First Person Podcast Episode 48

Disco Elysium The Final Cut

Kacper Szozda, Andrew Bailey, Francis Parr, and Patrick Dolan

Welcome to a very special 48th episode of the First-Person Podcast. The world is opening back up and gaming backlogs are clogging up with sweet savings from summer sales. With the regular crew on a well-deserved break, we have some fantastic guests from the FPS community to take over. This month, we’ll be taking a return trip to Disco Elysium in light of it’s recent Final Cut and we have a trio of DE-experts to a tour guide. But don’t be frightened or intimidated, these are fun and friendly fellows, and I (Patrick Dolan, Managing editor of FPS) will be here with you the whole time. Ok so, let’s let these gentlemen and scholars introduce themselves. Continue Reading →

First Person Podcast Episode 47

Queer Representation in Gaming

Giuseppe Femia, Alex Chalk, and Patrick Dolan

Welcome to the 47th episode of First-Person Podcast and Happy Pride Month everybody! This episode we are going to be looking at and talking about queer representation in gaming. Whether it be queer theming, queer performativity, or explicitly queer characters, we want to try and open up the conversation a bit more looking at the way gaming media frames queer values and narratives. Join us as we look into both mainstream and indie games and discuss our experience with them. Continue Reading →

Interview with Kishonna gray

Pallavi Sodhi

Check out the edited transcript for an interview with Kishonna Gray below! You can also listen to the interview on Soundcloud by clicking here or following this link: https://soundcloud.com/firstpersonpodcast/racial-equity-games-showcase-an-interview-with-kishonna-gray Additionally, if you’d like to see the full transcript, please click… Continue Reading →

Remaking Legitimacy in Final Fantasy VII

What the Remake Can Learn From a Pirate Demake

Ian R. Larson

Notions of legitimacy are often called upon within the Western gaming community to deny games that fall outside of the traditional video game industry their meaningful contribution to global franchises. In the case of unlicensed games and romhacks like Final Fantasy VII Demake, this denial devalues the productive forces of fans and independent laborers that went into their creation. To expand the definition of what labor is considered legitimate, I call for a more nuanced understanding of fan and pirate productions as hybrids of the modern glocalized gaming medium; one that factors in class, location, and access as defining markers of regional gaming identity. Continue Reading →

First Person Podcast Episode 46

Player-Narrative Dissonance

Giuseppe Femia, Sabrina Sgandurra, Alex Chalk, and Patrick Dolan

Welcome to the 46th episode of the First-Person Podcast. This month we aren’t going to be talking about the Ludonarrative Dissonance but focusing on the Player-Narrative Dissonance. How do we ourselves legitimize doing something in a video game world that we are morally opposed to in the meatspace?
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I learn through Paradise, or Disco Inferno?

A Brief Etymology of Disco Elysium

Francis Butterworth-Parr

The most important heritage Disco Elysium receives from disco is its deference to powerful emotion. Even Diana Ross (1979), whose command of her own sass was enough to “turn emotion, on and off”, collapses, eventually, into a different romantic victory: it was “love”, not a man, nor material things, that taught Ross “who was the boss” (fab70smusic, 2012). Ross’ singing typifies Dyer’s (1979) argued function for disco, to give “a glimpse of what it means to live at the height of our emotional and experiential capacities” (p.23). Continue Reading →