Free Play Podcast

It’s been an interesting week in the world. There have been a lot of ideas and questions asked of so very high ranking officials… but none as important as the ones that we tackle in this episode. So, if you’ve ever wanted to know some of the deepest darkest secrets that we have… you’re gonna be pretty disappointed, but probably entertained. So, sit back and learn some random facts about us this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Animal crossing is hard. You have to catch bugs, shake sticks out of trees, and make friends. Lucky for us, the internet is here to rescue us from the burden that is "responsibility" in-game. We share a few helpful services on the old online that make life on an island a little more bearable… oh, and both Kat and Matt had birthdays this week. All that and more this week on the Free Play podcast.

Bunny Day has come and gone… and most of us would be just fine with never seeing another one of those water eggs ever again. Pointless crafting aside, today we get down to the nitty-gritty as we answer some of the hard-hitting questions that you, the listeners, asked our opinions on. What wisdom do we have to bestow upon you? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

The self-isolation descent into insanity continues as Bubba, Matt, and Kate continue to document their activities (or lack thereof). Kate organized a video game hostage handoff that involved Whole Food bags in a parking lot, Matt continues his Star Trek: The Next Generation binge with his wife as well as hunting for the money his child hid on his Animal Crossing: New Horizons island, and Bubba gets sucked into the redneck cousin of Making of a Murderer: Netflix's Tiger King.

Bubba, Matt, and Kate return this week to take our minds off the state of the world. Instead, they talk about Matt's disgusting backed up bathtub, Kate's news report tells a sordid and twisted tale about a community of pumas that rival Game of Thrones in its scandalous aspirations, and Bubba's love for Picard on CBS all access has convinced Matt to binge Star Trek: The Next Generation while in quarantine...all 7 seasons.

It's another week of quarantine for Bubba, Matt, and Kate as they all set sail for deserted islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizon. The trio talks about their experiences in exploring the island, some of the more frustrating elements of gameplay, how Kate completely pillaged her best friend's island, and how Bubba will eventually cave and let chickens into his house. All this and more on this episode of the Free Play Podcast.

Well, here we are. The entire world in the midst of a global pandemic. It crazy, really. We’ve all seen 100 post-apocalyptic movies and played through games like The Last of Us and Fallout more times than you could shake a radioactive stick at, but I’m not sure that anyone really ever thought we’d be here having to deal with something like this. I hope you’re all stocked up on toilet paper and bottle caps because they are 100% the new currency. All that being said, nerds are on the rise as the internet becomes everyone’s new place of refuge and that what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast!

Bubba and Matt are at PAX East 2020 with Love Thy Nerd's Editor-In-Chief Drew Dixon. The trio reflects on the games they have played and where they feel Love Thy Nerd can be an influencer amongst the gaming community. Also, Matt plays with the new soundboard and chaos ensues.

Bubba, Matt, & Kate take your questions in this Ask Us Anything episode along with Matt and Kate's "free range posse" escapades in Red Dead Online.

Kate wants to go into scary mines with her Switch while re-enacting scenes from Red Dead, Matt shames Bubba and Kate into joining his posse, and Bubba introduces a new game, "Test Your Friends" by seeing if Kate or Matt can identify iconic video game themes played backward.

This week on the Free Play podcast, Kate reads yet another entry from her Red Dead Diary, Matt plays his 41st play of Marvel Champions, and I catch you up on the adventure that is playing Gloomhaven… well… starting it, anyways. Thanks for spending just a little bit of time with us this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Bubba, Kate, and Matt are back for season 3 in a free for all episodes where there is no plan, any game they have been playing is up for discussion, and introductions to Free Play insider lingo for the noobs.

Jennifer Graham-Macht of Keymaster Games joins Bubba for a sit-down interview about her background as a local game store owner, the board game Parks, and the upcoming Kickstarter from Keymaster games for Parks Memories.

