Please enjoy this bonus Halloween episode on Bloodborne’s The Old Hunters DLC. We'll post a full episode next Monday as usual.
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In this episode, Bryan and Nathan discuss Jonathan Boulter’s 2015 book Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience, published by Wayne State University Press. They discuss the concept of posthumanism and how games help us elaborate on it. Nathan proposes an alternate framing (“prehumanism”) and talks about why Boulter’s book feels so prescient in the context of the Metal Gear Solid series in particular.
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Bryan and Nathan discuss Chill Games, "Smart Games," Dumb Games, and Dumb Smart Games, and Bryan shares his early impressions of Metal Gear Solid 2 (the topic of an upcoming episode). They also cover the second half of Kentucky Route Zero, including the brilliant Xanadu sequence and the risks of narrative complexity creep.
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Bryan and Nathan get "enfrenzied" as they continue their discussion of Bloodborne. They discuss the role of madness, the empty form of knowledge, and why scholars need so much sedative.
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After mentioning the game in almost every episode so far, Bryan and Nathan finally have a dedicated discussion about Bloodborne. They talk about Nathan's recently published book (Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne), Bryan's recent replay, Evil Santa, and the one area in the game that still makes no sense.
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Bryan and Nathan are joined by games scholar Erick Verran to talk about video game criticism and writing. They discuss the pitfalls of professional scholarship, the differences between European and American games writing, and the beauty of classic gaming magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Find Erick Verran at https://linktr.ee/erickverran
Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice
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Bryan and Nathan are joined by literary and games scholar Justin Carpenter (University of Utah) to talk about Kentucky Route Zero. They discuss the game's amazing art style and sound design, its literariness, and the ways it challenges ideas of play, agency, and control.
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Bryan and Nathan are once again joined by Shane (cohost of the terrific Reel Rap, a podcast about adaptations) to talk about Dark Souls 1. They discuss sentences lost to time, the meaning of humanity (!?), and why the game's world of Lordran resembles a giant haunted house.
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Bryan and Nathan finish up their conversation about Silent Hill 2 (2024), focusing especially on the game's final boss and discussing (again) the game's structures of repetition, the warehouse setting, and why spider enemies in games usually suck.
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Bryan and Nathan are joined by filmmaker Christopher Jason Bell (Miss Me Yet, Failed State) to discuss Final Fantasy VII. They touch on the generative capacities of technological limitation for gameplay and narrative, what motivates the various graphical iterations of the game's characters, and the role of paratext in the experience of playing.
Find Christopher Jason Bell at https://linktr.ee/christopherjasonbell
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Bryan and Nathan are joined by author Debbie Urbanski (Portalmania, After World: A Novel) to discuss her work and the 1963 novel The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. They touch on the gamelike qualities of narrative, environmental storytelling, and the metaphysics of invisible walls.
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Bryan and Nathan inaugurate a new series, "Abandoned Old Workshop," where they are joined by colleagues in a focused presentation of their recent or forthcoming academic work. In this episode, they speak with Joseph LaBine, editor of terminal 1: Arrivals (Flat Singles Press, 2025), a collection of poetry by the Irish architect, artist, and critic Niall Montgomery. Among other topics, they discuss Montgomery's status as a figure in modernism, and his friendship with and influence from authors like James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and T. S. Eliot.
terminal 1: https://www.flatsinglespress.com/shop/p/terminal-1-arrivals
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Bryan and Nathan embark on another "formless one," discussing the coziness of survival horror games, different valences of horror in the metal genre, and American author Bennett Sims's short story "Portonaccio Sarcophagus."
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Bryan and Nathan continue their conversation about Silent Hill 2 (2024), discussing the game's fascinating structures of repetition, déjà vu, and anonymity.
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Bryan and Nathan discuss Bloober Team's 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2. They talk about the game's incredible sound design, the multiple ways one can and cannot identify with a video game avatar, and why this might be the smelliest game of all time. They also debut a new segment on video game atmosphere called Wainstein and Smog.
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It turns out Bryan and Nathan aren't done talking about Elden Ring. This time they're joined by Shane, a Living Success and the co-host of Reel Rap, a podcast about adaptations (you can find him at @crealoya on Twitter). Together they discuss the game's soundtrack and atmosphere, the irrelevance of its plot, and the question of a possible film adaptation.
In their first grab bag episode, Bryan and Nathan talk about the games they've been playing and the texts they've been reading, including Monster Hunter: Wilds, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, "House-sitting" by Bennett Sims, and After World: A Novel by Debbie Urbanski. They then discuss Jorge Luis Borges's 1939 short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and introduce their Enigma of the Week.
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Bryan and Nathan conclude (for now) their discussion of Elden Ring and its DLC by talking about their hard-won victory over the DLC's final boss in co-op (spoilers), engaging with Souls multiplayer systems for the first time, and the jubilation of being "smooched" on stream.
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In this week's episode, special guest Sam Tett (University of Utah) joins Bryan and Nathan to talk about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011). We discuss open world boundaries, the game's (underrated?) combat, the joys of ledging, and why the Dragonborn might be his own dad.
The Eurogamer essay mentioned by Nathan is "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is Anything but Overrated" by Chris Tapsell: https://www.eurogamer.net/games-of-the-decade-the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-is-anything-but-overrated
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Bryan and Nathan continue their conversation about Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree by discussing oversized objects, the DLC's strange sky, and why every Souls game might need a single un-openable door.
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