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"content": "\u003cp>One of my favorite maps in \u003cem>Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2\u003c/em> is Venice Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I was a kid, I would skate around the prettiest parts of the map, near the sand, hopping up onto a low wall and grinding across it, sticking the landing and zooming off to ride up a halfpipe. There were a lot of crashing waves, seagulls, and Papa Roach playing in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The release of the original \u003cem>Pro Skater\u003c/em> games brought skateboarding to a wider audience, and I was that wider audience. I could never skate in the real world because I’m a klutz, but I could at least get a feel for how awesome it was by landing cool tricks in Tony Hawk’s digital world. Anytime I saw a kid skateboarding in a parking lot, I immediately thought of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those games, released in 1999 and 2000 for the first-generation PlayStation, haven’t aged well. Like other games from that era, the blocky, flatly-colored environment of the original Venice level lacks any true detail or realism—so I haven’t revisited it much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But developer Vicarious Visions and publisher Activision have just released a remastered version that condenses both \u003cem>Pro Skater \u003c/em>\u003cem>1\u003c/em> and \u003cem>2\u003c/em> into a single game with modern graphics, bringing it up to speed for today’s gamers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My old favorite Venice is laid out the same, but everything has a completely new, shinier look. When you skate up to a high area, the palm trees stretch out as far as the eye can see, leading to a huge mountain in the horizon. It’s the same game, but so much better, and it makes exploring the map way more rewarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For me, the magic of the game is multiplayer, which lets you face off against friends in competitions to see who can land the most complex tricks. But my absolute favorite thing to do with friends is mess around in Free Skate mode, where you can explore the maps and practice without any time limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13886144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-800x450.png\" alt=\"Japanese Olympian Aori Nishimura is one of the new playable characters in 'Pro Skater 1+2.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Japanese Olympian Aori Nishimura is one of the new playable characters in ‘Pro Skater 1+2.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Activision)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I was a kid, I would sit next to my friend in his living room for hours playing Free Skate mode, listen to the amazing soundtrack, and showing off cool jumps, spins, and secret spots around the map. It takes some practice to be good, just like in real life, and that makes it even more satisfying when you finally land an intricate trick after trying dozens of times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Playing multiplayer with my boyfriend, going absolutely nuts when one of us landed a complex combo worth tens of thousands of points, sent me right back to those childhood afternoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you played the original games a lot, you’ll feel right at home with the remake. The controls are slightly different because new mechanics have been added from later titles, but if you haven’t touched a \u003cem>Pro Skater\u003c/em> game since 2000, you’ll still be able to play. It took me a little while to get used to the game again, but my boyfriend picked up the controller and got a high score on his first try, as if no time had passed from his glory days years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What hasn’t changed are the settings. You’re still skating around places like New York City and Malibu, and empty warehouses and malls. You unlock new maps by achieving different goals—in the originals, players collected things like tapes, floating fire hydrants, and the letters “SKATE”—those things remain the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Music was a huge part of \u003cem>Pro Skater\u003c/em> for me. It’s where I first heard of a lot of bands I like today: Papa Roach, Rage Against the Machine, and Dead Kennedys. Songs from the original soundtrack are still there, but now alongside 37 new tracks that fully fit into the game, from artists like Machine Gun Kelly, Sublime, and Billy Talent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The developers applied that same philosophy to the lineup of playable pro skaters, keeping the originals while making sure to bring in a diverse group of today’s pros, including Leo Baker, Nyjah Huston, Tyshawn Jones, Aori Nishimura, and Shane O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there’s a welcome addition in the form of challenges. Money isn’t lying around the map like it did in the originals, instead, you’re tasked to complete a specific goal in exchange for in-game currency that you can spend on cosmetics and clothes for your character. You can also build your own skate parks and share them with other players over the internet, which was a feature introduced in 2015’s \u003cem>Pro Skater 5\u003c/em>—I’m really excited to see artistically-minded players take that feature and run with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2\u003c/em> strikes an amazing balance between old and new content. This isn’t just a high-def clone of a beloved old game—I feel like I’m playing the same game from my childhood, with all the warm fuzzies of nostalgia \u003cem>and\u003c/em> all the best parts of the later games. I don’t think the old games ever fully lost their magic, but the remake makes them really shine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\">\u003cem>@kaitykline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Remastered+%27Tony+Hawk%27+Games+Land+A+High-Scoring+Trick&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My old favorite Venice is laid out the same, but everything has a completely new, shinier look. When you skate up to a high area, the palm trees stretch out as far as the eye can see, leading to a huge mountain in the horizon. It’s the same game, but so much better, and it makes exploring the map way more rewarding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For me, the magic of the game is multiplayer, which lets you face off against friends in competitions to see who can land the most complex tricks. But my absolute favorite thing to do with friends is mess around in Free Skate mode, where you can explore the maps and practice without any time limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13886144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13886144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-800x450.png\" alt=\"Japanese Olympian Aori Nishimura is one of the new playable characters in 'Pro Skater 1+2.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1020x574.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-160x90.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-768x432.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-2048x1152.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/new_skater_anishimura_final_wide-296d582ca13c0e5609de25d2a01f4227e534c848-1920x1080.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Japanese Olympian Aori Nishimura is one of the new playable characters in ‘Pro Skater 1+2.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Activision)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I was a kid, I would sit next to my friend in his living room for hours playing Free Skate mode, listen to the amazing soundtrack, and showing off cool jumps, spins, and secret spots around the map. It takes some practice to be good, just like in real life, and that makes it even more satisfying when you finally land an intricate trick after trying dozens of times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Playing multiplayer with my boyfriend, going absolutely nuts when one of us landed a complex combo worth tens of thousands of points, sent me right back to those childhood afternoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you played the original games a lot, you’ll feel right at home with the remake. The controls are slightly different because new mechanics have been added from later titles, but if you haven’t touched a \u003cem>Pro Skater\u003c/em> game since 2000, you’ll still be able to play. It took me a little while to get used to the game again, but my boyfriend picked up the controller and got a high score on his first try, as if no time had passed from his glory days years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What hasn’t changed are the settings. You’re still skating around places like New York City and Malibu, and empty warehouses and malls. You unlock new maps by achieving different goals—in the originals, players collected things like tapes, floating fire hydrants, and the letters “SKATE”—those things remain the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Music was a huge part of \u003cem>Pro Skater\u003c/em> for me. It’s where I first heard of a lot of bands I like today: Papa Roach, Rage Against the Machine, and Dead Kennedys. Songs from the original soundtrack are still there, but now alongside 37 new tracks that fully fit into the game, from artists like Machine Gun Kelly, Sublime, and Billy Talent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The developers applied that same philosophy to the lineup of playable pro skaters, keeping the originals while making sure to bring in a diverse group of today’s pros, including Leo Baker, Nyjah Huston, Tyshawn Jones, Aori Nishimura, and Shane O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there’s a welcome addition in the form of challenges. Money isn’t lying around the map like it did in the originals, instead, you’re tasked to complete a specific goal in exchange for in-game currency that you can spend on cosmetics and clothes for your character. You can also build your own skate parks and share them with other players over the internet, which was a feature introduced in 2015’s \u003cem>Pro Skater 5\u003c/em>—I’m really excited to see artistically-minded players take that feature and run with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2\u003c/em> strikes an amazing balance between old and new content. This isn’t just a high-def clone of a beloved old game—I feel like I’m playing the same game from my childhood, with all the warm fuzzies of nostalgia \u003cem>and\u003c/em> all the best parts of the later games. I don’t think the old games ever fully lost their magic, but the remake makes them really shine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\">\u003cem>@kaitykline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Remastered+%27Tony+Hawk%27+Games+Land+A+High-Scoring+Trick&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "All’s Fair Game in ‘Love and Warcraft’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Although Madhuri Shekar’s \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> debuted in 2013, it feels custom-written for this moment in time. As it delves into the nuances of living a significant part of one’s life online, \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> gives its Generation Z characters a shot at love, while reveling in their individual goofy streaks and neuroses. Directed by Peter J. Kuo, and starring six American Conservatory Theater (ACT) Conservatory students, this candid ode to college romance wears a Zoom container comfortably—as if it were meant to be performed that way all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> was originally slated to be performed in the Spring at ACT’s Costume Shop, so the actors \u003cem>did\u003c/em> have the luxury of having already rehearsed together in real life, helping them in transition to all-digital platforms with natural ease. There’s real chemistry between protagonist Evie (Cassandra Hunter) and the object of her tentative desire, Raul (Hernán Angulo)—and plenty of mutual fondness and easy camaraderie among the rest of the ensemble as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An avid player of a multi-player fantasy game that Shekar calls “Warcraft Universe,” Evie’s side hustle is writing love letters for her classmates. She’s a modern-day Cyrano, whose specialties include Facebook posts, text messages, and heartfelt emails. But Evie’s own love life is suspect. Her teammate Ryan (James Mercer)—an amiable nerd with an affinity for Red Vines—is supposedly her boyfriend, but all of their “dates” take place online. Meanwhile, her sex-positive roommate Kitty (Evangeline Edwards) urges her to break it off and explore the exciting possibilities of physical romance. The opportunity to do so presents itself almost immediately in the form of Raul, a former client of Evie’s, who’s fallen for the loving words she’d written to his now-ex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the scenario is a little contrived, what’s completely genuine is the relatable awkwardness of Evie’s inexpert foray into the unknown. With Kitty urging her on from the sidelines, Evie screws her courage to the sticking point—until she gets stuck. Uncertain of her own desires, she discovers that the reliable language of love that she’s deployed faithfully on behalf of others is not enough to express the complexities of her own feelings. Meanwhile, a smitten Raul soon discovers that he must also navigate aspects of their relationship that are new to him as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885921\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cassandra Hunter as Evie and Hernán Angulo as Raul in Madhuri Shekar’s ‘In Love and Warcraft.’ \u003ccite>(courtesy of A.C.T.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As Evie, Hunter is a delight to watch. Her every gesture and nose wrinkle speaks volumes of dork-ish. Her excitement on the Warcraft battlefield is matched by her real expertise in the game. That she thinks of romance in game terms makes her valuable as a go-between. But, as she discovers for herself, keeping a scorecard in personal relationships is a recipe for misadventure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Raul, Angulo embodies a lovable ungainliness. Even when he stumbles (and stumble he does) he never crosses the line into the unforgivable. As a co-conspirator, and occasional co-transgressor, Evangeline Edwards brings a vibrant touch to her role, luminous eyes beaming out from her screen in every scene she’s in. If you’ve been wondering about the viability of digital platforms as stages for live performance, being mesmerized by all of the subtleties of expression in each character’s face makes a good case for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past few years, the rich world of gamers has emerged as one ripe for exploring through the medium of theater, including the current affairs-parsing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13825717/non-player-character-puts-gamergate-on-the-theater-stage\">\u003cem>Non-Player Character\u003c/em> at San Francisco Playhouse\u003c/a>, and the virtual reality romp \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13871091/5-plays-for-the-holidays-that-arent-a-christmas-carol\">\u003cem>An Invitation Out\u003c/em> with Quantum Dragon Theatre\u003c/a>. A major challenge for those plays was staging their game scenes \u003cem>without \u003c/em>screens, mostly relying on extravagant costumes and occasional video enhancement to give their game worlds a computerized feel. For \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em>, the challenge is inverted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the characters inhabit their game world, the audience experiences the computer graphic gameplay onscreen, as opposed to the cast dressed up as their avatars. The bigger challenge these actors face is how to stage their non-game action from their respective screens so it appears that they’re sharing the same space. By actively manipulating the angles and timing of their devices, they’re able to face each other and interact relatively naturally, their evident rapport helping to blur the borders of their Zoom rooms. Through allusion and some clever choreography, even first kisses and gynecological exams are made plausible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885922\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885922\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Madhuri Shekar’s ‘In Love and Warcraft,’ with James Mercer as Ryan, Cassandra Hunter as Evie, and Evangeline Edwards as Kitty. \u003ccite>(courtesy of A.C.T.