Gaming’s Hardest Critic Desires You to Stay a Happier Life

Today’s episode would possibly make some listeners somewhat grumpy. After all, my visitor — creator, sport designer, and thinker Ian Bogost — isn’t afraid to make claims like this one concerning the early-2010’s online game increase

“ I didn’t love the quality of the conversations that I was able to have about games and art in the games community at that time. They felt unsophisticated and, I started to feel like, Wow, this whole, this whole world of game people is just Philistines. They’re not interested in anything. They don’t know about anything.”

But whereas Bogost is certainly one of gaming’s hardest critics, he’s additionally a passionate evangelist of the basic human expertise of play. And along with his new guide, The Small Stuff, he dives deeper into sensorial pleasure. His steerage may aid you reclaim a few of the pleasures in life which were eliminated, largely, by tech firms which have changed the sensual pleasures of life with frictionless, joyless apps.

So, this week, I encourage you to method the interview with an open thoughts. Resist reacting. Maybe seize some bubble wrap to pop, to set off some pleasurable chemical reactions in your mind. Because, as Bogost pre-emptively warns, “People who are interested in games have too much of their identities bound up with their interest in games compared to almost anything else that I’ve encountered.”

Maybe he’s proper. Maybe he’s mistaken. But Ian Bogost is all the time dependable for beginning an fascinating dialog.

• 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

• Ian Bogost: Game designer, essayist, professor, and creator of “The Small Stuff”

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

Early entry to ad-free episodes, weekly bonus segments, and month-to-month bonus episodes, together with monthly episodes of Past Games, the place specialists share the histories of beloved video games.

Now reside: The History of the Original Tomb Raider!

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

• Why Anything however Games Matters (Game Developer)

• Persuasive Games (Wiki)

• ‘Advergames’: how video games platform Roblox grew to become a company advertising and marketing playground (The Guardian)

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

• Movie entrepreneurs 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)

• Visualization: A Weird Experience With Beaterator (Kotaku)

• Grand Theft Auto 5 overview: golden years (Polygon)

• Grand Theft Auto 5 – Review (Polygon/YouTube)

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

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

• Opinion: The secret motive so many individuals love Grand Theft Auto (Polygon)

• Red Dead Redemption 2 overview (Polygon)

• The Making of Red Dead Redemption 2 (NYMag)

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

• Here’s a hyperlink to the complete audiobook:

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

• Shigeru Miyamoto x Kenji Eno (1996) (shmuplations)

• It’s all over the place: Rape tradition, 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 movie is something like The Odyssey journey sport from 2012, Matt Damon will spend the whole first hour attempting to unravel a single loom puzzle (PCGamer)

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

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