Society & Culture

Plumbing Game Studies

by Graham Culbertson

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Latest episodes

School as a Game -- Ethan Hutt

October 5, 2026 · 1 hr 0 min

If the goal of school is to learn, school isn't a game. But if the goal of school is to get a high score on a test, or raise the rankings of your university, or beat the competition to get into med school, then school looks an awful lot…
Markets and Models as Games -- Donald MacKenzie

August 24, 2026 · 51 min

Donald MacKenzie rejoins the show to talk about his book An Engine, Not a Camera, which is about how financial models aren't designed to reflect the world economy, like a camera, but drive the world economy, like an engine. This means that…
Games Are More Like Toasters Than Movies -- Ian Bogost

July 6, 2026 · 53 min

Ian Bogost joins me to discuss The Small Stuff, his book about finding gratification in physical things. We discuss his road from game studies to gratification, the place for gratification in games, and how something as small as pushing a…
Is Science a Game?

June 8, 2026 · 49 min

Today I'm joined by two social scientists to address the question: is science a game? Michael Penkler, Stefan Sulzenbacher, and Stephan Voss recently published an article on this topic: Playing science: representing and doing research in…
Learning Against Gamification -- Molly Worthen

May 14, 2026 · 45 min

Molly Worthen joins me to discuss her recent NYTimes article "You Can't Game Your Way to a Real Education," which argues that the gamification of classroom learning stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how students learn. We…

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The Creative Challenge of Cozy Games -- Lex Play

April 13, 2026 · 32 min

Lex Play, a video game YouTube streamer, joins me to discuss her specialty: cozy games. We quickly figure out that cozy games are less about winning and more about creating, a trend that Lex identifies as having started with MineCraft. Lex…
Playing the Part in Japanese Video Games -- Rachael Hutchinson

November 13, 2025 · 1 hr 8 min

This episode is co-hosted by David Hall, PhD Candidate in ECL at UNC. David and I are joined by Rachael Hutchinson, Professor in Japanese Studies and Game Studies at the University of Delaware, to discuss what it means to play and…
The Meta of Free to Play Games -- Donald MacKenzie

March 13, 2025 · 40 min

Sociologist Donald MacKenzie joins me to discuss his recent article in the London Review of Books, "Hey Big Spender: What Your Smartphone Knows About You." Game Studies rarely focuses on phone games - but billions of people are playing…
Adapting The Lord of the Rings as Trick-Taking -- Bryan Bornmueller

February 27, 2025 · 38 min

Game designer Bryan Bornmueller joins me to discuss his new game The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick Taking Game. This game pushes narratology and ludology together in a way I had never seen before: an adaptation of a story in which…
The Malaise of Modern Video Games -- Simon Parkin

January 23, 2025 · 46 min

Simon Parkin, host of the podcast My Perfect Console and contributing writer (mostly on video games) to The New Yorker, joins Plumbing Game Studies to talk about his recent NYTimes article on modern video games. (Paywalls on both articles…
A Board Game Whose Rules Will Never be Known -- Amabel Holland

November 19, 2024 · 49 min

Board game designer Amabel Holland joins me to discuss her recent board game The City of Six Moons. City of Six Moons isn't an ordinary game - the game is presented as an alien object, and the rules are in an unknown language. Amabel joins…
The Emulation Game of Japanese Culture -- Morgan Pitelka

November 6, 2024 · 1 hr 13 min

This episode is co-hosted by David Hall, PhD Candidate in ECL at UNC. David and I are joined by Morgan Pitelka, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and of History at UNC - Chapel Hill, joins us to discuss representations of the…

Full episode archive on Apple Podcasts →

About the show

Philosophy is like plumbing for ideas - it makes connections and keeps everything flowing. In this podcast, Graham and his guests are doing some philosophical plumbing for game studies. We'll be asking questions like: Why are philosophers always talking about games? Is philosophy itself a game? How can we use games to understand philosophy - and how can we use philosophy to understand games? This podcast will use philosophy to study games and games to study philosophy. Anyone interested in philosophy, games, and how they interact should enjoy it! Remember: the unexamined game is not worth playing