Studying Pixels – Details, episodes & analysis

We have been podcasting diligently every week for approximately two years. Now, we decided to take a hiatus to recover a bit and organize some things in our private and professional lives. We look forward to returning, because we have got so many more episodes already planned. It's going to be fun!

If you are a Studying Pixels Plus subscriber, you do not have to do anything. We will pause our Patreon campaign while we are on hiatus, so you will not be billed.

If you wish to stay in the loop, please stay subscribed or join our Discord, which will also be alive and running the entire time.

You are the best and we are looking forward to resume our journey!

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How do we go about analyzing video games? Well, close playing is one of the most prominent methods to do so. Together with Prof. Dr. Theresa Jean Tanenbaum, we discuss what close playing means and how to pragmatically go about it.

Well read: Applying close reading techniques to gameplay experiences (Jim Bizzocchi and Theresa Tanenbaum)

Hermeneutic Inquiry for Digital Games Research (Theresa Tanenbaum)

https://transformativeplay.ics.uci.edu/

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No, you didn’t misread that. Stefan and Dan watched the original Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993 and they… have some thoughts. Was it a good film? No. Was it influential in the video game adaptation space? For better or worse, yes. Let’s see what it has to offer and what we can expect from the new movie coming out in April. 

Bob Hoskins: 'The Method? Living it out? Cobblers!’ (Simon Hattenstone)

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Motion capturing might look so smooth and effortless on screen but it is often the result of an intricate process. Our guest, Jimmy Corvan, can attest to that. He worked at the motion capture studio House of Moves for eleven years and shares his insights on how characters in The Last of Us, Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty and many more games (and films) were brought to life.

House of Moves: https://www.moves.com

Room 8 Group: https://room8group.com

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We’ve played so many games recently and barely had the time to squish them all into the show. So that is exactly we are doing with this episode. Here are our impression of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Forspoken, Fire Emblem Engage, Octopath Traveller II, and the Dead Space Remake.

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This is a replay episode, originally aired on May 22, 2022.

How about we advertise a new game by paying off people’s speeding tickets for one day? Or, even better, how about we showcase a dead goat for some extra PR? Or maybe we plaster the inner city with racist billboards? – Sometimes it is truly impressive what publishers come up with to draw attention to their games. We go through 10 of the arguably most terrible marketing choices ever made.

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It is one of the biggest launches this year so far and at the same time one of the most contested one. In our review, we focus on the actual game and discuss how the magic of Hogwarts enthralled us just as much as the incessant repetition of the open world repulsed us.

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Every now and then, video game companies come up with the weirdest, most peculiar, and often entirely unusable gaming gadgets and accessories. Here are our favourites!

Plus 13. Heaven is a Halfpipe: The Story of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (Studying Pixels)

Title image by Marcin Wichary (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/45221968804/) under CC BY 2.0 license; cropped image for title fitting.

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