Has it been a year already since Mav last did a special GameJam episode? I guess so. For those who are new to VoxPopcast, every year Mav serves as a judge and mentor for an annual event held at his place of employment, the University of Pittsburgh, where students compete to create playable games with pro-social messages over a marathon session that takes the entire weekend. This was that weekend! And since Mav is there the entire time, he;s taken to spotlighting various student projects by interviewing the participants while they work. So join us for this year's Games4SocialImpact GameJam special and hear what all the students were working on and about their design process. Then, head on over to the contest's webpage where you can download the games and...
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Call For Comments: Does Pop Culture Matter? (LIVE show at Wizard World Pittsburgh)
From Mav: Well, this is kind of exciting. We’ve been invited to do a live panel at Wizard World Pittsburgh this week. We’ll be joining together with our good friend Danny Anderson of the Sectarian Review to talk about why pop culture matters on Sunday, July 28th at 12:30 in room 315 at the Wizard…
Call for Comments: Cuteness and Popular Culture
From Hannah: Happily, we’re surrounded by cute things. The Internet was made for photos of cute cats (and hedgehogs and teacup pigs and otters and puppies and wombats and foxes and all the baby animals). How many people have gone to see films like How to Train Your Dragon or The Secret Life of Pets…
e66. Fandom Petitions
Did you hear about the thing a couple weeks ago where a Christian watchdog group started a petition to get Netflix to cancel the hit TV show Good Omens because Satan, and the internet got a big huge laugh out of it, because that show isn’t even on Netflix? That was great. But it makes…
e65. AR Gaming
(Note: an earlier version of this podcast had an audio problem. It has now been corrected. Please redownload if there is an issue) If we’d asked the question “do you play AR games?” five or ten years ago, we’d have a very different answer than we probably do today. It used to be very much…
Call For Comments: Parallel Media
From Mav: To me, one of the most fascinating things that happens in Hollywood is when two different movies with essentially the same plot come out at roughly the same time. I don’t mean one movie that is a remake of another movie. I mean when two studios come up with essentially the idea as…
e64. Mythologizing the Founders
If you live in the United States of America, then this week is Independence Day, the day when we patriotically celebrate the greatest of our heritage and the foresight of a bunch of men in breeches, wigs and stockings decided to create a perfect nation… or so we tell ourselves. If you live outside the…
e63. Transcosplaphobia
Recently Mav witnessed something fascinating on the internet. Several men arguing on a message over whether or not it was appropriate to post transgender cosplay models and to talk about how sexy they were. This isn’t to say that they were concerned about whether or not it was appropriate to objectify women — that was…
Call for Comments: On Puerto Rico
July 23, 2019
People take to the Las Americas Highway in San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 22, 2019 on day 9th of continuous protests demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. – (Photo by Eric Rojas / AFP)ERIC ROJAS/AFP/Getty Images From Katya: We have another serious episode in the works. On July 18th, Puerto Ricans began protesting in…