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rather than relying overmuch on virtual backgrounds, which can make actors’ limbs disappear at random moments, these performers have instead decorated the walls of their homes with cafe signs and medical posters. And if occasionally their couch cushions don’t line up perfectly from screen to screen, suspending disbelief in order to fully embrace the world of the play is what theater audiences do best. It just so happens that this world is one that infiltrates our personal space instead of the other way around. In a sense, it creates a \u003cem>more\u003c/em> intimate experience for the audience than a conventionally staged performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another way in which this digital production embraces its unique format is as a co-production with Juneau, Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre. Sharing costs and creative team, ACT and Perseverance demonstrate the potential of collaborating over a distance, opening up a whole realm of possibilities for future partnerships with almost any theater company from around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, this sweetly sincere investigation of analog human connection in a digital age is worth experiencing, whatever the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘In Love and Warcraft’ runs live through Sept. 12, and on demand through Sept. 25. Tickets and \u003ca href=\"https://secure.act-sf.org/overview/loveandwarcraft\">more details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Although Madhuri Shekar’s \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> debuted in 2013, it feels custom-written for this moment in time. As it delves into the nuances of living a significant part of one’s life online, \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> gives its Generation Z characters a shot at love, while reveling in their individual goofy streaks and neuroses. Directed by Peter J. Kuo, and starring six American Conservatory Theater (ACT) Conservatory students, this candid ode to college romance wears a Zoom container comfortably—as if it were meant to be performed that way all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em> was originally slated to be performed in the Spring at ACT’s Costume Shop, so the actors \u003cem>did\u003c/em> have the luxury of having already rehearsed together in real life, helping them in transition to all-digital platforms with natural ease. There’s real chemistry between protagonist Evie (Cassandra Hunter) and the object of her tentative desire, Raul (Hernán Angulo)—and plenty of mutual fondness and easy camaraderie among the rest of the ensemble as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An avid player of a multi-player fantasy game that Shekar calls “Warcraft Universe,” Evie’s side hustle is writing love letters for her classmates. She’s a modern-day Cyrano, whose specialties include Facebook posts, text messages, and heartfelt emails. But Evie’s own love life is suspect. Her teammate Ryan (James Mercer)—an amiable nerd with an affinity for Red Vines—is supposedly her boyfriend, but all of their “dates” take place online. Meanwhile, her sex-positive roommate Kitty (Evangeline Edwards) urges her to break it off and explore the exciting possibilities of physical romance. The opportunity to do so presents itself almost immediately in the form of Raul, a former client of Evie’s, who’s fallen for the loving words she’d written to his now-ex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the scenario is a little contrived, what’s completely genuine is the relatable awkwardness of Evie’s inexpert foray into the unknown. With Kitty urging her on from the sidelines, Evie screws her courage to the sticking point—until she gets stuck. Uncertain of her own desires, she discovers that the reliable language of love that she’s deployed faithfully on behalf of others is not enough to express the complexities of her own feelings. Meanwhile, a smitten Raul soon discovers that he must also navigate aspects of their relationship that are new to him as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885921\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885921\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWwarcraft_Still2_courtesyofACT.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cassandra Hunter as Evie and Hernán Angulo as Raul in Madhuri Shekar’s ‘In Love and Warcraft.’ \u003ccite>(courtesy of A.C.T.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As Evie, Hunter is a delight to watch. Her every gesture and nose wrinkle speaks volumes of dork-ish. Her excitement on the Warcraft battlefield is matched by her real expertise in the game. That she thinks of romance in game terms makes her valuable as a go-between. But, as she discovers for herself, keeping a scorecard in personal relationships is a recipe for misadventure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Raul, Angulo embodies a lovable ungainliness. Even when he stumbles (and stumble he does) he never crosses the line into the unforgivable. As a co-conspirator, and occasional co-transgressor, Evangeline Edwards brings a vibrant touch to her role, luminous eyes beaming out from her screen in every scene she’s in. If you’ve been wondering about the viability of digital platforms as stages for live performance, being mesmerized by all of the subtleties of expression in each character’s face makes a good case for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the past few years, the rich world of gamers has emerged as one ripe for exploring through the medium of theater, including the current affairs-parsing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13825717/non-player-character-puts-gamergate-on-the-theater-stage\">\u003cem>Non-Player Character\u003c/em> at San Francisco Playhouse\u003c/a>, and the virtual reality romp \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13871091/5-plays-for-the-holidays-that-arent-a-christmas-carol\">\u003cem>An Invitation Out\u003c/em> with Quantum Dragon Theatre\u003c/a>. A major challenge for those plays was staging their game scenes \u003cem>without \u003c/em>screens, mostly relying on extravagant costumes and occasional video enhancement to give their game worlds a computerized feel. For \u003cem>In Love and Warcraft\u003c/em>, the challenge is inverted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the characters inhabit their game world, the audience experiences the computer graphic gameplay onscreen, as opposed to the cast dressed up as their avatars. The bigger challenge these actors face is how to stage their non-game action from their respective screens so it appears that they’re sharing the same space. By actively manipulating the angles and timing of their devices, they’re able to face each other and interact relatively naturally, their evident rapport helping to blur the borders of their Zoom rooms. Through allusion and some clever choreography, even first kisses and gynecological exams are made plausible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885922\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885922\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/InLoveAndWarcraft_Still3_courtesyofACT.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Madhuri Shekar’s ‘In Love and Warcraft,’ with James Mercer as Ryan, Cassandra Hunter as Evie, and Evangeline Edwards as Kitty. \u003ccite>(courtesy of A.C.T.)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Rather than relying overmuch on virtual backgrounds, which can make actors’ limbs disappear at random moments, these performers have instead decorated the walls of their homes with cafe signs and medical posters. And if occasionally their couch cushions don’t line up perfectly from screen to screen, suspending disbelief in order to fully embrace the world of the play is what theater audiences do best. It just so happens that this world is one that infiltrates our personal space instead of the other way around. In a sense, it creates a \u003cem>more\u003c/em> intimate experience for the audience than a conventionally staged performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another way in which this digital production embraces its unique format is as a co-production with Juneau, Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre. Sharing costs and creative team, ACT and Perseverance demonstrate the potential of collaborating over a distance, opening up a whole realm of possibilities for future partnerships with almost any theater company from around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, this sweetly sincere investigation of analog human connection in a digital age is worth experiencing, whatever the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘In Love and Warcraft’ runs live through Sept. 12, and on demand through Sept. 25. Tickets and \u003ca href=\"https://secure.act-sf.org/overview/loveandwarcraft\">more details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "I Thought a Zoo: Simulated Games For Isolated Times",
"headTitle": "I Thought a Zoo: Simulated Games For Isolated Times | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>I’m overwhelmed by so many things right now, not the least of which is that I keep having to build wind turbines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not in my yard, you understand: in my imaginary city. The city I created playing the game \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>. I play it on my Nintendo Switch, but you can play it on your Xbox, or your PlayStation, or your computer. It’s very much like the game \u003cem>Sim City \u003c/em>that I played years ago, and it proceeds in much the same way: You have some land. You build some roads, you create zoning (and really, who \u003cem>doesn’t \u003c/em>get into gaming in order to explore land-use planning?), you supply these areas with water and power, and then people begin to move in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it’s not a surprise that I, as someone who lives alone and finds myself with time to kill in these Pandemic Days, have made a lot more use of my Switch in the last few months than in the last couple of years. Yes, I played \u003cem>Animal Crossing: New Horizons\u003c/em> when it first came out—in fact, I bought a copy for a stranger on Twitter, because she was in a pinch and it had been such a balm to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I also play \u003cem>RBI Baseball 20 \u003c/em>(the official MLB-sanctioned baseball game) and \u003cem>Super Mega Baseball 3 \u003c/em>(the funnier, more whimsical baseball game), and I play \u003cem>Paper Mario: The Origami King \u003c/em>(the fact that you throw confetti like Rip Taylor in that game is just the best). I loved \u003cem>Kentucky Route Zero\u003c/em>, which is a moody, melancholy point-and-click storytelling game with musical interludes and all kinds of cool stuff. I’m okay at \u003cem>Breakfast Bar Tycoon\u003c/em>, which requires you to learn how to assemble breakfast sandwiches and serve grumpy customers (though anything where you’re eventually rushing stresses me out), and I’m not even going to list the games I’ve tried at which I’m completely hopeless. (One of my dear friends is a devotee of NBA2K, a game I find as stressful as an ancient version of myself might have found a tiger attack.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But more than anything, I have been playing simulation games. Almost anything can be defined as a simulation of sorts, in that there’s always a reality that you’re living in, even if you’re jumping from platform to platform or shooting at bad guys. But here, I’m referring to the more methodical, world-creating, no-obvious-ending simulations like \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/07/18/629760717/put-your-face-in-it-how-gaming-helped-me-understand-my-dog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the farming game \u003cem>Stardew Valley\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, where you set up your farm and then grow things and sell them and try to make friends. \u003cem>Animal Crossing \u003c/em>is a simulation, too. But it’s unlike most simulations, in that it’s not particularly stressful. Not a lot of really terrible things can happen very easily; it’s more that if you don’t play, you’re not out there earning goodies and catching new bugs. I recently picked it up again after a couple of months off, and my biggest problem was that my animal friends had really missed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not the case in some of the other games I’ve been playing. Let me take you on a tour of a few of these imaginary worlds I’ve been building and, in some cases, messing up completely, while I hope that my actual world will steady.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Cities: Skylines\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"This is a shot of only one of many very very bad traffic configurations I created in Cities: Skylines. Yes, two houses are on fire.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01.jpe 1278w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is a shot of only one of many very very bad traffic configurations I created in Cities: Skylines. Yes, two houses are on fire. \u003ccite>(Screenshot via Switch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>First: back to those wind turbines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you set up your \u003cem>Cities: Skylines \u003c/em>city, it needs power. Back when I used to play \u003cem>Sim City\u003c/em>, you were boxed into starting with a coal-fired power plant, which you plunked down in some unfortunate part of your city. Coal plants are dirty, but they’ll juice up your town, and they’re what you can afford. In \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>, you can start with coal—or you can put up wind turbines. You have to look at your maps and find a place to put them that’s windy enough, but they come in smaller units, so the initial cost for the power you need to get started is lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plus, you’ll start seeing your citizens tweeting—sorry, I meant “chirping,” which is the game’s version of something that looks rather like tweeting—about how much they appreciate your commitment to green energy. (Of course, they also tweet complaints. Every time I see the chirp that gripes that it’s not that hard to create a working power grid, I say out loud something like “It’s harder than you think, jerk, so \u003cem>give \u003c/em>me a \u003cem>minute\u003c/em> if you \u003cem>don’t mind \u003c/em>and I will \u003cem>fix it\u003c/em>.” Then I go build some more power lines.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then you’ll add clean water, and your city will grow. Little bars at the bottom of the screen tell you how much demand there is for different kinds of zoning, and when you see that orange bar grow, that means your people want some Industrial Zone space. So you lay it out, and businesses move in. And then, before you know it, little lightning bolts start flashing over some of your residential housing. You’re short of power. If you still have money, you maybe build another wind turbine. Or two. Then the industrial buildings start flashing a little symbol that says they don’t have enough workers. So you build more residential areas. The population keeps growing. They begin to want things. They need the garbage collected. They need a medical clinic and a school, they tell you. They need fire trucks, they tell you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They need police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is true in \u003cem>Cities: Skylines \u003c/em>is, of course, only what the people who developed it decided would be true. (Although on some platforms, you can download mods created by users that tinker with the programming.) And what’s true here is that you add police stations and you add budgets for them, and that prevents crime. Because, as the in-game explanation says, the more stations and money, the more patrol cars. And patrol cars cut crime in the buildings they drive by. (You can eventually watch your police cars drive around.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police cars aren’t the only thing that reduces crime: education does too. And police cars don’t do any good if they can’t get around because of traffic or other road issues. But in this game, police presence affects the happiness of your citizens in only one way, which is that they feel safer when there are more patrol cars driving around. If you don’t have enough police—what the game defines as “enough police”—your crime rate goes up. What that looks like is that instead of the lightning bolts that flash on a building without power or the hardhat person who flashes on a building without enough workers, a face in a ski mask flashes on a building where the crime rate is too high. “Save us all from guys in ski masks,” your imaginary citizens are allegedly thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a small-“c” conservative bent to such a game, of course, because how things have worked is how they must always work. In a year in which even more attention than before has gone to calls to reform police, change how they operate, and potentially give them \u003cem>less \u003c/em>money, a strictly linear relationship between the number of police cars and the amount of happiness seems fanciful, like setting up the game so that adding roads increases a city’s population of red pandas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even these simulated worlds I am trying to build keep bumping into the real one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Two Point Hospital\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884898\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884898\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"In this shot of my hospital, you can see the clown treatment room, a couple of training rooms, a psychiatrist's office, and some vending machines, among other things.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea.jpe 1278w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In this shot of my hospital, you can see the clown treatment room, a couple of training rooms, a psychiatrist’s office, and some vending machines, among other things. \u003ccite>(Screenshot via Switch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Also on the list of uncomfortable collisions with reality is \u003cem>Two Point Hospital\u003c/em>, one of my favorites. I realize that just as there were people who wanted to watch \u003cem>Contagion \u003c/em>early in the pandemic but I couldn’t imagine it, there are people who would never currently want to play a wacky hospital simulation, even if the people mostly have pretend diseases like “Animal Magnetism” and “Hurty Leg.” One of my favorites, though, is “Night Fever,” and if you zoom in on any of the patients who are afflicted with it, you’ll see every one of them is wearing a white suit and doing John Travolta moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this game, you build your GP’s offices and your treatment rooms, you hire doctors and nurses and assistants and janitors, and you install drink machines to try to keep the patients from getting angry. It’s all deeply goofy. You can build a whole treatment room that’s just for sick clowns. It looks like a circus tent. The clown goes into it, whirls around for a while, and is hopefully cured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game’s sense of time is either intentionally or unintentionally hilarious: Patients will sometimes storm out of the hospital angry about the time it’s taken for a doctor to see them, and you’ll see in their information that they waited in your hospital for like a year and a half, drinking from your drink machines, eating from your snack machines, and playing your arcade games. That’s just too long for a sick clown to chill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People die in this game. (Side note: They die in \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em> too, at which point a skull and crossbones flashes on the house until the body is retrieved by a hearse and taken to a cemetery that—yes, of course—you must build. You do not want to know what happens if you refuse to build a cemetery.) They die of their jokey, made-up ailments, and then they become ghosts, and they float around the hospital scaring the other patients until a janitor, one that carries the special ghost cleanup qualification, sucks them up with a vacuum. It’s so weird that I kind of can’t resist it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing \u003cem>TPH\u003c/em> has going for it is that it doesn’t require you to build too much infrastructure. I become impatient during the phase of games like \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em> where you’re mostly connecting pipes in rectangles. In real life, I pride myself on not taking infrastructure for granted, but sitting in front of my TV with a controller, I want to be figuring out where my university will be and how many adorable parks I can have. I don’t especially want to be relocating pipes with pinpoint accuracy or managing traffic patterns by installing roundabouts. (Honestly, what good is building my own city if I can’t ban roundabouts?) \u003cem>Two Point Hospital \u003c/em>does make you place radiators to keep people from freezing, but it does not make you put in the hospital laundry or the transformers or anything else boring. More clowns! Fewer water pumps!