Well, we did it. This is the last Free Play episode of 2019 and Matt and I are in the same room to record it! With all of the games that came out this year, we thought it would be a good idea to do the most creative thing we would think of, so we came up with what we thought were the top 8 tabletop games released this year and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

The holiday season is in full swing, and chances are you’re probably out shopping for that special someone in your life… even if it’s you… which it probably is. What should you get them? Is it going to be worth your time to pick it up and their time to open it? Well, fret not, nerd, because the Free Play Podcast is here for just a time as this. We’ve created a little holiday shopping guide and that’s what we want to talk about this week of the Free Play Podcast!

Are there too many streaming services? I mean, who doesn’t love a good binge-watching session with their favorite streaming TV show, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to get everything we want in one place. Mickey Mouse just released his mega streaming service and even Disney + doesn’t have everything on it. Where do services like Hulu, Netflix, Prime video and the new Apple TV + fit into the mix? Should we be spending our hard-earned doll-hairs on multiple services? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

Who doesn’t love a 400 hour story mode? I mean, when you are in a world that you love playing a game that lets you escape the one that you actually live in… you don’t really mind the extra time spent chasing bottlecaps and crafting mats just to spend a little more time with your favorite characters. But is all of that time worth it? Would it be better if you could just play for a shorter amount of time and then move on to the next best thing? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week of the Free Play podcast.

After what feels like a thousand years of waiting, we finally had a chance to see what Kojima has up his sleeve. Is it another Silent Hill? What about something similar to Metal Gear? Well, take those two hands, mash them together, add a baby and a bunch of fetch quests and you got yourself a snazzy new game featuring everyone’s favorite motorcyclist, Norman Reedus exclusive to your Playstation video game console! But is it any good?

Just because Halloween is over doesn’t mean that we can’t keep the spoops rollin’! We polled our Facebook Community and asked them about a few of the more memorable times when they got a little more than scared playing games. And that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Well… Fortnite broke itself… and the internet. In what can only be described as a pretty great PR stunt for epic games, they literally obliterated the game. Like… all the way, dead. It’s fine... I mean, it came back… but was it worth it? Were there other off the wall PR stunts that the gaming industry has tried? That’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

LTN Con has LTN Come and LTN Gone, and it was good! Nerds from all over the US and Canada came to learn what exactly Love Thy Nerd is, who runs it and why it’s important. We had sessions on our three pillars, raffled the night away and gave away over 200 games! But was it worth it? That what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

We’ve been excited about the Link’s Awakening remake since the day it was announced and, ladies and gentlemen, IT IS FINALLY HERE. Is it everything we hoped it would be? And should you pick it up for yourself if you don’t have it already? That’s what we want to talk about today on the Freeplay Podcast.

Games cost money, and we’ll gladly hand over all the pennies that we’ve got for them. But how many plays or hours do you expect to get out of a game to make the financial investment “worth it”? How many dollars are you willing to pay or do you expect to pay per play to make it worth the financial commitment? That’s what we want to talk about this week on the FreePlay Podcast.

We got another major update from Nintendo last week about the upcoming hotness for Switch. And they did not disappoint, as usual. Updates that included everything from Super Nintendo Games finally making an appearance to an Animal Crossing update to Overwatch coming to the Switch has us hyped. Aaaaand wondering how we’re going to buy All The Things. We’ll figure it out. Right? Anyways, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the FreePlay Podcast.

Some things are too good to be true and aren’t made to last. Spider-Guy in the MCU falls well within that category. Why didn’t it work? What will we do without him? Are we finally going to get to see that real-life into the spider verse with toby McGuire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland that the internet wants so much or will Sony see that sometimes its better to have your big brother with you on the playground? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be in a confined space with 70,000 of your closest friends nerding out over board games for four days in Indianapolis, Indiana… then you should go to Gen Con. Because that’s exactly what it is. Over 600 games were shown and sold this year and we basically played and or bought all of them. There were more than a few that stood out to us and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

