Honestly gotta commend the answer to
esper Vanilla Bean asks: What is the Aphex Twin to Radiohead to Coldplay of video games? (07:32)
for hitting the nail on the head so well that it really set the tone for the rest of the podcast.
This pod was super fun from an anthropological standpoint because it has me questioning how my age, upbringing, etc. has affected how I see certain things.
e.g.
esper Maybesheforgot: What is the O Brother Where Art Thou of video games? (35:37)
For this question I totally honed in on The Odyssey and O Brother Where Art Thou?'s relationship with that text - i.e. I was thinking about which games successfully stand on the shoulders of other pieces of media. On the pod though, that was absolutely not what was focused on and I found that really cool
esper Charlie: Who, or what game, is the first Mark Twain of video games? (45:28)
Another interesting one - I’m not sure if this is generational or regional or a collective lie we’ve all bought into, but… Despite Mark Twain’s prominence, I’ve never actually met another person who had to read any of his books in school. It’s always been one of those curiosities to me about how on TV shows set in high school the characters are always reading Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn but from what I know, they aren’t commonly read (anymore?). I do know some people who have eventually got around to them as adults though. So the question for me becomes something along the lines of “Game/Person who is held in high regard but very few people actually engage with?” or maybe “…held in high regard but isn’t engaged with by the audience you would think would engage with it?”
