Best Connor Farrell Podcasts (2025)

1
Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber, "The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully" (MIT Press, 2025) 33:08

4d ago33:08

33:08

How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response. In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT Press, 2025), Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber explore the experiences we have when we play games: not the outcomes of play or the aesthetics of formal game structures but the ephemeral and emotional expe…

1
Peter Krapp, "Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation" (MIT Press, 2024) 1:13:44

8d ago1:13:44

1:13:44

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Network. In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture. Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbol…

1
James Cartlidge, "The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon" (CRC Press, 2025) 28:12

20d ago28:12

28:12

The Rise of the Roguelite: Inside a Gaming Phenomenon (CRC Press, 2025) analyzes the wave of roguelite games that have appeared over the past decade, putting them in historical context, informing readers about their development out of and relation to the roguelike genre that inspired them. The book includes discussions of the historical development…

1
Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025) 59:01

25d ago59:01

59:01

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion…

1
Connor Jackson, "Zombies, Consumption, and Satire in Capcom's Dead Rising" (Routledge, 2024) 16:06

24d ago16:06

16:06

Zombies, Consumption, and Satire in Capcom's Dead Rising (Routledge, 2024) explores the relationship between video games and satire through an in-depth examination of Capcom’s Dead Rising series, which alludes to, recontextualises, and builds upon George A. Romero’s filmic satire on American consumer culture, Dawn of the Dead. Proposing a taxonomy …

1
Milena Droumeva, "Playthrough Poetics: Gameplay as Research Method" (Amherst College Press, 2024) 32:57

1M ago32:57

32:57

Game streamers and live commentators are producing increasingly comprehensive analyses of gameplay, yet scholarship still tends to flatten the experiential media of video games into text for close reading. By shifting focus toward the immersiveness of video games, Playthrough Poetics: Gameplay as Research Method (Amherst, 2024) makes the case for g…

1
Daryl Fairweather, "Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 36:04

1M ago36:04

36:04

The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us. Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? What salary do I deserve? Should I just quit this job? Common anxieties about life are often grounded in economics. In an increasingly win-lose society, these economic decisions—where to work, where to …

1
Mia Consalvo et al., "Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch" (MIT Press, 2025) 43:20

2M ago43:20

43:20

The vast majority of people who stream themselves playing videogames online do so with few or no viewers. In Streaming by the Rest of Us: Microstreaming Videogames on Twitch (MIT Press, 2025) Dr. Mia Consalvo, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse, and Dr. Andrei Zanescu investigate who they are, why they do so, and why this form of leisure activity is important to …

1
Sarah Stang, et al., "Monstrosity in Games and Play" (Amsterdam UP, 2024) 52:47

2M ago52:47

52:47

Sarah Stang, editor, joins Jana Byars to talk about Monstrosity in Games and Play (Amsterdam UP, 2024). Monsters fascinate us. From ancient folklore to contemporary digital games, they are at the core of the stories we tell. They reflect our fears, deepest desires, and the monstrosity hidden within ourselves. Monsters hold a mirror to our contempor…

1
Blair Farrell, "The Avengers in Video Games" (McFarland, 2021) 40:13

2M ago40:13

40:13

For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or video games. Similar to the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers video games first started with titles driven by single characters, like Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Capta…

1
Kyle Orland, "Minesweeper" (Boss Fight Books, 2023) 20:09

2M ago20:09

20:09

If you had some free time and a Windows PC in the 1990s, your mouse probably crawled its way to Minesweeper, an exciting watch-where-you-click puzzle game with a ticking clock and a ton of “just one more game” replayability. Originally sold as part of a “big box” bundle of simple games, Minesweeper became a cornerstone of the Windows experience whe…

1
Robert Houghton, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games: Ludic Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024) 36:05

2M ago36:05

36:05

Games with a medieval setting are commercially lucrative and reach a truly massive audience. Moreover, they can engage their players in a manner that is not only different, but in certain aspects, more profound than traditional literary or cinematic forms of medievalism. However, although it is important to understand the versions of the Middle Age…

