian and Heather chat about queer game design and the growing body of scholarship from writers including Bo Ruberg and Xavier Ho on queer games and the way queer games reimagine and play with the video game form. We catch up on what we’ve been working on...Continue reading »
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Episode 35 – Cosy Games
In this episode Sian and Heather reflect on ‘cosy’ games – games that are designed or played for relaxation and comfort. We recap our research over the past month or so, including the DIGRAA conference, and games we’ve played recently, including Signalis and Mato Anomalies. We consider what ‘cosy’ games are; a category that often...Continue reading »
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Episode 34 – Water Worlds
In this episode Sian and Heather ‘dive in’ to underwater worlds and level design in video games, particularly the kinds of storytelling inscribed in watery environments. We first catch up on different research projects we’ve been working on and what we’ve been playing recently, before discussing a few different artistic and scientific projects that bring...Continue reading »
Welcome to Meaningful Play, a podcast where we talk about video games, new or old, light or serious, controversial or inspiring, and everything in between with an academic flair. Meaningful Play is hosted by Sian Tomkinson and Heather Blakey, who are games studies scholars based in Perth, Western Australia.