Gay for Play: A Video Game Podcast

After a couple months of having lovely guests on the pod, this week Eric and Laurence sit down one-on-one for a classic catch up on the truly wild amount of culture that's been happening.
From the "Don't Worry Darling" drama, to Lea Michele debuting in Funny Girl, to Queen Liz 2 kicking the bucket and reincarnating as Trisha Paytas's baby— there's a LOT to discuss.
Plus, Video Games! We played a couple of great ones this week.
Immortality is the latest FMV (Full-Motion Video) game by "Her Story"-creator Sam Barlow, in which you, the player, scrub through uncovered footage of 3 unreleased movies starring fictional actress Marissa Marcel, who has since gone missing. As you scrub though and interact with the camera footage, you uncover the mystery of what happened to her & the other actors in the film, as well as a darker, spookier, meta mystery that unfolds.
On the total opposite end of the spectrum, we have Ooblets!! A charming new life-sim that blends the farming of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley with the monster-collecting of Pokémon. We discuss its charms, strengths, and gripes, as well as some other life-sim games that we're playing/want to play soon.
It's a big slay of an episode, we hope you enjoy it!
========
Get in touch with us!
EMAIL US at [email protected]
FOLLOW G4P

Twitter: @GayForPlayPod
Instagram: @GayForPlayPod
Twitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypod
Support the Show & Unlock Bonus Episodes on our PATREON

========
CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Benny Kessler (@retro.spectacle.studio)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish, Travis Ryans & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Art" by Nainata Desai
"Fashion, But Kinda Sad" by Pedro Silva

This week we are thrilled to be joined by our *EXTRA* special guest, Travis Ryans!! Travis (they/he) is one of the hosts Rainbow Road: A Gay Gaming Podcast, our fellow queer gaming podcast sibling to the north.
They join us to discuss PREY, the 2017 FPS/immersive sim from Arkane Studios and Bethesda about a space station overrun by a hostile spooky alien force known as the Typhon. We dive into the game's themes of morality, empathy, queerness, and iconic moments that can only be experienced through the medium of games.
Then, in the second half of the show, we discuss a *new* post-apocalyptic video game that's taking the world by storm; STRAY, where you play as a lost cat making their way through an underground city of AI robots many many centuries after the disappearance of all humans from the cities walls. We share our early impressions on this haunting, but deeply soothing (and cute) video game.
This has been a collab a long time in the making and we're beyond glad we finally had a chance to have Travis on. Make sure you give a listen to @RainbowRoadPod if you're craving more wonderful queer gaming podcasts in your life!
========
Get in touch with us!
EMAIL US at [email protected]
FOLLOW G4P

Twitter: @GayForPlayPod
Instagram: @GayForPlayPod
Twitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypod
Support the Show & Unlock Bonus Episodes on our PATREON

========
CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Benny Kessler (@retro.spectacle.studio)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish, Travis Ryans & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Everything Is Going to Be Ok" by Mick Gordon
"Rikonium" by Yann Van Der Cruyssen

Around once a year, a game releases that seems to completely dominate the gaming cultural conversation (by which we mean it's massively popular and men get really testy about it online). This year the game in that spotlight seems to be ELDEN RING - a new open world RPG from FromSoftware (creators of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, & Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice), directed by studio head Hidetaka Miyazaki and featuring a story & lore written by George RR Martin (yes, *that* George RR Martin)
In this episode, we discuss our thoughts on this massive, brilliant, ruthless open-work adventure (basically we love it), discuss the queerness of high fantasy and spellcasting, unpack how the game's open-world design encourages queer modes of play, and talk about how this game succeeds when players chase the fun and don't take it too seriously (again, much to the chagrin of some really intensely opinionated men on the internet).
We also briefly touch on the discussion around "approachability vs accessibility" in games; a hot-button issue when it comes to FromSoftware games in particular. We highly recommend checking out this YouTube video by Steve Saylor for an in-depth conversation on this topic in regards to Elden Ring from disabled players themselves. It's a really important and illuminating conversation!
We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we're enjoying this video game! (A pretty high-bar now that we think about it, this game is a major slay).
========
Be Our Friends!!
EMAIL US at [email protected]
FOLLOW G4P

Twitter: @GayForPlayPod
Instagram: @GayForPlayPod
Twitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypod
Support the Show on PATREON

========
CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Nick Adams (@nickadams.art)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Elden Ring (Main Theme)" by Tsukasa Saitoh
"Regal Ancestor Spirit" by Yuka Kitamura

Full transparency: we're still just playing Elden Ring / experiencing video game burnout from playing too much Elden Ring, so we figured this week would be a great opportunity to catch up on other video game & pop culture moments that have been in the zeitgeist!
Aside from an obligatory Elden Ring corner, topics the employee walkouts at Disney over the company's ongoing financial support of anti-LGBTQ politicians, the Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation, a few other video games we've been checking out (Tunic, Paradise Killer, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Kirby and the Forgotten Land), The Video Game Accessibility Awards hosted by Alanah Pierce and Steven Spohn, and gaming fundraisers for Ukraine relief-efforts from the (now-ended) itch.io bundle and Epic Games.
Then in the back-half of the show for "what else we're gay for this week" we get into a whole bunch of movies and TV we've been watching! It's a lovely hodgepodge of an episode, we hope you enjoy!
========
Be Our Friends!!
EMAIL US at [email protected]
FOLLOW G4P

Twitter: @GayForPlayPod
Instagram: @GayForPlayPod
Twitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypod
Support the Show on PATREON

========
CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Nick Adams (@nickadams.art)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Stranger of Paradise Main Theme" by Naoshi Mizuta

It's our season finale! We'll be off for the next month, but before we take a little slumber in our memory recovery pods, we're back for one more episode to take another look at one of our favorite video game franchises that we simply cannot stop talking about: KINGDOM HEARTS.
The beloved Final Fantasy / Disney crossover JRPG series has been back on our minds lately. It celebrated its 20th Anniversary earlier this month, alongside the reveal of the next mainline entry in the series: Kingdom Hearts IV. And just recently, the iconic singer of the KH theme songs Utada Hikaru performed some of their hits on the Coachella mainstage.
We've covered KH on the pod before* so this week we're taking a deeper "dive to the heart" of the series viewed through a queer lens: from its use of queer-adjacent shonen anime tropes, to the trans/nonbinary-coded Nobodies, its mindbending ideas of reality and multiverses, and how the game's relationship to its not-so-queer-friendly corporate benefactor Disney has affected how we and others view these games.
We also speculate on what we expect/want out of Kingdom Hearts 4, especially now living in an era of "multiverse media" that Kingdom Hearts laid the groundwork for 20 years ago.
We hope you enjoy this last episode of our season! We'll be back in June with more Gay For Play.
*To hear our original episode on KH, go back through our archives and check out Episode 20! ("Kingdom Farts") where we discussed the origins of the series with our good friend and KH-historian, Casey Fox.
========
Be Our Friends!!
EMAIL US at [email protected]
FOLLOW G4P

Twitter: @GayForPlayPod
Instagram: @GayForPlayPod
Twitch: twitch.tv/gayforplaypod
Support the Show on PATREON

========
CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Nick Adams (@nickadams.art)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Dearly Beloved" by Yoko Shimomura
"The Afternoon Streets" by Yoko Shimomura
"Kingdom Hearts 4 Trailer Music" by Yoko Shimomura, Arranged, orchestrated, and produced by Diego Mitre