1
Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024) 55:17

2M ago55:17

55:17

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Cul…

1
Jeff Yoshimi, "Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery" (MIT Press, 2025) 22:24

3M ago22:24

22:24

Can experimenting with game design increase our chances of finding a cure for cancer? Cancer is crafty, forcing us to be just as clever in our efforts to outfox it—and we’ve made excellent progress, but is it time for a new play in the playbook? In Gaming Cancer: How Building and Playing Video Games Can Accelerate Scientific Discovery (MIT Press, 2…

1
Shelly Jones and Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, "Beyond the Deck: Critical Essays on Magic, The Gathering and Its Influence" (McFarland, 2023) 29:34

3M ago29:34

29:34

Since its debut in 1993, Magic: The Gathering has grown to be an influential collectible card game, allowing its community of loyal fans to duel each other while enjoying its lore and compelling narratives. Beyond the Deck (McFarland, 2023) focuses on Magic from a variety of disciplinary approaches. Authors explore the innovative game design of Mag…

1
René Reinhold Schallegger, "A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames" (McFarland, 2024) 40:14

3M ago40:14

40:14

We are witnessing the collapse of the postwar consensus, the implosion of the caring society. In times of social, economic, and political insecurity, egotism spreads. Many popular videogames follow a logic of consumerist self-gratification and self-empowerment. Deeply political, videogames contribute to the transformation of players, causing a need…

1
Réjane Dreifuss et al., "Live Performance and Video Games: Inspirations, Appropriations and Mutual Transfers" (Transcript Publishing, 2024) 32:33

3M ago32:33

32:33

Narrative strategies, immersion, interaction, participation, identification, multimodality, characters and the connection between physical and fictional or virtual worlds: the fields of inquiry into the complex relationship between live performance and video games are numerous and diverse. For the first time, Live Performance and Video Games: Inspi…

1
Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024) 55:43

3M ago55:43

55:43

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novice…

1
Marco Arnaudo, "The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century" (McFarland, 2023) 27:19

4M ago27:19

27:19

The Tabletop Revolution: Gaming Reimagined in the 21st Century (McFarland, 2023) is an overview of the ongoing revolution in tabletop gaming design and culture, which exploded to unprecedented levels of vitality in the 21st century, leading to new ways of creating, marketing, and experiencing a game. Designers have become superstars, publishers hav…

1
Jesper Juul, "Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer" (MIT Press, 2024) 36:40

4M ago36:40

36:40

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun. The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most…

1
James Malazita, "Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine" (MIT Press, 2024) 40:01

4M ago40:01

40:01

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself. In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories …

1
Andrew S. Latham, "Hey! Listen!: Hypertext Rhetoric and The Legend of Zelda" (McFarland, 2024) 39:25

4M ago39:25

39:25

How does analyzing video games as hypertexts expand the landscape of research for video game rhetoricians and games studies scholars? This is the first book to focus on how hypertext rhetoric impacts the five canons of rhetoric, and to apply that hypertext rhetoric to the study of video games. It also explores how ludonarrative agency is seized by …

1
John Eglin, "The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency" (Oxford UP, 2023) 56:42

5M ago56:42

56:42

John Eglin talks with Jana Byars about The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency (Oxford UP, 2023). Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial…

1
Julien Mailland, "The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry" (MIT Press, 2024) 40:39

5M ago40:39

40:39

A guide to the fascinating legal history of the videogame industry, written for nonlawyers. Why did a judge recall FIFA 15, a nonviolent soccer game, from French shelves in 2014? Why was Vodka Drunkenski, a character in Nintendo-Japan’s Punch-Out!, renamed Soda Popinski in the US and then in Western Europe, where the pun made no sense? Why was a Du…

1
Matthew S. Smith, "EverQuest" (Boss Fight Books, 2024) 38:29

5M ago38:29

38:29

“You’re in our world now.” This bold tagline led Sony’s 1999 ad blitz for EverQuest (Boss Fight Books, 2024), the year’s most anticipated massively multiplayer game. Though just five words long, it challenged players to live in a virtual world beyond anything they’d experienced before—and delivered. The game that proved the MMORPG’s potential, Ever…

