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


Maps are profoundly practical. They help players find orientation in extensive game worlds, indicate points of interaction, and track progress. Yet by the same token, they complicate a player’s relationship to the world of a game’s fiction. This week, we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of those complications.

Later: Stefan kicks off his Yakuza: Like a Dragon diary; we discuss the order in which we unlock the final trophies of a game; and Dan recaps his visit to last week’s Classic Game Fest in Austin.


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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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