The following is an episode of With a Terrible Fate’s weekly podcast discussing video-game storytelling from all angles. Find all episodes here.


Video games return to the topic of pandemics time and time again. The Resident Evil series continues to indulge in close-up outbreak scenarios; The Walking Dead has brought players to tears at the emotional impact of loss; creative twists like Plague Inc. introduced the role of a pathogen on a quest to conquer the world; the infamous Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft even accidentally simulated a raging pandemic. With our guest, the cultural historian Dr. Arno Görgen, we discuss the constructions of pandemics in video-game stories and how they relate to our current real-world situation.

Later, Dan and Stefan’s side quests merge to ponder E3 2021, Take Two‘s diversity panel, and the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins demo.

  • Main Story
    • 00:02:15 Playing the Pandemic, with Dr. Arno Görgen
  • Side Quests

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Stefan Heinrich Simond

Stefan Heinrich Simond is a game studies scholar and podcast host at With a Terrible Fate. He teaches at the Institute of Media Studies at Philipps University Marburg and works on his PhD regarding constructions of madness in video games. Awarded a scholarship by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Simond turned his passion into a profession as he obtained an M.A. degree in Media Studies in 2017. He broadened his perspective with studies in Philosophy and Crucial Differences at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Since then, he has taught courses with a particular focus on political and philosophical perspectives on video games. His current research revolves around constructions of madness in video games, elements of which have already been published in numerous articles and presented at a plethora of conferences. Most recently, he has co-published the internationally first anthology on illnesses in video games. Prior to Simond’s activity on With a Terrible Fate, he founded and hosted a German game studies podcast named Pixeldiskurs. The project ran from 2016 to March 2021 and concluded at over 230 weekly episodes.

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