1
Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman, "Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie®" (MIT Press, 2024) 35:27

5M ago35:27

35:27

The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry. Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia—do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogam…

1
OTB Breakfast Bite | Mickey Mansell's Indian darts summer 11:20

6M ago11:20

11:20

Welcome to Friday's OTB Breakfast Bite - your daily taster of this morning's Off The Ball Breakfast. On this morning's show, former Republic of Ireland winger Keith Treacy looked back on last night's victory over Finland. We have our weekly check-in with La Rochelle head coach Ronan O'Gara ahead of Ireland's test tonight with Argentina. Plus, Kevin…

1
Gabe Durham, "Bible Adventures" (Boss Fight Books, 2015) 29:15

6M ago29:15

29:15

In the beginning, a small unlicensed game development company was hit with divine inspiration: They could make a lot of money (and escape the wrath of Nintendo) by creating games for Christians. With the release of the 1990 NES platformer Bible Adventures, the developers saw what they had made, and it was good. Or, at least, good enough. Based on e…

1
Seth E. Jenny et al., "Routledge Handbook of Esports" (Routledge, 2024) 35:37

6M ago35:37

35:37

The Routledge Handbook of Esports (Routledge, 2024) offers the first fully comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of esports, one of the fastest growing sectors of the contemporary sports and entertainment industries. Global in coverage, the book emphasizes the multifaceted nature of esports and explores the most pressing issues defining the compet…

1
Yaraslau Kot, "Central and Eastern European Histories and Heritages in Video Games" (Routledge, 2024) 35:52

6M ago35:52

35:52

Focusing on games that examine a range of national histories and heritages from across Central and Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European Histories and Heritages in Video Games (Routledge, 2024) looks beyond the diversity of the local histories depicted in games, and the audience reception of these histories, to show a diversity of approaches…

1
Richard Moss, "Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games" (Bitmap Books, 2024) 37:28

6M ago37:28

37:28

Painstakingly researched and written by football-obsessed writer and experienced game journalist, historian, and documentarian Richard Moss – author of Bitmap's own The Secret History of Mac Gaming – A Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games stays keenly on the ball as it shares the rich and influential history of video game footbal…

1
Tom Smith, "Anatomy of Game Design" (CRC Press, 2024) 28:05

7M ago28:05

28:05

People have played games forever, but it’s only in the past few decades that people really started thinking about what games are, how they work, and how to make them better. Anatomy of Game Design (CRC Press, 2024) takes some of the most popular and beloved games of all time and dissects them to see what makes them tick. By breaking down the system…

1
Maurice Suckling, "Paper Time Machines: Critical Game Design and Historical Board Games" (Routledge, 2024) 35:18

7M ago35:18

35:18

James Dunnigan’s memorable phrase serves as the first part of a title for this book, where it seeks to be applicable not just to analog wargames, but also to board games exploring non-expressly military history, that is, to political, diplomatic, social, economic, or other forms of history. Don’t board games about history, made predominantly out of…

1
Jordan Minor, "Video Game of the Year: A Year-By-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977" (Abrams, 2023) 17:07

8M ago17:07

17:07

Pong. The Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band. Fortnite. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, there is a defining game, a game that captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed. Through a series of entertaining, informative, and opinionated critical essays, author and tech …

1
Marta Fijak and Artur Ganszyniec, "How and Why We Make Games" (CRC Press, 2024) 32:51

8M ago32:51

32:51

How and Why We Make Games (CRC Press, 2024) delves into the intricate realms of games and their creation, examining them through cultural, systemic, and, most notably, human lenses. It explores diverse themes such as authorship, creative responsibility, the tension between games as a product and games as a form of cultural expression, and the myth …

1
Hey, Robot! 28:34

8M ago28:34

28:34

Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank Lantz. Over the past nightmare year of the coronavirus, many of us have been hunkered down, trying to figure out how to pass the time with our families. Board game sales on Amazon were up 4,000% percent in…

