Episodes Meaningful Play Podcast

We’re back to haunt you! After our hiatus we’re back for our first episode of 2025. We discuss some games we’ve been playing lately, including The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, Piofiore: Fated Memories, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, and South of Midnight. We then move on to discuss haunting in […]

In this episode, Sian and Heather reflect on the past few busy months and discuss their favourite games of the year. From the psychological horrors Mouthwashing and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley to the action-RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard and visual novel STOP BURYING ME ALIVE, BEAUTIFUL!, it certainly has been an eventful 2024....Continue reading »

In this episode, Sian and Heather reflect on the complexities of archiving video games. We discuss the way that formal archiving is often difficult and tied up with ideas and judgements about cultural value. We also reflect on the importance of fan preservation, and the discussions around ownership, accessibility, licencing, backwards compatibility, remixing, and more....Continue reading »

Queer games? For pride month? Ground-breaking. This episode Sian and Heather chat about queer game design and the growing body of scholarship from writers including Bo Ruberg and Xavier Ho on queer games and the way queer games reimagine and play with the video game form. We catch up on what we’ve been working on...Continue reading »

In this episode Sian and Heather reflect on ‘cosy’ games – games that are designed or played for relaxation and comfort. We recap our research over the past month or so, including the DIGRAA conference, and games we’ve played recently, including Signalis and Mato Anomalies. We consider what ‘cosy’ games are; a category that often...Continue reading »

In this episode Sian and Heather ‘dive in’ to underwater worlds and level design in video games, particularly the kinds of storytelling inscribed in watery environments. We first catch up on different research projects we’ve been working on and what we’ve been playing recently, before discussing a few different artistic and scientific projects that bring...Continue reading »

In this episode, Sian and Heather ‘tuck in’ to video game food and its role from both  mechanical and narrative perspectives. Food, an essential part of life, is a constant presence in video games that rely on world-building and environmental storytelling to convey meaning. From cute cooking minigames to games that use food to inscribe...Continue reading »

Gamification is the practice of applying game design elements in non-game contexts. Both the term and practice have been applied to various activities including education, work, fitness, romance, finances, and beyond. In this episode, we slow down and unpack what the term means and some of the research around its application from various game studies...Continue reading »

What does the phrase ‘gaming lifestyle’ mean in 2023? In this episode, we talk about the spaces, times, and activities that come to mind when we think of gaming as a hobby. From stylised gaming setups and the visuals of video game streaming; to challenging and toxic communities; to game design exhibitions and the community...Continue reading »

What makes something cute, and what does a cute thing do in the context of video games? As a surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) dominant aesthetic of the contemporary era, cuteness is an area of interest for various scholars. In the episode, Sian and Heather unpack some of the developing ideas around cuteness within and outside...Continue reading »

In this episode, Sian and Heather get stuck into the influential concept of flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s writing and lectures on the flow state have been applied by designers and scholars alike to understand and articulate the unique experiences of play that video games facilitate. We walk through what the concept means and discuss some later...Continue reading »

Happy new year! In this episode Sian and Heather talk about failure in video games. Failure has been an aspect of gameplay that has fascinated many scholars studying video games. We walk through the theories of several scholars, including Jesper Juul, Jane McGonigal, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ronald Tocci, Christopher Paul, Bonnie Ruberg, and Jack Halberstam, reflecting...Continue reading »

Welcome to our last episode of 2022–and what a year it has been! Sian and Heather take it light and breezy and discuss some of their favourite games from this year, titles they loved, titles they spent a lot of time on (hello Genshin Impact …) and those with some interesting mechanics. We catch up...Continue reading »

Happy Halloween! In this episode Sian and Heather catch up on what they’ve been playing and researching lately before moving into a discussion of the gothic, the horrible, and the spooky in video games. We reflect on some different ways of thinking about these genres and their appearances in different video games, discussing scholarship, the...Continue reading »

Bandai Namco sends a prolific Elden Ring player a sword and God gives you a phone in Pokemon Arceus. This episode, Sian and Heather dive into the idea of generous play. While over the years there has been plenty of discussion on the more negative emotions associated with games and play, there is plenty to...Continue reading »

In Episode 24 of Meaningful Play, Sian and Heather catch up on some recent research projects before diving into a thinking exercise around the recent discussions on open world games—their MacGuffins, beauty, and all the quirks in between. What is it about this prolific genre (and its mechanics) that is at times so wonderfully compelling...Continue reading »

In episode 23 of Meaningful Play, Sian and Heather get stuck into a discussion on difficulty in video games—a subject that has resurfaced in significance with the release of FromSoftware’s latest title Elden Ring. While touching on some of the rich scholarship around community behaviour and polarisation in relation to difficulty, the discussion branches out...Continue reading »

In Episode 22 of Meaningful Play, Sian, Heather and Jordana discuss one of the most controversial topics in the realm of videogames – NFTs! In discussing NFTs, they attempt to define and understand NFTs and how they can be used in relation to videogames as a distinct medium. References: D’Angelo, W (2022). [Update] Nintendo on...Continue reading »

*Apologies for the audio quality – due to COVID-19 we were not able to record with our usual equipment*. In Episode 21, Jordana, Sian, and Heather discuss what games they have been playing recently, and consider what makes their favourite boss battles so memorable.  Key Games Discussed:  Blacksad: Under the Skin, Blasphemous, Final Fantasy XIV,...Continue reading »

In the twentieth episode of Meaningful Play, Sian and Jordana welcome a special guest, Heather Blakey(!), a PhD candidate focused on games and aesthetics. Together, they discuss the concept of environmental storytelling (or “embedded narratives” as termed by scholar Henry Jenkins), sharing some of their favourite or notable games that have successfully implemented environmental objects... Continue Reading →