This is it… buckle up, kids… we are doin’ a spoiler cast. This week we are talking about Playstation’s Spider-Man and the hit Netflix original, Stranger Things. You’ve been warned… so do what you have to going forward, but we have all kinds of ideas about both of those and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Nintendo has officially figured out that nerds love the Switch. We keep asking for every game to make its way to the console and they have answered our cries by ignoring them and offering us the Switch Lite. This console is a simplified version of it’s predecessor and, we think, it’s geared towards a completely different audience than current Switch owners. But who needs it? Who is the actual target market? Are we planning on picking this thing up? Well, that’s what we wanna talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

Sometimes reality isn’t all it's cracked up to be. If I want to travel to the moon or lift a car over my head it’s a whole lot easier to do it in digital space than to go through the trouble of exercising and all that. Augmented Reality, or AR, is on the rise and making both our gaming and actual lives a little bit more fun than they may have been otherwise. But is it all about spotting pokemon, casting spells and catching ghosts, or is there more that AR has to offer this ever-growing technologically expanding world? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Who doesn’t love being rewarded for playing a game? I mean, when you look at all that hard work and dedication that we put into honing our craft it only seems fair to get a little something something on the back end. But it doesn’t always go as planned. Loot boxes have made their way back into the news and players are again talking about the ethics of both loot boxes an microtransactions as they pertain to video games. Are they gambling? Are they fair? Are they robbing us of the joy of playing these games that we have all come to know and love? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

It’s been a crazy whirlwind of dope announcements with this year’s E3. We covered the first half of press conferences on last week’s episode. Today we’re talking all about Nintendo, Square Enix, Ubisoft, PC Gaming Show, and the Kinda Funny Games Showcase and that’s what we want to talk about in the second half of our E3 coverage this week on the Free Play Podcast.

If there’s one thing nerds like, it’s learning all of the things about new games and consoles coming out in the now to near future. Microsoft, Bethesda, EA, Devolver and Google have all had their press conferences and we couldn’t be more thrilled about some of it and that’s what we want to talk about in the first half of our E3 coverage this week on the Free Play Podcast.

In 1996, we were introduced to three lovable characters named Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Pikachu. These pocket monsters would change the gaming world forever. Fast forward to 2019, over 20 years later, and they are no longer content with consuming our every waking hour. Now, they also want the sleeping ones. The Pokémon company released an app and a companion device that trains your Pokémon while you sleep. If that doesn’t make sense to you either, then you are in good company and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the free play podcast.

Wether you're crushing your friends in Super Smash Brothers on the Switch, or eradicating flesh eating bacteria in Pandemic, games are fun or at least they are supposed to be. They offer rest from the things of life that weigh us down while allowing us the opportunity to build relationships with the people around us. But is there a way to leverage both the fun and relationship building aspect of gaming within the context of the local church? That's what we want to talk about this week.

Do you or someone you love suffer from Gaming Analysis Paralysis? Do you find it difficult and sometimes downright impossible to find a game to play when there are dozens to choose from in your console backlog or on your shelf of shame? If so, you are not alone and we at Love Thy Nerd are here to help. Though we may not have a cure, per se, we do have some helpful tips to get you over that hump, and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the FreePlay podcast.

Fandoms are the lifeblood of the nerd world. Mess with them and you’ll probably get cut. Hollywood knows that… right? Like… they should at least be able to learn from past experiences like Street Fighter, Doom and Super Mario. Yet we still have our childhood’s altered every time a new video game movie comes out, and Sonic is the latest in a long line of artistic freedoms taken with beloved icons and that’s what we want to talk about this week of the free play podcast.

We’ve all been there. It’s 2 am and you’re trolling around on the internet when a force beyond your control stops your scroll dead in it’s tracks. That force’s name: Kickstarter. Suddenly it’s 4 am and you have backed dozens of things you never knew you needed. As great as kickstarter is, it’s taken a strange turn this past month by suspending several projects… some of which had fully funded to the tune of $200K. This left us all asking… “but… why?” and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

It’s been a while since we’ve really proven our validity as a gaming media outlet. So long, in fact, that we actually almost didn’t do this one… but too much has happened in the nerd world to not talk about at least some of it. We have a few thoughts about things like Disney +, Ubisoft and the PS5, and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