1
Jordan Magnuson, "Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice" (Amherst College Press, 2023) 35:18

8M ago35:18

35:18

Scholars, critics, and creators describe certain videogames as being “poetic,” yet what that means or why it matters is rarely discussed. In Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice (Amherst College Press, 2023), independent game designer Jordan Magnuson explores the convergences between game making and lyric poetry and makes the surprising p…

1
Sarah Malanowski and Nicholas R. Baima, "Why It's Ok to Be a Gamer" (Routledge, 2024) 24:39

8M ago24:39

24:39

If you enjoy video games as a pastime, you are certainly not alone—billions of people worldwide now play video games. However, you may still find yourself reluctant to tell others this fact about yourself. After all, we are routinely warned that video games have the potential to cause addiction and violence. And when we aren’t being warned of their…

1
Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle, "Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us" (Duke UP, 2024) 40:34

9M ago40:34

40:34

Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us (Duke UP, 2024) explores the key role video games play within the race makings of Asia/America. Its fourteen critical essays on games, ranging from Death Stranding to Animal Crossing, and five roundtables with twenty Asian/American game makers examine the historical entanglements of…

1
Tore C. Olsson, "Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past" (St. Martin's Press, 2024) 1:15:43

9M ago1:15:43

1:15:43

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history? In Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's…

1
Sören Schoppmeier, "Playing American: Open-World Videogames and the Reproduction of American Culture" (De Gruyter, 2023) 25:08

10M ago25:08

25:08

Videogames have always depicted representations of American culture, but how exactly they feed back into this culture is less obvious. Advocating an action-based understanding of both videogames and culture, this book delineates how aspects of American culture are reproduced transnationally through popular open-world videogames. Playing American: O…

1
Souvik Mukherjee, "Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent: Development, Culture(s) and Representations" (Bloomsbury, 2022) 25:09

11M ago25:09

25:09

While there has been considerable research on digital cultures in the Indian Subcontinent, video games have received scant attention so far. Yet, they are hugely influential. Globally, India is perceived as a ‘sleeping giant’ of the video game industry with immense untapped potential, and Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan also have …

1
Edwin McRae, "Narrative Worldbuilding: A Player Centric Approach to Designing Story Rich Game Worlds" (Narrative, 2024) 28:04

12M ago28:04

28:04

Game worlds differ from traditional fictional worlds. While literary and cinematic worlds are written to host character arcs and plots, game worlds need to be designed to host game mechanics. While Princess Leia, Mad Max and Daenerys Targaryen may leave their marks on their fictional worlds, it is YOU, the player, who will carve your personal exper…

1
En Li, "Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023) 38:47

12M ago38:47

38:47

During the Qing dynasty in China, a wide variety of people participated in a lottery game named weixing (“surname guessing”), which had participants placing bets on the surnames of civil service examination candidates. A fiercely competitive process, those who passed the various levels of the civil service and military examinations could climb the …

1
Regina Seiwald and Ed Vollans, "(Not) In the Game: History, Paratexts, and Games" (de Gruyter, 2023) 25:56

1y ago25:56

25:56

How do games represent history, and how do we make sense of the history of games? The industry regularly uses history to sell products, while processes of creation and of promotion leave behind markers of a game’s history. The access to this history is often granted by so-called paratexts, which are accompanying elements orbiting texts. Exploring t…

1
Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, "The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games" (MIT Press, 2024) 25:48

1y ago25:48

25:48

How games are built on the foundations of rules, and how rules—of which there are only five kinds—really work. Board games to sports, digital games to party games, gambling to role-playing games. They all share one thing in common: rules. Indeed, rules are the one and only thing game scholars agree is central to games. But what, in fact, are rules?…

1
Title Run In | Klopp's Successor | Scheffler's masterclass | Off the Ball Breakfast 34:14

1y ago34:14

34:14

Eoin Sheahan is joined by Nathan Murphy and Kathleen McNamee to dicuss the latest news in the sporting world including reviewing the latest Premier League action in relation to this seasons epic title race. Off the Ball Breakfast

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Connor Farrell Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen