This Week on Post Games:

Act 1: A Life Making Sense of Games

Act 2: The Pleasure in Noticing the Small Things

Patreon Bonus: Behind-the-Scenes of Grand Theft Auto's Press Events

Bonus: An Excerpt from "The Small Stuff" Audiobook

Guests:

Ian Bogost: Game designer, essayist, professor, and author of "The Small Stuff"

Closing Song: “The Path of the Wind (from My Neighbor Totoro)” performed by  Gentle Love

Act 1: A Life Making Sense of Games

The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life (Simon & Schuster)

Why Anything but Games Matters (Game Developer)

Persuasive Games (Wiki)

‘Advergames’: how games platform Roblox became a corporate marketing playground (The Guardian)

Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind The Howard Dean for Iowa Game (Electronic Book Review)

Movie marketers compete in ‘advergames’ (Variety)

Public Thinker: Ian Bogost on Games, Doorknobs, and General Readers (Public Books)

How to Write about Videogames (Public Books)

Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press)

Cow Clicker (Wiki)

Act 2: The Pleasure in Noticing the Small Things

The End of Manual Transmission (The Atlantic)

Video Games Are Better Without Stories (The Atlantic)

Video Games Are Better Without Characters (The Atlantic)

In The Shadow of the Holodeck (Charles J Pratt)

How to Be an Alien: Ian Bogost’s “Alien Phenomenology, or, What It's Like to Be a Thing” (LA Review of Books)

Patreon Bonus: Behind-the-Scenes of Grand Theft Auto's Press Events

Visualization: A Weird Experience With Beaterator (Kotaku)

Grand Theft Auto 5 review: golden years (Polygon)

Grand Theft Auto 5 - Review (Polygon/YouTube)

New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ finds new ways to outrage critics (CNBC)

Grand Theft Auto V Is a Return to the Comedy of Violence (NYTimes)

Opinion: The secret reason so many people love Grand Theft Auto (Polygon)

Red Dead Redemption 2 review (Polygon)

The Making of Red Dead Redemption 2 (NYMag)

Song of the Week: “The Path of the Wind (from My Neighbor Totoro)” performed by  Gentle Love

From the album Prescription for Sleep: Ghibli, now available for pre-order

The Small Stuff Excerpt

Here's a link to the full audiobook: https://bit.ly/3TDKKNG 

Copyright © 2026 by Ian Bogost. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, from the audiobook The Small Stuff by Ian Bogost, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC.

This Week in Video Game Links

Shigeru Miyamoto x Kenji Eno (1996) (shmuplations)

It's everywhere: Rape culture, Cyberpunk 2077, and would-be Senators (Mothership)

ASSASSIN'S CREED BLACK FLAG RESYNCED REVIEW (PC Gamer)

47 revelatory hours with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (Game File)

Did We Finally Figure Out Video Game Movies? | Mike Drucker | (Sam Brown University TV)

If The Odyssey film is anything like The Odyssey adventure game from 2012, Matt Damon will spend the entire first hour trying to solve a single loom puzzle (PCGamer)

"There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft": Xbox owners accused of cultivating a "disposable worker mentality" in damning report on layoffs (RPS)

Free Game of the Week: Radiator Forever

From the summary: "Short experimental 3D game collection about sexuality and masculinity. Spanking, sucking, driving, showering." (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

Sam Neill on 'New Zealand Cinema' (filmSCHOOLarchive/YouTube)

The Simple Genius of Jon Klassen (The New Yorker)

‘Citizen Vigilante’ Is The Latest Product Of The Culture Of Petulance (Defector)