Part of what we do here at Love Thy Nerd is go out into the world of nerddom and meet new people, make new friends, and love on every nerd as best as we can. We’re kicking off convention season this year with Phoenix Fan Fusion, the first “comic con” type convention we’ve been to, and we can’t wait to experience it and tell you how you can get involved. That’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

Bubba, Matt, and Kate are out this week because that’s what happens when two of you work for a church and it’s Easter week. So they’ve decided to treat you, beloved listener, to an unreleased episode from Season 1 featuring Love Thy Nerd supporter Justin Bowers as well as dark confession from Matt Warmbier about his departed horse Horpens and Kate getting distracted by bread slime. Enjoy!

The 90’s were a seriously tubular time in history. Everything about the 90’s was loud and cutting edge. The colors, the synthesizers, and more importantly… the games. Vanilla Ice wasn’t the only cool thing to hit the shelves during this decade. Games that have shaped the way we interact with the media came from the 90’s and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Freeplay Podcast.

Games are a big part of our lives for those of us that really really love them. When you love something, people know about it. We at the FreePlay Podcast are Christians who love games. And we’ve had experiences, both good and bad, with how they’ve affected our faith and relationships with other Christians.

Times are a changin’! Things that were once thought impossible are becoming a reality. Technology is moving us forward at an alarming pace, and Skynet is imminent… and we, at the Free Play podcast welcome our new robot overlords. For real though… the video game scene is constantly changing. Carts to discs to downloads… and now to streaming. Enter: Google Stadia, a brand new gaming platform from the tech giant responsible for just about everything you consume on the internet. Is it possible to have a seamless, high end gaming experience across almost any gaming device? That’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast!

Playing games is a big part of the hobby. Some would say that the other part of it is collecting games. Looking at you, Backlog… but there is a side of the hobby that we may not think about nearly as often. A side that makes playing these wonderful games possible. I’m talking about game creation. Whether it’s board games or video games, these things take time, creativity and passion to see the light of day. There are ways that you, the average joe, can go from idea to table or console, and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the free play podcast.

This past week, Stonemaier games’ retail release of Wingspan wasn’t met with the response they might have hoped. Only 5,000 English copies of the game went out to game stores worldwide with far more than that pre ordered by nerds who didn’t get their copy. Though part of the story, supply and demand isn’t the main character. Jamie Stagemaier’s response to the public outcry is a master’s class on public relations… and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play podcast.

You know what they say… “They just don’t make them like the used to.” For us… that thing is “games.” They used to be harder, you know? It used to take you WEEKS to beat a game. Now, you can get a game from RedBox and have it beat and back in the machine faster than you can say, “Cattails. Woo ooo.” Why is that? What’s changed in the gaming industry and sub culture? Well, that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast.

Games have all kinds of inherit value that they rarely get credit for. They can help us understand the best way to act in any number of situations… one of which would be when not to throw a flash bang… the answer is into a door frame… at your team mates. There is really no end to the things we have and could learn from both video and tabletop games and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the free play podcast.

Sometimes, our bros over at Nintendo know what they are doing when they drop things on us during their YouTube directs. Other times they completely miss the mark by not giving us the Metroid and Animal Crossing we so rightfully deserve. Nintendo had one of those directs this past week with all of the ups and downs we’ve come to expect and that’s what we want to talk about this week on the Free Play Podcast

Matt is still in mourning over the loss of his Red Dead horse, Horepens and is also frustrated with the lack of common sense of his replacement mount, Dude. Despite the emotional vulnerability, Matt continues on along with Kate and Bubba to talk about the games they have played this week. Kate also leads the community discussion about what games can be considered "groundbreaking" and why.

As members of the nerd community we are sadly not strangers to the negative press that our favorite past tends to get. "You are wasting your life!", "You will become violent!" are just some of the criticisms we hear on a regular basis. However, what if we could help people understand that video and board games are not wastes of time, but can actually make you a better person to be around at work and a more productive employee? There is compelling research that lends validity to this and that is what Bubba, Matt, and Kate talk about on today's episode.