The following is an episode of The Drawing Board, a podcast by With a Terrible Fate that highlights the unstructured conversations about video games from which our analytical content is derived.
Welcome to Episode 11 of The Drawing Board, a podcast by With a Terrible Fate.
Last month, Dan and I were honored to chat with the good people of PAX South about the phenomenon we call teaser culture: the modern tendency to analyze and discuss trailers, demos, and other kinds of spoiler-rich content about a video game’s story long before the video game itself is actually released. (Looking at you, Kingdom Hearts III.)
While Dan and I both remain skeptical about the value that teaser culture has to offer discussions of video games and their stories—especially in the short-term—we are grateful to a typically incisive audience of PAX-goers for sharing nuanced views of the many sides and considerations of this new culture in which we all now find ourselves enmeshed. To that end, while we’ll soon be publishing full video footage of the panel itself, we wanted to take this opportunity to undergo a free-wheeling debrief of the panel—both in terms of our presentation, and in terms of which points from audience members really struck a chord with us.
How are 60-minute analyses of 60-second trailers for 60-hour games changing our experience of video-game stories? How might a spoiler-oriented culture catalyze the next generation of truly experimental storytelling? Can watching the trailer for a video game actually change the content of its story once we later play that game?
Listen in, and find out.