Sociologist Donald MacKenzie joins me to discuss his recent article in the London Review of Books, "Hey Big Spender: What Your Smartphone Knows About You."

Game Studies rarely focuses on phone games - but billions of people are playing them. And they are mostly free. So getting you to pay for them is another game entirely.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n16/donald-mackenzie/hey-big-spender

Game designer Bryan Bornmueller joins me to discuss his new game The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick Taking Game. This game pushes narratology and ludology together in a way I had never seen before: an adaptation of a story in which trick-taking (the abstract mechanic from bridge, spades, and hearts) captures the soul of a literary work. Bryan and I discuss how he took these two incredibly popular yet disparate things and combined them into one narrative game.

As of publishing, I believe this game is in print. You can find it here: https://store.asmodee.com/products/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-trick-taking-game

Simon Parkin, host of the podcast My Perfect Console and contributing writer (mostly on video games) to The New Yorker, joins Plumbing Game Studies to talk about his recent NYTimes article on modern video games. (Paywalls on both articles - no paywall on My Perfect Console though!)

Simon and I discuss the difference between modern video games and the console games of the previous decades, especially the relationship between art, commerce, and addiction.