Advertise on podcast: Emotive Pixels: The Year of AAA Videogames

Three white guys find themselves wanting more Blackness from a story that is definitely trying.

We decide to start a series with its eighth entry, and find surprising life circumstance relevance. Nate gameworms David Chapman's "Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity".

We, as gamers, conflate labor and free time. But more importantly, we explore another chapter of Will.Wasting Time: Human Idleness and Durational Mechanics in Idle Games, Liam Kelly, Game Studies, volume 26 issue 1

We explore the empty procedural rhetoric of changing Eve's clothes, and probe if we have *feelings* about the matter. We also cover two books, Elise Hu's "Flawless" and "Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The women's movement against sexual violence" by Kyungja Jung.

We find more in common between two seemingly different tiers of 2024 games than we expected, generating questions about interactivity and polish.

We get to know our cohost Will with his life's companion piece.

We discuss the 2025 charmer that would go on to sweep the Keighleys, while slowly continuing to investigate and yet unravel our gaming personalities.

We journey through 45 rooms and a permanent foundation in a game about becoming a character from Divinity: Original Sin 2. The hardest dungeon EVER designed, the video Will was recently watching, about Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle by Christopher Manson

We subject many of our games covered so far against each other in only 2 of 8 brackets of a double elimination match, to be concluded sometime in the future. For the long-time fans 💖 Featuring the following: The NPC Award, The Experimental Excellence Award, The Should Have Been Huge Award, Put It On Repeat Soundtrack Award, The Photomode or It Didn't Happen Award, The Inventory Tetris MVP Award, The If You Build It, They Will Cry Award, The Wait... What Just Happened? Award, The Came Out of Nowhere Award, The Haunting Vibes, No Jumpscares Award, and The Most Satisfying Button-Press Award. And producing the following quotes: "Bro, are you serious? [Game 1] launched broken; [game 2] launched to economic collapse and heartbreak!""This game was Factorio 10 years before Factorio existed!""I don't have any lovers to be in my dangerous space-time!""[This game] was great, back in like, 1960...""It's a fart, but it's a dragon punch.""Whereas, everybody has made a Duck Tales game by this point, which is what [this game] is."

We get deep into the plot of this large JRPG political election story, its metatextual commentaries (or lack thereof) on 16th century English authors, and its intertwining of Medieval royal succession and liberal democracy.

We break the hearts of fandom as we are baffled by the rampaging success of Baldur's Gate 3, an interesting game made of many spectacular details that don't cohere for us into something that we like playing - a game whose reception and accolades led us to be very confused: "It's all informed by the next sentence you don't get to pick." Part 2 in our evolving series of wrestling with understanding the inherent appeal of all-consuming and frictional media objects.

We continue our investigation of what big-budget gaming means with one of the titans of AAA graphical fidelity, marred by a rocky launch. Yet, after 4 years, the game captivates us all. Was it all the dollars spent on Polish demoscene graphics programmers, fantastic voice acting, and Studio Trigger tie-ins?

From Keighleys 2024 winners to Italian gamebook dozen-sellers. Craig: Lil' Gator Game, The Plucky Squire, Shadow Warrior 3, Road 96, Astro Bot Nate: Balatro on mobile updates, Another Crab's Treasure, 1000xResist, Final Fantasy XVI, Felvidek Pauly: 49 Keys, Home Safety Hotline, White Knuckle, NaissanceE

Season 5 is all about AAA gaming in 2025, and in episode 1 we inspect the EA-published Immortals of Aveum, which was declared a commercial failure last year, with most of its studio laid off. What is going on in the game - can we find a reason for its lack of success? Is it actually an indie game in disguise, and is that what "AA" gaming is? Remap Radio interview with Bret Robbins

We ride the cozy caravan into the storm in this charming open world. We ponder identity, coziness, and the differing texture between this and Sable.