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take note: This game was developed by a British studio, so there is no billing of patients and there are no insurance companies. So that’s a couple of doses of reality you do not have to worry about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Planet Zoo\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884902\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884902\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"'Planet Zoo'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Planet Zoo’ \u003ccite>(Frontier)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This one isn’t on Switch (right now), so to play it, I have to sneak up to my office and sequester myself up there to play on my PC. Believe it or not, I’ve spent a number of hours in the tutorial sections and I have yet to start anything from scratch, which might mean that I’m not really cut out for the zoo management business. But I persevere! For the animals, you see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your task in this game is to build (or improve) a zoo. You “adopt” animals from various sources, you build habitats, you outfit them with the plants and the terrain that the particular animal needs, and you try to keep them happy. You also, ideally, rehabilitate and release some into the wild and get conservation points. \u003cem>Planet Zoo\u003c/em> has rapidly become the game I use to escape my considerable real-world anxieties. When you get a notice that a couple of your hippos are fighting (in retrospect, I think I mismanaged the population of adult males and they started going after each other [imagine a big eyes emoji here]), it will really get your attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, this is also a game where mistakes are viscerally upsetting. I have not had to mourn a zoo animal yet, but I had a very depressed pair of frogs the other day (I hadn’t adjusted the humidity correctly), and despite the fact that these frogs do not exist, I felt terrible. Sad frogs! My fault! This is also where I admit that I tend to talk to my animals a lot, out loud. “Oh no! Let’s fix your plants,” I will say to some imaginary lizards. It’s possible that isolation is taking a toll on me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, if you learn that your tapirs are bored and you give them some toys, you can watch the bar that represents their well-being slide up through the yellow zone and into the green zone. At least \u003cem>somebody \u003c/em>is having a good time, even if they’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/group/tapirs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">kinda funny-looking pig-elephants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884904\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884904\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"'Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures.’ \u003ccite>(Nintendo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Can I be straight with you? I didn’t know you could even play \u003cem>Roller Coaster Tycoon \u003c/em>anymore. This is another one that dates back to my CD-ROM game days, when mostly what I remember is trying to stop people from eating near the thrill rides, because it would mean I had to clean up after them when they got sick. I spent a lot of time on barf reduction strategies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I play it on the Switch, it’s richer than it used to be, but it’s still fundamentally the same game. You can still set up your merry-go-round first. Build a little path. Work your way up to arcade games, get some families hanging around, put in a lemonade stand. (I feel like it’s less about the upset tummies than earlier versions, too.) Eventually, you can set up your thrill rides and your big wooden coasters, and you can place a lot of wild topiary stuff for people to look at. This is one of the ones I play that’s the most straightforward. Unlike \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>, where problems can rapidly cascade until everyone in town hates you and you’re broke and everyone is sick and the dead bodies are piling up and no one has electricity (hypothetically this could happen you know maybe), as long as you keep a general eye on the goings-on, it seems like your amusement park does not become some kind of haunted monstrosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And unlike reality, this world seems to feature fewer unsettled stomachs than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>No, Thank You: The Ones I Won’t Play\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A final note: Not every imaginary world should be entered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wasn’t too far into poking around for interesting simulation games when I saw that one exists that’s called \u003cem>Prison Architect\u003c/em>. The reasons I was instinctively grossed out are probably obvious: I don’t find prisons whimsical, even more than I don’t find hospitals whimsical. I was intrigued, however, by a description that suggested that the point of it was that you could play around with rehabilitation options or “punitive” ones, and some part of me thought it might be interesting to explore how they impose consequences of your decisions. So I got it, and I fired it up, and I found that … the tutorial requires you to build an execution chamber with an electric chair. It shows you a graphic animation of your prisoner killing two people. You have to connect the electric chair directly to power, because it needs so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I quit that one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of time has been spent on the ethics of certain kinds of games. First-person shooters, for instance—what does it do to a person to practice shooting people? Or \u003cem>Grand Theft Auto\u003c/em>, which I once dabbled in years ago, only to quit because, of all things, I was a terrible driver. I never even \u003cem>got \u003c/em>to explore the causes of the moral panic; I just kept crashing the car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as much as escape appeals at this point, I don’t need to build an electric chair. I have enough qualms about zoning my citizens to improve their land values, demolishing their homes to build police stations, building glass walls in my zoo so people can look at my fighting hippos, and letting clowns die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point, I realized that the key to why these simulations will always be fantasies even when they’re dark fantasies is that you can leave. I managed a city so badly once that practically every house was flashing with some dystopian symbol of failure, so … I made a new one. Moreover, one of the reasons you have to keep your citizens happy is that \u003cem>they \u003c/em>can leave. They can leave your city, they can stop going to your amusement park, they can storm out of the hospital. There’s always an exit to elsewhere. There’s always the X in the upper right-hand corner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Get me out of here. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=I+Thought+A+Zoo%3A+Simulated+Games+For+Isolated+Times&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I’m overwhelmed by so many things right now, not the least of which is that I keep having to build wind turbines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not in my yard, you understand: in my imaginary city. The city I created playing the game \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>. I play it on my Nintendo Switch, but you can play it on your Xbox, or your PlayStation, or your computer. It’s very much like the game \u003cem>Sim City \u003c/em>that I played years ago, and it proceeds in much the same way: You have some land. You build some roads, you create zoning (and really, who \u003cem>doesn’t \u003c/em>get into gaming in order to explore land-use planning?), you supply these areas with water and power, and then people begin to move in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it’s not a surprise that I, as someone who lives alone and finds myself with time to kill in these Pandemic Days, have made a lot more use of my Switch in the last few months than in the last couple of years. Yes, I played \u003cem>Animal Crossing: New Horizons\u003c/em> when it first came out—in fact, I bought a copy for a stranger on Twitter, because she was in a pinch and it had been such a balm to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I also play \u003cem>RBI Baseball 20 \u003c/em>(the official MLB-sanctioned baseball game) and \u003cem>Super Mega Baseball 3 \u003c/em>(the funnier, more whimsical baseball game), and I play \u003cem>Paper Mario: The Origami King \u003c/em>(the fact that you throw confetti like Rip Taylor in that game is just the best). I loved \u003cem>Kentucky Route Zero\u003c/em>, which is a moody, melancholy point-and-click storytelling game with musical interludes and all kinds of cool stuff. I’m okay at \u003cem>Breakfast Bar Tycoon\u003c/em>, which requires you to learn how to assemble breakfast sandwiches and serve grumpy customers (though anything where you’re eventually rushing stresses me out), and I’m not even going to list the games I’ve tried at which I’m completely hopeless. (One of my dear friends is a devotee of NBA2K, a game I find as stressful as an ancient version of myself might have found a tiger attack.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But more than anything, I have been playing simulation games. Almost anything can be defined as a simulation of sorts, in that there’s always a reality that you’re living in, even if you’re jumping from platform to platform or shooting at bad guys. But here, I’m referring to the more methodical, world-creating, no-obvious-ending simulations like \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/07/18/629760717/put-your-face-in-it-how-gaming-helped-me-understand-my-dog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the farming game \u003cem>Stardew Valley\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, where you set up your farm and then grow things and sell them and try to make friends. \u003cem>Animal Crossing \u003c/em>is a simulation, too. But it’s unlike most simulations, in that it’s not particularly stressful. Not a lot of really terrible things can happen very easily; it’s more that if you don’t play, you’re not out there earning goodies and catching new bugs. I recently picked it up again after a couple of months off, and my biggest problem was that my animal friends had really missed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not the case in some of the other games I’ve been playing. Let me take you on a tour of a few of these imaginary worlds I’ve been building and, in some cases, messing up completely, while I hope that my actual world will steady.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Cities: Skylines\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884897\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884897\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"This is a shot of only one of many very very bad traffic configurations I created in Cities: Skylines. Yes, two houses are on fire.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/citiesskylines_wide-55e580e36d840d545a63f7c83ae1bf61cd4e8d01.jpe 1278w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is a shot of only one of many very very bad traffic configurations I created in Cities: Skylines. Yes, two houses are on fire. \u003ccite>(Screenshot via Switch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>First: back to those wind turbines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you set up your \u003cem>Cities: Skylines \u003c/em>city, it needs power. Back when I used to play \u003cem>Sim City\u003c/em>, you were boxed into starting with a coal-fired power plant, which you plunked down in some unfortunate part of your city. Coal plants are dirty, but they’ll juice up your town, and they’re what you can afford. In \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>, you can start with coal—or you can put up wind turbines. You have to look at your maps and find a place to put them that’s windy enough, but they come in smaller units, so the initial cost for the power you need to get started is lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plus, you’ll start seeing your citizens tweeting—sorry, I meant “chirping,” which is the game’s version of something that looks rather like tweeting—about how much they appreciate your commitment to green energy. (Of course, they also tweet complaints. Every time I see the chirp that gripes that it’s not that hard to create a working power grid, I say out loud something like “It’s harder than you think, jerk, so \u003cem>give \u003c/em>me a \u003cem>minute\u003c/em> if you \u003cem>don’t mind \u003c/em>and I will \u003cem>fix it\u003c/em>.” Then I go build some more power lines.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then you’ll add clean water, and your city will grow. Little bars at the bottom of the screen tell you how much demand there is for different kinds of zoning, and when you see that orange bar grow, that means your people want some Industrial Zone space. So you lay it out, and businesses move in. And then, before you know it, little lightning bolts start flashing over some of your residential housing. You’re short of power. If you still have money, you maybe build another wind turbine. Or two. Then the industrial buildings start flashing a little symbol that says they don’t have enough workers. So you build more residential areas. The population keeps growing. They begin to want things. They need the garbage collected. They need a medical clinic and a school, they tell you. They need fire trucks, they tell you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They need police.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is true in \u003cem>Cities: Skylines \u003c/em>is, of course, only what the people who developed it decided would be true. (Although on some platforms, you can download mods created by users that tinker with the programming.) And what’s true here is that you add police stations and you add budgets for them, and that prevents crime. Because, as the in-game explanation says, the more stations and money, the more patrol cars. And patrol cars cut crime in the buildings they drive by. (You can eventually watch your police cars drive around.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police cars aren’t the only thing that reduces crime: education does too. And police cars don’t do any good if they can’t get around because of traffic or other road issues. But in this game, police presence affects the happiness of your citizens in only one way, which is that they feel safer when there are more patrol cars driving around. If you don’t have enough police—what the game defines as “enough police”—your crime rate goes up. What that looks like is that instead of the lightning bolts that flash on a building without power or the hardhat person who flashes on a building without enough workers, a face in a ski mask flashes on a building where the crime rate is too high. “Save us all from guys in ski masks,” your imaginary citizens are allegedly thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a small-“c” conservative bent to such a game, of course, because how things have worked is how they must always work. In a year in which even more attention than before has gone to calls to reform police, change how they operate, and potentially give them \u003cem>less \u003c/em>money, a strictly linear relationship between the number of police cars and the amount of happiness seems fanciful, like setting up the game so that adding roads increases a city’s population of red pandas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even these simulated worlds I am trying to build keep bumping into the real one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Two Point Hospital\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884898\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884898\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-800x450.jpe\" alt=\"In this shot of my hospital, you can see the clown treatment room, a couple of training rooms, a psychiatrist's office, and some vending machines, among other things.