e288. Games4SocialImpact 2023

Last year, we had a very special episode where Mav attended the University of Pittsburgh’s Games4SocialImpact game jam event as a judge and mentor. Well, that was so much fun that he decided to do it again. So, on this week’s show you get to hear Mav interview several of his students about their process…

e234. Games4SocialImpact

On this week’s show we’re doing something a little different. As part of Mav’s new job he was asked if he was asked to volunteer as a faculty advisor and judge for the University of Pittsburgh’s Games4SocialImpact event this last weekend. Games4SocialImpact is a 2-day student game jam design competition based around the idea of…

e196. The 2022 Box Office Draft!

It’s that time of year again. Every year the hosts of Voxpopcast play a fantasy box office game! Even though it’s only the second week of the year, we are going to review every movie expected to come out in 2022. Then each host will draft 15 movies and compete to see who can have…

e175. Game Studies: Ludology vs. Narratology

We don’t talk about games as much as we should on this show, but arguably they’re one of the most enduring mediums of popular culture. They’re certainly one of the most popular. There’s much comparison of modern video games to movies. This makes sense… if we want people to consider games to be a legitimate…

Call for Comments: Narratology v. Ludology

From Katya: I recently saw a TikTok from Dominic Myers (@gamestudies101) that summarizes the narratology v. ludology split in game studies. Check out their summary because it’s a good one but, simply put, ludology argues that games are a unique medium because they include interactive game mechanics that are distinct from other representational forms. Narratology,…

e161. Describing 20 Games We Haven’t Played

Do you like to play games? We do. And Hannah really likes to play games. In fact, she’s addicted. So much so that she made a game about games… and forced the rest of us to play. Seriously… there were horrible threats… people’s families were in danger. Someone might have lost a little finger. On…

Call for Comments: Gaming in the time of COVID

From Hannah: Fairly early into the pandemic last year, it felt like almost everyone was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (We actually did an entire episode on the relationship between cozy games and what was going on it the world.) In fact, the Nintendo Switch felt impossible to find for most of 2020. And the…

e145. 2021 Fantasy Box Office Draft

It’s a new year and that means we get to do one of our most exciting shows. It’s the fantasy box office draft! Every year we play a game (shamelessly stolen form the Protagonist Podcast… credit where credit is due) where we take turns predicting what will be the most successful movies in the next…

Call For Comments: 2021 Box Office Game

From Mav: Well, this ought to be weird. It’s the end of the year, so it’s once again time for us to do our movie picks for the annual fantasy box office episode. If you’re new to our show, every year we play a game where we earn points by how well movies do at…

e136. Describing 14 Films We Haven’t Seen

In a world where four podcasters are exhausted from the never ended horrific news cycle of politics, racial tensions, pestilence and death that has been the year 2020, these weary souls decide to take one week away from serious pseudo academic pop culture analysis with drinking and swearing and do… goofy pseudo academic pop culture…