[Podcast] Gaming With the Moms #3: Get Ready for Eeeeeee! (E3)

Welcome to episode #3 of the Gaming With the Moms podcast, where we talk about family-gaming news and issues—and we occasionally/often go off on crazy tangents about geeky topics like Riker’s beard). Nicole Tanner, our host and Pixelkin’s managing editor, leads the conversation. This week we talk about violence in video games and other topics, including E3, the big industry convention.

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In this episode:

• The people behind the beloved Banjo Kazooie game are coming out with a new game called Yooka-Laylee. A chameleon and a bat team up in this great-looking 3D platformer.
• A leak! There are going to be new Star Wars figurines for Disney Infinity.
• Microsoft has announced they’re going to make modding (modifying) Minecraft much easier. They’ve also announced the name of their new browser will be called “Edge.” Somehow this discussion morphs into a fight about how good the band U2 is.
• Children’s TV shows can be annoying. How you decide what you can put up with (it’s not easy sometimes).
• Simone and Linda had dinner with Jerry Holkins and had a lively discussion about Assassin’s Creed: Unity. We go on a rant about whether it makes sense to hide in haystacks, in closets, or in both.
• We talk about the video games we’ve been playing: Peggle Blast (Simone), Broken Age (Courtney), Year Walk (Nicole), plus the usefulness of walkthroughs. And why it’s always good to play hard puzzle games with a friend.
• Although violence in video games sometimes looks bad to non-players, most video game players actually experience the violence in video games in much the same way that chess players do—as just a part of playing the game and trying to be a good competitor. (And yet, how we wish there were more creative games like Splatoon, Portal, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney that don’t involve “killing” things.)
• Some video games are really funny, like the indie game I Am Bread, in which you’re a piece of bread trying to toast yourself, and a game that’s a favorite of Courtney’s, Octodad: The Dadliest Catch.
  

  Octodad: Dadliest Catch is fun and funny.

• Not everyone is going to enjoy video games. And that’s okay. But we live for the day when “gamer” carries the same type of (mellow) connotations as “movie fan” or “reader.”
• Somehow we get off on a long tangent about the myriad Star Trek series on TV.
• We talk about the merits of an article in Gamasutra in which the author complains about the tyranny of popularity—how being popular makes games more popular, but it’s hard to break in and become popular in the first place.
• We talk about Steam, an excellent place to buy video games on the Internet, and why it’s great. Especially with the new increased ability for games to ban players.
• The June E3 conference is the place where many new games are announced. There’s a new press conference for PC games planned for E3. If you like being the first among your friends to find out when games are coming out, you can watch the streaming press conferences—or just wait for Pixelkin’s coverage of E3, because we’ll be watching and posting articles the whole time.

This podcast was recorded in the studios of the Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle. Music by Pat Goodwin at Novelty Shop Creative. Nicole Tanner, Linda Breneman, Simone de Rochefort, and Courtney Holmes participated in this podcast. Thanks for listening!

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