Episode Ideas: Mediocre Games, Politics, and Theology (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to get better at posting more of my thoughts here on Patreon, because I appreciate all of you and want to give you some exclusive insights into my life and the creation of the show.   So today, I wanted to share some episode ideas I've had rolling around in my head! Not sure if any of these will make it to full episodes, but I've been working on them and maybe they'll see the light of day sometime!  

- The Mediocre Games That Mattered To Us

I think sometimes we forget that a game doesn't have to be great to matter. Especially when we're young; our tastes are still developing, and we haven't played a wide range of games with different styles and qualities. And sometimes, we play a game that didn't do anything particularly new, or even anything particularly good, but was nevertheless our first introduction to an idea, or a gameplay style, or story idea. 

I touched on this in my video about five games that changed my life, in which I say that Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, which is an excellent game but a simple story, introduced me to some philosophical ideas that I had not, at that point in my life, been exposed to. But there are other, worse games that had an impact on me growing up. Including, of all things, the Star Wars: Episode I movie tie-in game on the PS1, which was the first game I played that had sidequests and significant amounts of time exploring with no fighting or platforming.  

So if I can get an interesting episode out of it, I'm hoping to talk about the ways we often find meaning and significance in works that most other people may not even remember.   

- Gaming Culture and Politics

I've been trying to figure out how explicitly political I want to get on the show. I've dabbled with it (notably with the criticism of organized religion in Halo 2 and the message of diversity in The World Ends With You), but it continues to be a divisive and incredibly important flashpoint in video game culture wars, and while I still want the channel to be primarily about storytelling in video games, I feel increasingly as though staying silent on some of these matters is irresponsible of me. 

How to go about this is difficult. I've considered doing a video deconstructing the arguments of gamers who oppose political content in games and reveal it for the counterproductive rhetoric it is, but that's proven an incredibly difficult episode to write, for a great variety of reasons. I'm working on it, but I won't release it unless I can produce something I feel really confident in. 

I've also considered doing shorter, more satirical episodes about all the great apolitical games from back before "SJWs" (heavy quotes there) supposedly ruined gaming. I guess I've seen one too many people complain on the internet that Kojima might get political with Death Stranding, as though his most famous games don't include multiple long-winded monologues about nuclear weapons and the military-industrial complex. 

We'll see how it all goes, but I do want to get a bit further into this world than I currently am. I just need to be very careful about how, and make sure that, whatever I do, I do it well.   

- The Theology of [insert game here]

I find it interesting to examine how video games approach topics of religion, God, and spirituality in general. And there's not a lot of examination of these elements of games, aside from the occasional Christian gaming site that tries to turn games into devotionals (which is legitimate, but very focused on converting a game's messages into Christian theological statements, which is not what I'm talking about here). I want to determine what theological outlook is established by a given game, then consider what the game is saying about the world through that lens.

I've actually got an episode ready to film soon about the theology of the Dishonored series as presented in Death of the Outsider, which I'm looking forward to, and I've added a Patreon goal to tackle a series about the theology of each mainline Final Fantasy game. But in the meantime, I'm hoping to do some others, and I'd welcome suggestions about which games could make for interesting episodes about theology!   

So that's what I've got rolling around in my head right now. There are a few reviews and that Dishonored episode coming up, and while this month has proven difficult for video production (all but a week of July includes visiting or being visited by family), I'm going to hit the ground running as soon as I've got my daily life back in order. 

Thank you all for supporting the show, and I'll try to keep these little blog thingies coming!