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-800x450.jpe 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-1020x574.jpe 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-160x90.jpe 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea-768x432.jpe 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/twopointhospital_wide-7f480849e6907b16c3c7f6fd7c98e44637ba50ea.jpe 1278w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In this shot of my hospital, you can see the clown treatment room, a couple of training rooms, a psychiatrist’s office, and some vending machines, among other things. \u003ccite>(Screenshot via Switch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Also on the list of uncomfortable collisions with reality is \u003cem>Two Point Hospital\u003c/em>, one of my favorites. I realize that just as there were people who wanted to watch \u003cem>Contagion \u003c/em>early in the pandemic but I couldn’t imagine it, there are people who would never currently want to play a wacky hospital simulation, even if the people mostly have pretend diseases like “Animal Magnetism” and “Hurty Leg.” One of my favorites, though, is “Night Fever,” and if you zoom in on any of the patients who are afflicted with it, you’ll see every one of them is wearing a white suit and doing John Travolta moves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this game, you build your GP’s offices and your treatment rooms, you hire doctors and nurses and assistants and janitors, and you install drink machines to try to keep the patients from getting angry. It’s all deeply goofy. You can build a whole treatment room that’s just for sick clowns. It looks like a circus tent. The clown goes into it, whirls around for a while, and is hopefully cured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game’s sense of time is either intentionally or unintentionally hilarious: Patients will sometimes storm out of the hospital angry about the time it’s taken for a doctor to see them, and you’ll see in their information that they waited in your hospital for like a year and a half, drinking from your drink machines, eating from your snack machines, and playing your arcade games. That’s just too long for a sick clown to chill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People die in this game. (Side note: They die in \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em> too, at which point a skull and crossbones flashes on the house until the body is retrieved by a hearse and taken to a cemetery that—yes, of course—you must build. You do not want to know what happens if you refuse to build a cemetery.) They die of their jokey, made-up ailments, and then they become ghosts, and they float around the hospital scaring the other patients until a janitor, one that carries the special ghost cleanup qualification, sucks them up with a vacuum. It’s so weird that I kind of can’t resist it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing \u003cem>TPH\u003c/em> has going for it is that it doesn’t require you to build too much infrastructure. I become impatient during the phase of games like \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em> where you’re mostly connecting pipes in rectangles. In real life, I pride myself on not taking infrastructure for granted, but sitting in front of my TV with a controller, I want to be figuring out where my university will be and how many adorable parks I can have. I don’t especially want to be relocating pipes with pinpoint accuracy or managing traffic patterns by installing roundabouts. (Honestly, what good is building my own city if I can’t ban roundabouts?) \u003cem>Two Point Hospital \u003c/em>does make you place radiators to keep people from freezing, but it does not make you put in the hospital laundry or the transformers or anything else boring. More clowns! Fewer water pumps!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take note: This game was developed by a British studio, so there is no billing of patients and there are no insurance companies. So that’s a couple of doses of reality you do not have to worry about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Planet Zoo\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884902\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884902\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"'Planet Zoo'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/planet-zoo-is-a-sim-from-the-creators-of-planet-coaster-in-the-style-of-zoo-tycoon.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Planet Zoo’ \u003ccite>(Frontier)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This one isn’t on Switch (right now), so to play it, I have to sneak up to my office and sequester myself up there to play on my PC. Believe it or not, I’ve spent a number of hours in the tutorial sections and I have yet to start anything from scratch, which might mean that I’m not really cut out for the zoo management business. But I persevere! For the animals, you see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your task in this game is to build (or improve) a zoo. You “adopt” animals from various sources, you build habitats, you outfit them with the plants and the terrain that the particular animal needs, and you try to keep them happy. You also, ideally, rehabilitate and release some into the wild and get conservation points. \u003cem>Planet Zoo\u003c/em> has rapidly become the game I use to escape my considerable real-world anxieties. When you get a notice that a couple of your hippos are fighting (in retrospect, I think I mismanaged the population of adult males and they started going after each other [imagine a big eyes emoji here]), it will really get your attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, this is also a game where mistakes are viscerally upsetting. I have not had to mourn a zoo animal yet, but I had a very depressed pair of frogs the other day (I hadn’t adjusted the humidity correctly), and despite the fact that these frogs do not exist, I felt terrible. Sad frogs! My fault! This is also where I admit that I tend to talk to my animals a lot, out loud. “Oh no! Let’s fix your plants,” I will say to some imaginary lizards. It’s possible that isolation is taking a toll on me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, if you learn that your tapirs are bored and you give them some toys, you can watch the bar that represents their well-being slide up through the yellow zone and into the green zone. At least \u003cem>somebody \u003c/em>is having a good time, even if they’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/group/tapirs/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">kinda funny-looking pig-elephants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13884904\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13884904\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"'Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures.'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/rollercoaster-tycoon-adventures-switch-screenshot05.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Roller Coaster Tycoon Adventures.’ \u003ccite>(Nintendo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Can I be straight with you? I didn’t know you could even play \u003cem>Roller Coaster Tycoon \u003c/em>anymore. This is another one that dates back to my CD-ROM game days, when mostly what I remember is trying to stop people from eating near the thrill rides, because it would mean I had to clean up after them when they got sick. I spent a lot of time on barf reduction strategies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I play it on the Switch, it’s richer than it used to be, but it’s still fundamentally the same game. You can still set up your merry-go-round first. Build a little path. Work your way up to arcade games, get some families hanging around, put in a lemonade stand. (I feel like it’s less about the upset tummies than earlier versions, too.) Eventually, you can set up your thrill rides and your big wooden coasters, and you can place a lot of wild topiary stuff for people to look at. This is one of the ones I play that’s the most straightforward. Unlike \u003cem>Cities: Skylines\u003c/em>, where problems can rapidly cascade until everyone in town hates you and you’re broke and everyone is sick and the dead bodies are piling up and no one has electricity (hypothetically this could happen you know maybe), as long as you keep a general eye on the goings-on, it seems like your amusement park does not become some kind of haunted monstrosity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And unlike reality, this world seems to feature fewer unsettled stomachs than I remember.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>No, Thank You: The Ones I Won’t Play\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A final note: Not every imaginary world should be entered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wasn’t too far into poking around for interesting simulation games when I saw that one exists that’s called \u003cem>Prison Architect\u003c/em>. The reasons I was instinctively grossed out are probably obvious: I don’t find prisons whimsical, even more than I don’t find hospitals whimsical. I was intrigued, however, by a description that suggested that the point of it was that you could play around with rehabilitation options or “punitive” ones, and some part of me thought it might be interesting to explore how they impose consequences of your decisions. So I got it, and I fired it up, and I found that … the tutorial requires you to build an execution chamber with an electric chair. It shows you a graphic animation of your prisoner killing two people. You have to connect the electric chair directly to power, because it needs so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I quit that one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of time has been spent on the ethics of certain kinds of games. First-person shooters, for instance—what does it do to a person to practice shooting people? Or \u003cem>Grand Theft Auto\u003c/em>, which I once dabbled in years ago, only to quit because, of all things, I was a terrible driver. I never even \u003cem>got \u003c/em>to explore the causes of the moral panic; I just kept crashing the car.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as much as escape appeals at this point, I don’t need to build an electric chair. I have enough qualms about zoning my citizens to improve their land values, demolishing their homes to build police stations, building glass walls in my zoo so people can look at my fighting hippos, and letting clowns die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some point, I realized that the key to why these simulations will always be fantasies even when they’re dark fantasies is that you can leave. I managed a city so badly once that practically every house was flashing with some dystopian symbol of failure, so … I made a new one. Moreover, one of the reasons you have to keep your citizens happy is that \u003cem>they \u003c/em>can leave. They can leave your city, they can stop going to your amusement park, they can storm out of the hospital. There’s always an exit to elsewhere. There’s always the X in the upper right-hand corner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Get me out of here. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=I+Thought+A+Zoo%3A+Simulated+Games+For+Isolated+Times&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'The Last of Us Part II' is a Gut Punch That Just Keeps Punching",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>The Last of Us Part II\u003c/em> is a game that punches you in the gut right from the start, and never stops punching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a time like this, I honestly didn’t know if I could handle a game like \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, either part of it. As a journalist in 2020, a lot of my waking thoughts go to the news (which is usually upsetting). I wasn’t really tempted to escape into an apocalyptic hellscape where 60% of the world’s population is killed by a parasitic fungus that turns you into a zombie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t from a lack of interest. I’ve been looking forward to this game for years. The original \u003cem>Last of Us\u003c/em>, released in 2013, is considered one of the best games of all time. People had extraordinarily high expectations for this new installment—and it’s another masterpiece just like the first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re unfamiliar with the story: The main character, Joel, is a smuggler who lost his daughter during the initial outbreak. He was hired by a group called the Fireflies to transport a 14-year-old girl named Ellie from the Boston quarantine zone to a hospital in Salt Lake City. She is immune to the virus, and the Fireflies want to use that to create a vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: Spoilers ahead for the original game … which you really should have played by now!\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite initially being ice-cold to Ellie, Joel starts seeing her as a daughter during their journey—so when they get to Salt Lake City and he finds out creating the vaccine will kill Ellie, Joel chooses to rescue her, killing everybody in his path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Players of the first game rationalized Joel’s actions—he had gotten to know and love Ellie, and so did we. Some people (not me) say saving her was the right thing to do! But what about everybody else in the world, who has to live with the effects of decisions like that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Last of Us Part II\u003c/em>, we see what happens when the need for revenge and justice overtakes everything else. We see how the world makes people do desperate things for understandable reasons. The game doesn’t glorify violence—instead, it shows you the awful effects of violence on survivors. But that isn’t apparent until the top-secret second half of the game, when the waterworks really start flowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellie is now one of the main playable characters. She’s 19, and noticeably different from the bubbly 14-year-old she was in the previous game. Like everybody else in this universe, Ellie has been traumatized by her experiences, and they have hardened her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13882214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13882214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/screen_tlou2_teaser_05_1480799632_wide-63166899ac03afdd0ccb96305053d3c09849def6-800x450.png\" alt=\"At the start of Part II, Ellie has found a kind of peace—she enjoys playing guitar, corny jokes and crushing on girls. Naturally it doesn't last.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the start of Part II, Ellie has found a kind of peace—she enjoys playing guitar, corny jokes and crushing on girls. Naturally it doesn’t last. \u003ccite>(Sony Entertainment/Naughty Dog)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Right at the beginning, there’s a glimmer of hope: Joel and Ellie have achieved a new normal, living at a compound in Jackson, Wyo., owned by Joel’s brother Tommy. And at this point, everybody can handle zombies so easily that to Ellie, getting rid of them can be like going on a casual hunting trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she loves playing guitar, comics, and movies. She thinks corny jokes are hilarious and collects trading cards hiding around the map. Her diary is filled with entries about girls she is dating. And she really loves her friends, her crush Dina, and Joel, despite their newly tense relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also thinks it’s odd to be in a quarantine zone without hearing constant gunfire and explosions—and talks about the first time she killed somebody like she’s talking about the first time she drank a beer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since this is still \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, you know the new normal will be ripped away pretty fast. And when that happens, Ellie heads for Seattle to get revenge. That’s right: Revenge. Ellie started as a person willing to sacrifice her life to save the world. But loss has turned her into kind of a heartless monster, willing to sacrifice others for her own goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since this is still \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, you’ll be admiring the gorgeous, expansive world—full of puzzles, challenges and things to explore—as Ellie travels through it on her awful mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13882215\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13882215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/2510225ee9c2f1317175.94897258-tloupii_review_screenshot_06_wide-2899990ac0c81d3e4230507e729537d56c8fd114-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The world of 'Part II' is even bigger, lusher and more engaging than the first game.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The world of ‘Part II’ is even bigger, lusher and more engaging than the first game. \u003ccite>(Sony Entertainment/Naughty Dog)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part II \u003c/em>makes you deeply aware of the consequences of your actions. In most video games, you don’t question why you’re killing people, you just assume that everybody in a specific faction is bad. In this game, it’s not so black and white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Naughty Dog does a great job of getting players to connect with every character, not just the main characters. You truly feel like you’re experiencing this disturbing journey with Ellie—you feel her fall in love, you feel her grief, her anger, her fears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you also feel for your enemies. It’s crushing to hear Ellie’s targets talk about their own hopes, fears, and futures when she may soon have to kill them. I started avoiding combat whenever possible, and spent a lot of time trying to sneak around dangerous humans instead of confronting them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time I finished this emotional rollercoaster, I was a weeping mess. I did nothing but sob \u003cem>hard\u003c/em> for about an hour. I thought I’d gotten it out of my system. But afterward, I kept bursting into tears every now and then, when my mind wandered to little moments in the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not easy to understand why I felt like that until you play the second half of the game, the part I can’t tell you about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think \u003cem>The Last of Us Part II \u003c/em>has changed me a bit as a person. It made me very aware of the little things in my life that I take for granted, the kinds of things you don’t appreciate until they’re ripped away forever. It’s easy to get lost in the darkness of the world, but it’s necessary to look at the things that bring you light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wasn’t expecting it to be a happy game by any means, but I could have never predicted just how intense an emotional experience it was. I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at the original game the same way ever again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\">\u003cem>@kaitykline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27The+Last+Of+Us+Part+II%27+Is+A+Gut+Punch+That+Just+Keeps+Punching&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Last of Us Part II\u003c/em> is a game that punches you in the gut right from the start, and never stops punching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a time like this, I honestly didn’t know if I could handle a game like \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, either part of it. As a journalist in 2020, a lot of my waking thoughts go to the news (which is usually upsetting). I wasn’t really tempted to escape into an apocalyptic hellscape where 60% of the world’s population is killed by a parasitic fungus that turns you into a zombie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t from a lack of interest. I’ve been looking forward to this game for years. The original \u003cem>Last of Us\u003c/em>, released in 2013, is considered one of the best games of all time. People had extraordinarily high expectations for this new installment—and it’s another masterpiece just like the first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re unfamiliar with the story: The main character, Joel, is a smuggler who lost his daughter during the initial outbreak. He was hired by a group called the Fireflies to transport a 14-year-old girl named Ellie from the Boston quarantine zone to a hospital in Salt Lake City. She is immune to the virus, and the Fireflies want to use that to create a vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Warning: Spoilers ahead for the original game … which you really should have played by now!\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite initially being ice-cold to Ellie, Joel starts seeing her as a daughter during their journey—so when they get to Salt Lake City and he finds out creating the vaccine will kill Ellie, Joel chooses to rescue her, killing everybody in his path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Players of the first game rationalized Joel’s actions—he had gotten to know and love Ellie, and so did we. Some people (not me) say saving her was the right thing to do! But what about everybody else in the world, who has to live with the effects of decisions like that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Last of Us Part II\u003c/em>, we see what happens when the need for revenge and justice overtakes everything else. We see how the world makes people do desperate things for understandable reasons. The game doesn’t glorify violence—instead, it shows you the awful effects of violence on survivors. But that isn’t apparent until the top-secret second half of the game, when the waterworks really start flowing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellie is now one of the main playable characters. She’s 19, and noticeably different from the bubbly 14-year-old she was in the previous game. Like everybody else in this universe, Ellie has been traumatized by her experiences, and they have hardened her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13882214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13882214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/screen_tlou2_teaser_05_1480799632_wide-63166899ac03afdd0ccb96305053d3c09849def6-800x450.png\" alt=\"At the start of Part II, Ellie has found a kind of peace—she enjoys playing guitar, corny jokes and crushing on girls. Naturally it doesn't last.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the start of Part II, Ellie has found a kind of peace—she enjoys playing guitar, corny jokes and crushing on girls. Naturally it doesn’t last. \u003ccite>(Sony Entertainment/Naughty Dog)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Right at the beginning, there’s a glimmer of hope: Joel and Ellie have achieved a new normal, living at a compound in Jackson, Wyo., owned by Joel’s brother Tommy. And at this point, everybody can handle zombies so easily that to Ellie, getting rid of them can be like going on a casual hunting trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she loves playing guitar, comics, and movies. She thinks corny jokes are hilarious and collects trading cards hiding around the map. Her diary is filled with entries about girls she is dating. And she really loves her friends, her crush Dina, and Joel, despite their newly tense relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also thinks it’s odd to be in a quarantine zone without hearing constant gunfire and explosions—and talks about the first time she killed somebody like she’s talking about the first time she drank a beer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since this is still \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, you know the new normal will be ripped away pretty fast. And when that happens, Ellie heads for Seattle to get revenge. That’s right: Revenge. Ellie started as a person willing to sacrifice her life to save the world. But loss has turned her into kind of a heartless monster, willing to sacrifice others for her own goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since this is still \u003cem>The Last of Us\u003c/em>, you’ll be admiring the gorgeous, expansive world—full of puzzles, challenges and things to explore—as Ellie travels through it on her awful mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13882215\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13882215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/2510225ee9c2f1317175.94897258-tloupii_review_screenshot_06_wide-2899990ac0c81d3e4230507e729537d56c8fd114-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"The world of 'Part II' is even bigger, lusher and more engaging than the first game.\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The world of ‘Part II’ is even bigger, lusher and more engaging than the first game. \u003ccite>(Sony Entertainment/Naughty Dog)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part II \u003c/em>makes you deeply aware of the consequences of your actions. In most video games, you don’t question why you’re killing people, you just assume that everybody in a specific faction is bad. In this game, it’s not so black and white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Naughty Dog does a great job of getting players to connect with every character, not just the main characters. You truly feel like you’re experiencing this disturbing journey with Ellie—you feel her fall in love, you feel her grief, her anger, her fears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you also feel for your enemies. It’s crushing to hear Ellie’s targets talk about their own hopes, fears, and futures when she may soon have to kill them. I started avoiding combat whenever possible, and spent a lot of time trying to sneak around dangerous humans instead of confronting them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time I finished this emotional rollercoaster, I was a weeping mess. I did nothing but sob \u003cem>hard\u003c/em> for about an hour. I thought I’d gotten it out of my system. But afterward, I kept bursting into tears every now and then, when my mind wandered to little moments in the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not easy to understand why I felt like that until you play the second half of the game, the part I can’t tell you about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think \u003cem>The Last of Us Part II \u003c/em>has changed me a bit as a person. It made me very aware of the little things in my life that I take for granted, the kinds of things you don’t appreciate until they’re ripped away forever. It’s easy to get lost in the darkness of the world, but it’s necessary to look at the things that bring you light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wasn’t expecting it to be a happy game by any means, but I could have never predicted just how intense an emotional experience it was. I don’t think I’m going to be able to look at the original game the same way ever again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\">\u003cem>@kaitykline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27The+Last+Of+Us+Part+II%27+Is+A+Gut+Punch+That+Just+Keeps+Punching&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Neither Flood, Nor Fire, Nor Virus Shakes the Virtual Calm of 'Minecraft'",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Honey, I’m going out for an adventure!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>E. closes the door behind him and steps out into the world. I stay put, cooking up ideas for home improvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve only known each other for a few months, but once the pandemic threw our lives off balance, we decided to move in together. In a house we built. In \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house is modest—a pixelated, underground starter home made of dirt and cobblestone. In one corner is a large chest for storing our inventory. Nearby, a crafting table and a stove convert raw materials into something useful. There’s a bed for our re-spawn location, which means I won’t get lost the next time I drown or get blown up by a creeper—a recurring issue early on. And on the opposite wall, there’s a pen of clucking chickens. On second thought, not the best place for the chickens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later, we’ll upgrade to a multi-story castle atop a mountain—but for now, it’s home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Downloading\u003cem> Minecraft\u003c/em> wasn’t my first instinct when I stopped going to my office and everywhere else. I’ve never self-identified as a gamer in my adult life, and I certainly didn’t think the antidote to screen fatigue could be more screen time. Plus, video games always struck me as chaotic, and I was maxed out on chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As kids, my older brother and I would settle into an afternoon of \u003cem>Tekken 4\u003c/em> or \u003cem>James Bond 007: Nightfire\u003c/em>, battling enemies and each other on an otherwise calm day. It was thrilling, and I’d ride that anxious buzz of trying to survive until it was time for something else. It’s strange how much you can learn about yourself as a child when your avatar is a buxom woman named Pussy Galore. I discovered I only really had fun when my brother and I were on the same team, and friendly fire was turned off. I noticed that random civilian casualties made me feel sick. I questioned why lady avatars were scantily clad while dude avatars often weren’t. And I loved getting to sight-see. [aside postid='arts_13879036']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sightseeing is why \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> has had such an impact. Right now, my life’s parameters are my bedroom, my ambitions are the size of 80 bedrooms, and my \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> realm is the size of a zillion bedrooms. The game offers endless virtual space to roam when real-life space feels like a rare commodity. And relocation is the literal click of a button. When I tire of the mines, I try the mountains. When I’m done with the mountains, I go to the jungle. And when I’ve had it with the jungle, I hop in a boat that I made with oak from the jungle and find a new island to inhabit. Then I can do it all over again. The game’s natural world is artificial, but there’s something kind of enchanting about that block-shaped moon overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Offline, my weeks have been punctuated with worry about the strain I’m putting on my household’s resources. But \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> promises a retreat where raw materials are always plentiful and useful—water for putting out lava, iron for swords and pickaxes, cobwebs for string, animals for food. Neither climate change nor a pandemic can threaten this virtual cornucopia. Lately, I’ve discovered an affinity for running through open fields and punching grass. The satisfying crunching sound leads me to five-minute punching sprees from time to time, but this isn’t nihilism. It’s practical. Every few squares of freshly punched grass unearth little seeds that keep my chickens procreating and my farm plentiful. It’s a blissed-out vision of sustainability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s be clear, though: \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> is not a utopia. Days whiz by, and when that 32-bit block of sun starts to set, monsters are coming for me. In the mines, too. Exploding creepers, arrow-toting skeletons, mumbling zombies, nimble spiders, and mystifying enderman you can’t make eye contact with. I’m not very good at fighting these yet, but at least I can count on the game’s sonic and visual cues to let me know danger is afoot. Plus, I’m armed for battle. There are rules and boundaries within which I can almost guarantee safety. And if all else fails, I’ll come back to life in the same place I started: My bed, in my simple underground house, out of harm’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t say the same of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, I’m clinging to structure. Time is passing quickly, and if I’m honest, I don’t always yearn to make days feel longer or fuller. But when I close my bedroom door and open up a virtual world, I can feel the therapy of making things up as I go. Of itching for daylight so I can return to feeding chickens and building a castle on a mountain. Of experiencing something—making actual memories—when togetherness feels out of reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kathryn Fink is a producer for\u003c/em> 1A. \u003cem>She’s a native of Virginia, a new gamer, and an unapologetic lit nerd. She tweets at\u003c/em> @\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/finkcommakath\">finkcommakath\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Neither+Flood%2C+Nor+Fire%2C+Nor+Virus+Shakes+The+Virtual+Calm+Of+%27Minecraft%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Honey, I’m going out for an adventure!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>E. closes the door behind him and steps out into the world. I stay put, cooking up ideas for home improvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve only known each other for a few months, but once the pandemic threw our lives off balance, we decided to move in together. In a house we built. In \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house is modest—a pixelated, underground starter home made of dirt and cobblestone. In one corner is a large chest for storing our inventory. Nearby, a crafting table and a stove convert raw materials into something useful. There’s a bed for our re-spawn location, which means I won’t get lost the next time I drown or get blown up by a creeper—a recurring issue early on. And on the opposite wall, there’s a pen of clucking chickens. On second thought, not the best place for the chickens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later, we’ll upgrade to a multi-story castle atop a mountain—but for now, it’s home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Downloading\u003cem> Minecraft\u003c/em> wasn’t my first instinct when I stopped going to my office and everywhere else. I’ve never self-identified as a gamer in my adult life, and I certainly didn’t think the antidote to screen fatigue could be more screen time. Plus, video games always struck me as chaotic, and I was maxed out on chaos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As kids, my older brother and I would settle into an afternoon of \u003cem>Tekken 4\u003c/em> or \u003cem>James Bond 007: Nightfire\u003c/em>, battling enemies and each other on an otherwise calm day. It was thrilling, and I’d ride that anxious buzz of trying to survive until it was time for something else. It’s strange how much you can learn about yourself as a child when your avatar is a buxom woman named Pussy Galore. I discovered I only really had fun when my brother and I were on the same team, and friendly fire was turned off. I noticed that random civilian casualties made me feel sick. I questioned why lady avatars were scantily clad while dude avatars often weren’t. And I loved getting to sight-see. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sightseeing is why \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> has had such an impact. Right now, my life’s parameters are my bedroom, my ambitions are the size of 80 bedrooms, and my \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> realm is the size of a zillion bedrooms. The game offers endless virtual space to roam when real-life space feels like a rare commodity. And relocation is the literal click of a button. When I tire of the mines, I try the mountains. When I’m done with the mountains, I go to the jungle. And when I’ve had it with the jungle, I hop in a boat that I made with oak from the jungle and find a new island to inhabit. Then I can do it all over again. The game’s natural world is artificial, but there’s something kind of enchanting about that block-shaped moon overhead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Offline, my weeks have been punctuated with worry about the strain I’m putting on my household’s resources. But \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> promises a retreat where raw materials are always plentiful and useful—water for putting out lava, iron for swords and pickaxes, cobwebs for string, animals for food. Neither climate change nor a pandemic can threaten this virtual cornucopia. Lately, I’ve discovered an affinity for running through open fields and punching grass. The satisfying crunching sound leads me to five-minute punching sprees from time to time, but this isn’t nihilism. It’s practical. Every few squares of freshly punched grass unearth little seeds that keep my chickens procreating and my farm plentiful. It’s a blissed-out vision of sustainability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s be clear, though: \u003cem>Minecraft\u003c/em> is not a utopia. Days whiz by, and when that 32-bit block of sun starts to set, monsters are coming for me. In the mines, too. Exploding creepers, arrow-toting skeletons, mumbling zombies, nimble spiders, and mystifying enderman you can’t make eye contact with. I’m not very good at fighting these yet, but at least I can count on the game’s sonic and visual cues to let me know danger is afoot. Plus, I’m armed for battle. There are rules and boundaries within which I can almost guarantee safety. And if all else fails, I’ll come back to life in the same place I started: My bed, in my simple underground house, out of harm’s way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I can’t say the same of the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, I’m clinging to structure. Time is passing quickly, and if I’m honest, I don’t always yearn to make days feel longer or fuller. But when I close my bedroom door and open up a virtual world, I can feel the therapy of making things up as I go. Of itching for daylight so I can return to feeding chickens and building a castle on a mountain. Of experiencing something—making actual memories—when togetherness feels out of reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kathryn Fink is a producer for\u003c/em> 1A. \u003cem>She’s a native of Virginia, a new gamer, and an unapologetic lit nerd. She tweets at\u003c/em> @\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/finkcommakath\">finkcommakath\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Neither+Flood%2C+Nor+Fire%2C+Nor+Virus+Shakes+The+Virtual+Calm+Of+%27Minecraft%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Video Games Are Our New Venues",
"headTitle": "Video Games Are Our New Venues | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There’s one place where it’s still safe to mosh to music or wander through a crowded exhibition: your favorite video game. With arts spaces closed, concerts postponed and no one to dress up for, arts spaces, musicians and fashionistas are finding creative ways to stand out in the sea of livestreams and digital collections, by recreating venues—and the experiences they host—in video games. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 12 million Fortnite players tuned into rapper Travis Scott’s \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/virtual-concerts-travis-scotts-fortnite-100-gecs-minecraft/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">virtual concert\u003c/a>, \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> on April 23. That’s more than the total attendance of both U2 and Ed Sheerhan’s massively successful tours—at a time when Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music have seen their on-demand streams \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/music-streams-down-why-spotify-netflix-1203547387/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">fall by 7%\u003c/a>. The format was so successful Joe Biden is apparently considering \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/05/11/fortnites-travis-scott-concert-cited-as-possible-path-for-virtual-joe-biden-campaign/#403e27393aee\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">adopting it\u003c/a> for his presidential campaign.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/g__AuDSfPkU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For 10 minutes, a giant Travis Scott teleported around the Fortnite map playing hits like “Sicko Mode” and “Goosebumps,” and debuting \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/rs-charts-top-100-travis-scott-kid-cudi-the-scotts-993562/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a new song\u003c/a> with Kid Cudi that shot to number one on Rolling Stone’s weekly top 100 chart with over 32 million streams. (At number two, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” has a little over half that number of streams, at 17.4 million.) Players had the option to download character skins—including one inspired by a \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bigracks/status/930664984870379521\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">viral tweet\u003c/a> from 2017—and, of course, buy some Fortnite Travis Scott \u003ca href=\"https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/travis-scott-fortnite-merch/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">merch\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13879036']If \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> was a sold-out stadium show, then 100 gecs’ Square Garden Minecraft Festival was a packed warehouse for the extremely online. The electronic duo, who describe themselves as musical scavengers who “destroy the competition with their army of lethal bangers,” was joined by Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito and A. G. Cook, among others, for an “open pit Minecraft show” on April 24. The incredibly popular sandbox game is where players use blocks to create pixelated, 8-bit-looking structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>100 gecs’ Laura Les and Dylan Brady have long expressed their love for middle school dance hits like “Stanky Legg” and “Everytime We Touch,” so the game was the perfect venue for their over-the-top, 2000s-inspired aesthetic. Their chaotic electronic music and ironic internet references meshed with the low-fi block surroundings to create a cohesive, if intense, experience. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know what Minecraft is,” Charli XCX said between songs. But the crowd went wild when she played a \u003ca href=\"https://soundcloud.com/tufosmashupss/crank-that-vroom-vroom\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">mashup\u003c/a> of Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” and her own “Vroom Vroom.” For artists looking to create an immersive experience, it pays to partner with a video game whose audience plays well with their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880407\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"631\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13880407\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-800x421.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-768x404.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-1020x536.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot of the May 8 Open Pit-organized concert ‘AETH3R: A Minecraft benefit for Groundswell Fund.’ \u003ccite>(Jasmine Garnett)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Museums and the fashion world have found that ideal partner in Animal Crossing, the social simulation game centered around customizing every aspect of a tropical island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unable to welcome visitors into their exhibitions IRL, museums have started bringing art into peoples’ homes. Speaking to the \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/arts/design/museums-coronavirus-adam-koszary.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, the Royal Academy’s social media editor Adam Koszary explains, “A lot of people are going to fall into the trap of just trying to give people what they’d come to see in person on the screen.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where Animal Crossing comes in. Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s entire collection is available to own and display in the game. Likewise, the Instagram account \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/animalcrossingfashionarchive/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">@AnimalCrossingFashionArchive\u003c/a> documents designer looks recreated for Animal Crossing avatars. What started as a small group of friends has led to partnerships with fashion houses like \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B_sl6J9j9eD/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Jacobs\u003c/a> and Valentino. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/B_nK9h5pMSQ/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If listening to music or looking at paintings online were a replacement for concerts or exhibits, music venues and museums would have closed a long time ago; physical spaces are crucial to facilitating the conversations and insights that help us appreciate and enjoy art. (One Square Garden attendant commented, “You just can’t replicate moshing and some girl getting her hair twisted on the button of your jean jacket.”) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But virtual concerts also open the doors for people who wouldn’t otherwise get to experience those events. The average price for a Travis Scott concert ticket is well over a hundred dollars—not something most casual listeners would drop for a show. Christian Nisperos, who attended \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> as well as a few other virtual concerts since shelter in place started, typically doesn’t go to many shows in person. “One of the main drawbacks for me is cost,” he explains. “Many IRL concerts can get fairly expensive, but these virtual concerts have been free.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural experiences that once stood behind barriers—whether physical, financial or geographic—are now available to anyone with an internet connection. And while we’re all eagerly waiting for the next time we get to go see a show with our friends, more democratic access to art and music is a development well worth preserving.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s one place where it’s still safe to mosh to music or wander through a crowded exhibition: your favorite video game. With arts spaces closed, concerts postponed and no one to dress up for, arts spaces, musicians and fashionistas are finding creative ways to stand out in the sea of livestreams and digital collections, by recreating venues—and the experiences they host—in video games. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 12 million Fortnite players tuned into rapper Travis Scott’s \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/virtual-concerts-travis-scotts-fortnite-100-gecs-minecraft/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">virtual concert\u003c/a>, \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> on April 23. That’s more than the total attendance of both U2 and Ed Sheerhan’s massively successful tours—at a time when Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music have seen their on-demand streams \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/music-streams-down-why-spotify-netflix-1203547387/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">fall by 7%\u003c/a>. The format was so successful Joe Biden is apparently considering \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/05/11/fortnites-travis-scott-concert-cited-as-possible-path-for-virtual-joe-biden-campaign/#403e27393aee\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">adopting it\u003c/a> for his presidential campaign.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/g__AuDSfPkU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/g__AuDSfPkU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>For 10 minutes, a giant Travis Scott teleported around the Fortnite map playing hits like “Sicko Mode” and “Goosebumps,” and debuting \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/rs-charts-top-100-travis-scott-kid-cudi-the-scotts-993562/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a new song\u003c/a> with Kid Cudi that shot to number one on Rolling Stone’s weekly top 100 chart with over 32 million streams. (At number two, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” has a little over half that number of streams, at 17.4 million.) Players had the option to download character skins—including one inspired by a \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/bigracks/status/930664984870379521\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">viral tweet\u003c/a> from 2017—and, of course, buy some Fortnite Travis Scott \u003ca href=\"https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/travis-scott-fortnite-merch/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">merch\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>If \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> was a sold-out stadium show, then 100 gecs’ Square Garden Minecraft Festival was a packed warehouse for the extremely online. The electronic duo, who describe themselves as musical scavengers who “destroy the competition with their army of lethal bangers,” was joined by Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito and A. G. Cook, among others, for an “open pit Minecraft show” on April 24. The incredibly popular sandbox game is where players use blocks to create pixelated, 8-bit-looking structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>100 gecs’ Laura Les and Dylan Brady have long expressed their love for middle school dance hits like “Stanky Legg” and “Everytime We Touch,” so the game was the perfect venue for their over-the-top, 2000s-inspired aesthetic. Their chaotic electronic music and ironic internet references meshed with the low-fi block surroundings to create a cohesive, if intense, experience. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know what Minecraft is,” Charli XCX said between songs. But the crowd went wild when she played a \u003ca href=\"https://soundcloud.com/tufosmashupss/crank-that-vroom-vroom\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">mashup\u003c/a> of Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” and her own “Vroom Vroom.” For artists looking to create an immersive experience, it pays to partner with a video game whose audience plays well with their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880407\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"631\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13880407\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-160x84.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-800x421.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-768x404.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Open-Pit-1_1200-1020x536.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot of the May 8 Open Pit-organized concert ‘AETH3R: A Minecraft benefit for Groundswell Fund.’ \u003ccite>(Jasmine Garnett)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Museums and the fashion world have found that ideal partner in Animal Crossing, the social simulation game centered around customizing every aspect of a tropical island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unable to welcome visitors into their exhibitions IRL, museums have started bringing art into peoples’ homes. Speaking to the \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/arts/design/museums-coronavirus-adam-koszary.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, the Royal Academy’s social media editor Adam Koszary explains, “A lot of people are going to fall into the trap of just trying to give people what they’d come to see in person on the screen.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s where Animal Crossing comes in. Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s entire collection is available to own and display in the game. Likewise, the Instagram account \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/animalcrossingfashionarchive/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">@AnimalCrossingFashionArchive\u003c/a> documents designer looks recreated for Animal Crossing avatars. What started as a small group of friends has led to partnerships with fashion houses like \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B_sl6J9j9eD/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Jacobs\u003c/a> and Valentino. \u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If listening to music or looking at paintings online were a replacement for concerts or exhibits, music venues and museums would have closed a long time ago; physical spaces are crucial to facilitating the conversations and insights that help us appreciate and enjoy art. (One Square Garden attendant commented, “You just can’t replicate moshing and some girl getting her hair twisted on the button of your jean jacket.”) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But virtual concerts also open the doors for people who wouldn’t otherwise get to experience those events. The average price for a Travis Scott concert ticket is well over a hundred dollars—not something most casual listeners would drop for a show. Christian Nisperos, who attended \u003ci>Astronomic\u003c/i> as well as a few other virtual concerts since shelter in place started, typically doesn’t go to many shows in person. “One of the main drawbacks for me is cost,” he explains. “Many IRL concerts can get fairly expensive, but these virtual concerts have been free.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cultural experiences that once stood behind barriers—whether physical, financial or geographic—are now available to anyone with an internet connection. And while we’re all eagerly waiting for the next time we get to go see a show with our friends, more democratic access to art and music is a development well worth preserving.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>For millions of college students around the country, coronavirus lockdowns effectively canceled their hobbies and extracurriculars. But that’s not the case for Madison Cragle, a graphic design major at the State University of New York at Canton. She’s co-captain of her school’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team—an esports team. That’s right, varsity video games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a joke going around that once the quarantine ends, everyone’s going to be like a thousand times better because we have nothing else to do,” Cragle says. Besides all the extra practice time, right now, Cragle’s actually playing in a tournament alongside hundreds of her fellow students. The $20,000 prize pool will go to a SUNY student emergency aid fund, medical research, personal protective equipment and student scholarships. It’s sponsored by Extreme Networks, a technology company that provides the technical infrastructure for varsity esports at Canton and other campuses around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to reach out and continue to build community,” says SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson. Over 400,000 SUNY students are now at home, and plans for returning to campuses are very much still in formation. In the meantime, Johnson saw an opportunity to bring students together virtually across SUNY’s 64 campuses. “The motivation was to get the students engaged, and then to raise money for students impacted by the crisis, and to pull together. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are three separate games being played in the tournament, each by their own leagues. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a descendant of Nintendo’s beloved, 1980s vintage Mario Bros.; \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/104193/why-children-love-the-fortnite-video-game-so-much-in-their-own-words\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fortnite\u003c/a> is an immersive “battle royale,” and Rocket League is succinctly described by SUNY Canton sophomore Alec Knowles as “car soccer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowles, who hopped on a Zoom call along with Cragle to speak with NPR, is a “shoutcaster” for the tournament, meaning he provides play-by-play commentary over a livestream of the game. It takes a lot of time, he says: First, playing the game enough to learn the particulars so you can describe all the moves to fans. And then, the technical details. “We do all of our own streaming on Twitch,” a platform for livestreaming of all kinds of activities, from video gaming to DJ sets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So you have to put in the time to be able to set the stream up. Make sure that everything looks great, like the video and the pixels. … So we don’t have any issues where, like, it’s lagging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cragle says that while confined to home, the tournament’s been a good social outlet. “I haven’t really had much to do at home. I was gonna get a job but when the quarantine happened, I couldn’t get the job I was gonna get.” Now, she says, students from different campuses all over the state are connecting on special chat rooms set up on a site, called Discord, especially for tournament competitors. And there’s a matchmaking function, so you can challenge people to side games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I ask if there’s much trash talking on the Discord server, and Knowles chimes in: “Smash [Bros.] is the epicenter of salt [trash talk.]”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cragle laughs: “Yeah, if you watch the top players, they’re so mean to each other sometimes. It makes for some good entertainment though, to be honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Video game playing overall was \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gaming-usage-up-75-percent-coronavirus-outbreak-verizon-reports-1285140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">up a reported 75%\u003c/a> in the first week of U.S. coronavirus lockdowns, and streaming—live spectating of game play on platforms like Twitch—was up as well. Cragle and Knowles are hoping that the tournament helps win over new fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Transitioning into college, like my parents were like, yeah, I don’t know if you can actually make a career off this,” says Knowles. “So I did it. And my parents are really supportive of me now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Can%27t+Leave+The+House%3F+Try+Playing+Competitive+Video+Games&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For millions of college students around the country, coronavirus lockdowns effectively canceled their hobbies and extracurriculars. But that’s not the case for Madison Cragle, a graphic design major at the State University of New York at Canton. She’s co-captain of her school’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate team—an esports team. That’s right, varsity video games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a joke going around that once the quarantine ends, everyone’s going to be like a thousand times better because we have nothing else to do,” Cragle says. Besides all the extra practice time, right now, Cragle’s actually playing in a tournament alongside hundreds of her fellow students. The $20,000 prize pool will go to a SUNY student emergency aid fund, medical research, personal protective equipment and student scholarships. It’s sponsored by Extreme Networks, a technology company that provides the technical infrastructure for varsity esports at Canton and other campuses around the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to reach out and continue to build community,” says SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson. Over 400,000 SUNY students are now at home, and plans for returning to campuses are very much still in formation. In the meantime, Johnson saw an opportunity to bring students together virtually across SUNY’s 64 campuses. “The motivation was to get the students engaged, and then to raise money for students impacted by the crisis, and to pull together. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are three separate games being played in the tournament, each by their own leagues. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a descendant of Nintendo’s beloved, 1980s vintage Mario Bros.; \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/104193/why-children-love-the-fortnite-video-game-so-much-in-their-own-words\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fortnite\u003c/a> is an immersive “battle royale,” and Rocket League is succinctly described by SUNY Canton sophomore Alec Knowles as “car soccer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowles, who hopped on a Zoom call along with Cragle to speak with NPR, is a “shoutcaster” for the tournament, meaning he provides play-by-play commentary over a livestream of the game. It takes a lot of time, he says: First, playing the game enough to learn the particulars so you can describe all the moves to fans. And then, the technical details. “We do all of our own streaming on Twitch,” a platform for livestreaming of all kinds of activities, from video gaming to DJ sets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So you have to put in the time to be able to set the stream up. Make sure that everything looks great, like the video and the pixels. … So we don’t have any issues where, like, it’s lagging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cragle says that while confined to home, the tournament’s been a good social outlet. “I haven’t really had much to do at home. I was gonna get a job but when the quarantine happened, I couldn’t get the job I was gonna get.” Now, she says, students from different campuses all over the state are connecting on special chat rooms set up on a site, called Discord, especially for tournament competitors. And there’s a matchmaking function, so you can challenge people to side games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I ask if there’s much trash talking on the Discord server, and Knowles chimes in: “Smash [Bros.] is the epicenter of salt [trash talk.]”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cragle laughs: “Yeah, if you watch the top players, they’re so mean to each other sometimes. It makes for some good entertainment though, to be honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Video game playing overall was \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gaming-usage-up-75-percent-coronavirus-outbreak-verizon-reports-1285140\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">up a reported 75%\u003c/a> in the first week of U.S. coronavirus lockdowns, and streaming—live spectating of game play on platforms like Twitch—was up as well. Cragle and Knowles are hoping that the tournament helps win over new fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Transitioning into college, like my parents were like, yeah, I don’t know if you can actually make a career off this,” says Knowles. “So I did it. And my parents are really supportive of me now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Can%27t+Leave+The+House%3F+Try+Playing+Competitive+Video+Games&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>What do you do if you’re a college senior with a sense of humor, a canceled graduation and, suddenly, a lot of spare time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 15, UC Berkeley student Bjorn Lustic got the idea to recreate the graduation in Minecraft, a video game where the objective is to build structures by placing blocks around a 3D environment. He cites a sarcastic Facebook comment as the source of inspiration. A month, a few more Facebook posts and several thousand likes later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/244292959939686/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the project\u003c/a> has grown into a full-scale recreation of the UC Berkeley campus with a waiting list of students trying to get in on the fun of construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When IRL events started to disappear around campus, students, like everyone else, turned to the internet. “It’s kind of a natural thing at this point to look online and look to virtual communities to hang out, that’s what we’re used to,” Lustic says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879041\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"760\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-768x486.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-1020x646.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Users at work building ‘Blockeley University.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, is a simple way for people to build digital structures, even for those without a background in engineering or architecture, but it’s also sentimental for people who grew up playing the game. “This game already has had a really big impact on our lives and our social interactions,” Lustic says. “I’ve been hanging out with friends on servers for like eight, nine years. Being able to do this in another school, another place, it brings back a lot of memories of being at home with friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lustic initially started working on the plan to build Memorial Stadium with his friend Hunter Hall. When they realized the two of them weren’t going to be able to complete the project by themselves, they posted in the Facebook group Overheard at UC Berkeley. A small but steady stream of students offered to help until early April, when one of their Facebook posts spread across the platform. “I guess we were shell shocked—at least I was,” says Hall of the overwhelming response. “I woke up at noon, and I was like, ‘Either something really good or something really bad has happened.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project previously had about ten people organizing on a Discord server. As news spread, over 500 students began applying to help use satellite data to create a 1-1 scale model of not just UC Berkeley landmarks, but the whole school. “Our intention was never to build the entire campus,” says Hall. “We were expecting maybe a few dozen, at most maybe a hundred people to get a fun Minecraft graduation party for whoever was interested. It’s certainly grown and been self-sustaining since then.” The organizers are slowly building permissions to allow access for those who want to help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879043\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879043\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-1020x574.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Minecraft version of Memorial Stadium, where graduation ceremonies were scheduled to take place on May 16. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hall and Lustic started with Memorial Stadium, where their graduation would have taken place on May 16. They worked on building the field and outlining bigger structures, but they also added details specific to their own Berkeley experiences. Both of them are former members of the Cal rowing team and trained in a storage area of the stadium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I rebuilt [the storage area] one night, and Hunter walks in and he’s like ‘Wow, it feels like I’m almost there,” says Lustic. “It’s really weird how the 1-1 ratio in Minecraft can bring a mental presence to actually being there. It resurfaces a lot of emotions that wouldn’t have really come up unless you actually went to that exact place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fellow seniors Nick Pickett and Elliot Choi joined the project through one of the earlier Facebook posts on Overheard. A member of the Cal band, Pickett has his own special relationship to Memorial Stadium—specifically North Tunnel, where the band spends a lot of time before games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I first logged on, I was kind of taken aback by how gorgeous the stadium was, because it’s freakishly accurate,” says Pickett. “But as I’m walking towards North Tunnel, I’m like, ‘Wait, this isn’t right.’” He then spent hours recreating the tunnel by referencing photos from his four years in the band. “It was kind of surreal. It was like putting a puzzle together that I already knew what it was supposed to look like,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879040\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1250\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel.jpg 1250w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-160x184.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-800x922.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-768x885.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-1020x1175.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1250px) 100vw, 1250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">North Tunnel, a familiar space to members of the band, recreated from personal memories and photographs. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Minecraft, the act of recreating those spots became a way to share the personal significance of otherwise easily overlooked nooks and crannies on the Berkeley campus. “Going around to the other side where the band and the football team are, I’ve never really walked through there—maybe twice in my life,” says Hall. “So it was cool to meet someone who knows it to a T.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for all the work they’ve done together, most of the students involved in building a Minecraft campus haven’t actually met one another in real life. “Nick and I have been in classes together for I think, like, the last four years,” says Hall, “but we hadn’t really spoken until we started working together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every new person who joins the server adds another layer of unofficial Berkeley history to the project. “Google Images and Google Maps help us figure everything out, but each of us have very distinct memories of very near and dear locations,” says Pickett. “We might have our own personal photos that we can source to really get an accurate representation of campus for as many people as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The point is to bring people together and have them be in a place that they remember liking and having good memories in during a time that we can’t,” Hall adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As graduation creeps closer, the group is focused on finishing what they refer to as “Blockeley University” by getting more and more people involved. In a perfect world, they say, the school would partner with them and give everyone who wants to participate a free Minecraft account for graduation day. “Or even Microsoft themselves,” adds Choi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This post was updated to reflect that Bjorn Lustic and Hunter Hall are former, not current, members of the UC Berkeley rowing team, and that Lustic is not a graduating senior this year. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What do you do if you’re a college senior with a sense of humor, a canceled graduation and, suddenly, a lot of spare time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 15, UC Berkeley student Bjorn Lustic got the idea to recreate the graduation in Minecraft, a video game where the objective is to build structures by placing blocks around a 3D environment. He cites a sarcastic Facebook comment as the source of inspiration. A month, a few more Facebook posts and several thousand likes later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/244292959939686/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the project\u003c/a> has grown into a full-scale recreation of the UC Berkeley campus with a waiting list of students trying to get in on the fun of construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When IRL events started to disappear around campus, students, like everyone else, turned to the internet. “It’s kind of a natural thing at this point to look online and look to virtual communities to hang out, that’s what we’re used to,” Lustic says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879041\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"760\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-768x486.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Building_1200-1020x646.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Users at work building ‘Blockeley University.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, is a simple way for people to build digital structures, even for those without a background in engineering or architecture, but it’s also sentimental for people who grew up playing the game. “This game already has had a really big impact on our lives and our social interactions,” Lustic says. “I’ve been hanging out with friends on servers for like eight, nine years. Being able to do this in another school, another place, it brings back a lot of memories of being at home with friends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lustic initially started working on the plan to build Memorial Stadium with his friend Hunter Hall. When they realized the two of them weren’t going to be able to complete the project by themselves, they posted in the Facebook group Overheard at UC Berkeley. A small but steady stream of students offered to help until early April, when one of their Facebook posts spread across the platform. “I guess we were shell shocked—at least I was,” says Hall of the overwhelming response. “I woke up at noon, and I was like, ‘Either something really good or something really bad has happened.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project previously had about ten people organizing on a Discord server. As news spread, over 500 students began applying to help use satellite data to create a 1-1 scale model of not just UC Berkeley landmarks, but the whole school. “Our intention was never to build the entire campus,” says Hall. “We were expecting maybe a few dozen, at most maybe a hundred people to get a fun Minecraft graduation party for whoever was interested. It’s certainly grown and been self-sustaining since then.” The organizers are slowly building permissions to allow access for those who want to help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879043\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879043\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/Field-1020x574.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Minecraft version of Memorial Stadium, where graduation ceremonies were scheduled to take place on May 16. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hall and Lustic started with Memorial Stadium, where their graduation would have taken place on May 16. They worked on building the field and outlining bigger structures, but they also added details specific to their own Berkeley experiences. Both of them are former members of the Cal rowing team and trained in a storage area of the stadium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I rebuilt [the storage area] one night, and Hunter walks in and he’s like ‘Wow, it feels like I’m almost there,” says Lustic. “It’s really weird how the 1-1 ratio in Minecraft can bring a mental presence to actually being there. It resurfaces a lot of emotions that wouldn’t have really come up unless you actually went to that exact place.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fellow seniors Nick Pickett and Elliot Choi joined the project through one of the earlier Facebook posts on Overheard. A member of the Cal band, Pickett has his own special relationship to Memorial Stadium—specifically North Tunnel, where the band spends a lot of time before games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I first logged on, I was kind of taken aback by how gorgeous the stadium was, because it’s freakishly accurate,” says Pickett. “But as I’m walking towards North Tunnel, I’m like, ‘Wait, this isn’t right.’” He then spent hours recreating the tunnel by referencing photos from his four years in the band. “It was kind of surreal. It was like putting a puzzle together that I already knew what it was supposed to look like,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13879040\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13879040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1250\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel.jpg 1250w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-160x184.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-800x922.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-768x885.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/04/BandTunnel-1020x1175.jpg 1020w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1250px) 100vw, 1250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">North Tunnel, a familiar space to members of the band, recreated from personal memories and photographs. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artists)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Minecraft, the act of recreating those spots became a way to share the personal significance of otherwise easily overlooked nooks and crannies on the Berkeley campus. “Going around to the other side where the band and the football team are, I’ve never really walked through there—maybe twice in my life,” says Hall. “So it was cool to meet someone who knows it to a T.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for all the work they’ve done together, most of the students involved in building a Minecraft campus haven’t actually met one another in real life. “Nick and I have been in classes together for I think, like, the last four years,” says Hall, “but we hadn’t really spoken until we started working together.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every new person who joins the server adds another layer of unofficial Berkeley history to the project. “Google Images and Google Maps help us figure everything out, but each of us have very distinct memories of very near and dear locations,” says Pickett. “We might have our own personal photos that we can source to really get an accurate representation of campus for as many people as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The point is to bring people together and have them be in a place that they remember liking and having good memories in during a time that we can’t,” Hall adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As graduation creeps closer, the group is focused on finishing what they refer to as “Blockeley University” by getting more and more people involved. In a perfect world, they say, the school would partner with them and give everyone who wants to participate a free Minecraft account for graduation day. “Or even Microsoft themselves,” adds Choi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' is an Island Escape From Anxiety",
"headTitle": "‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ is an Island Escape From Anxiety | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>I remember, I was sitting on the floor of my friend’s bedroom, staring up at his tiny silver box of a TV. It was 2003, and I was in the second grade. He was playing a game—piloting a cute little character through a bubbly, dreamy cartoon town filled with randomly selected animal villagers, flowers and fruit trees (that occasionally yielded money bags). That was my first encounter with Nintendo’s \u003cem>Animal Crossing. \u003c/em>I went home and begged my parents for the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might seem like a strange time to be talking about video games. But right now, a lot of us are stuck indoors, scared and uncertain about the future. A lot of our normal coping mechanisms are cut off—but video games can bring us joy, escape, and connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And very few games are as well-equipped for joy, escape and connection as \u003cem>Animal Crossing\u003c/em>—the latest edition of which, \u003cem>New Horizons\u003c/em>, is out this month. Like every \u003cem>AC\u003c/em> game, it starts you off as the sole human in a community of extremely cute animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have no money or possessions, only a tent and some camping supplies that you get from the game’s eternal entrepreneur Tom Nook—along with a debt to pay off. The main goal of the game, if there is one, is to fully upgrade your house and pay off your debt for each upgrade—but how you get there is up to you. You can catch fish and bugs to sell, dig fossils, make friends with the local animals, unlock new characters and features—or just wander around enjoying the scenery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That part of \u003cem>Animal Crossing \u003c/em>has never changed. Back in second grade, I spent endless hours playing; my little town was a way to calm down and escape to another reality, a place to go when I felt alone and needed a mood boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that still applies today, no matter how dark reality gets. I’m in the at-risk group for COVID-19 because of my bad asthma. As a precaution, I haven’t been going outside my apartment at all. But playing \u003cem>New Horizons\u003c/em> this weekend was the first time in months that I didn’t think about the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3YNL0OWio0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a particularly tough day in the land of self isolation, I opened the game for the first time. The stress immediately melted away from my chest as I was greeted by Tom Nook’s twin nephews, the big eyed Timmy and Tommy, perched behind a travel counter. They were there to help me jet off to a new life on Nook’s dime, and part of my goal on top of paying my debt was to develop a deserted island into a thriving community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After I landed on the island, I was happily kept busy by all the small, simple tasks the Nooks assigned me: Finding the perfect spot for everybody’s tents, gathering twigs and rocks to make a fishing rod, net, and axe, and harvesting fruit for an island-warming bonfire party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I hunted for materials, there were soothing sounds coming from all around. I heard the sand crunching under my feet on the beach, shifting to a pattering sound as I stepped onto the grass. The sound of the wind and the waves going back and forth were constantly present, and every action made a satisfying \u003cem>bloop\u003c/em>, click, or whistle. Whimsical jazz music played in the background, with a lot of soft piano and acoustic guitar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game runs in real time—6pm in the real world is 6pm on your island—so there’s a slow progression day by day as your town grows. And that slow, day to day life is part of the reason \u003cem>Animal Crossing\u003c/em> is so beloved; the repetitive, satisfying tasks of digging a hole, chopping down wood, and fishing, against the amazing sonic backdrop. And everybody on your island is just so \u003cem>nice\u003c/em> to you. Letters and gifts from neighbors are constantly flooding your home’s mailbox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I went around talking to the villagers on my island in my cute new sweatshirt dress and matching boots. Mira, my rabbit villager, said she had a great hat to go with my outfit. It matched perfectly! Yes, she’s a cartoon rabbit on a tiny screen, but I was legitimately touched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some negatives. \u003cem>Animal Crossing: New Horizons\u003c/em> only gives players one island per console. It’s one island even if there are two accounts and two separate copies of the game. A family shouldn’t buy the game expecting to use one console and get their own island. And for now, at least, you can’t transfer your island from one console to another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, while multiplayer allows up to eight people, it’s a bit tedious to get set up for large groups at first. Everybody has to join the island one by one or the connection will fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that multiplayer aspect lets me and my boyfriend hang out with our friends in the game, and still maintain proper social distance. I’ve spoken to friends that I haven’t heard from in years because they wanted to visit my island—and when you’re cooped up in your apartment, hanging out on an island and taking pictures together wearing funny outfits is a relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m going to be coming back to this game a lot over the next few months to bring myself some peace and joy. It’s a great way to stay connected with others. I highly recommend picking up a copy (digitally!) and disappearing into it for the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kaitykline\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Tom+Nook%2C+Take+Me+Away%21+%27Animal+Crossing%3A+New+Horizons%27+Is+A+Perfect+Escape&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I remember, I was sitting on the floor of my friend’s bedroom, staring up at his tiny silver box of a TV. It was 2003, and I was in the second grade. He was playing a game—piloting a cute little character through a bubbly, dreamy cartoon town filled with randomly selected animal villagers, flowers and fruit trees (that occasionally yielded money bags). That was my first encounter with Nintendo’s \u003cem>Animal Crossing. \u003c/em>I went home and begged my parents for the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might seem like a strange time to be talking about video games. But right now, a lot of us are stuck indoors, scared and uncertain about the future. A lot of our normal coping mechanisms are cut off—but video games can bring us joy, escape, and connection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And very few games are as well-equipped for joy, escape and connection as \u003cem>Animal Crossing\u003c/em>—the latest edition of which, \u003cem>New Horizons\u003c/em>, is out this month. Like every \u003cem>AC\u003c/em> game, it starts you off as the sole human in a community of extremely cute animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have no money or possessions, only a tent and some camping supplies that you get from the game’s eternal entrepreneur Tom Nook—along with a debt to pay off. The main goal of the game, if there is one, is to fully upgrade your house and pay off your debt for each upgrade—but how you get there is up to you. You can catch fish and bugs to sell, dig fossils, make friends with the local animals, unlock new characters and features—or just wander around enjoying the scenery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That part of \u003cem>Animal Crossing \u003c/em>has never changed. Back in second grade, I spent endless hours playing; my little town was a way to calm down and escape to another reality, a place to go when I felt alone and needed a mood boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that still applies today, no matter how dark reality gets. I’m in the at-risk group for COVID-19 because of my bad asthma. As a precaution, I haven’t been going outside my apartment at all. But playing \u003cem>New Horizons\u003c/em> this weekend was the first time in months that I didn’t think about the coronavirus.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/_3YNL0OWio0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/_3YNL0OWio0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>After a particularly tough day in the land of self isolation, I opened the game for the first time. The stress immediately melted away from my chest as I was greeted by Tom Nook’s twin nephews, the big eyed Timmy and Tommy, perched behind a travel counter. They were there to help me jet off to a new life on Nook’s dime, and part of my goal on top of paying my debt was to develop a deserted island into a thriving community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After I landed on the island, I was happily kept busy by all the small, simple tasks the Nooks assigned me: Finding the perfect spot for everybody’s tents, gathering twigs and rocks to make a fishing rod, net, and axe, and harvesting fruit for an island-warming bonfire party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I hunted for materials, there were soothing sounds coming from all around. I heard the sand crunching under my feet on the beach, shifting to a pattering sound as I stepped onto the grass. The sound of the wind and the waves going back and forth were constantly present, and every action made a satisfying \u003cem>bloop\u003c/em>, click, or whistle. Whimsical jazz music played in the background, with a lot of soft piano and acoustic guitar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The game runs in real time—6pm in the real world is 6pm on your island—so there’s a slow progression day by day as your town grows. And that slow, day to day life is part of the reason \u003cem>Animal Crossing\u003c/em> is so beloved; the repetitive, satisfying tasks of digging a hole, chopping down wood, and fishing, against the amazing sonic backdrop. And everybody on your island is just so \u003cem>nice\u003c/em> to you. Letters and gifts from neighbors are constantly flooding your home’s mailbox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I went around talking to the villagers on my island in my cute new sweatshirt dress and matching boots. Mira, my rabbit villager, said she had a great hat to go with my outfit. It matched perfectly! Yes, she’s a cartoon rabbit on a tiny screen, but I was legitimately touched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some negatives. \u003cem>Animal Crossing: New Horizons\u003c/em> only gives players one island per console. It’s one island even if there are two accounts and two separate copies of the game. A family shouldn’t buy the game expecting to use one console and get their own island. And for now, at least, you can’t transfer your island from one console to another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, while multiplayer allows up to eight people, it’s a bit tedious to get set up for large groups at first. Everybody has to join the island one by one or the connection will fail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that multiplayer aspect lets me and my boyfriend hang out with our friends in the game, and still maintain proper social distance. I’ve spoken to friends that I haven’t heard from in years because they wanted to visit my island—and when you’re cooped up in your apartment, hanging out on an island and taking pictures together wearing funny outfits is a relief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m going to be coming back to this game a lot over the next few months to bring myself some peace and joy. It’s a great way to stay connected with others. I highly recommend picking up a copy (digitally!) and disappearing into it for the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kaity Kline is a columnist for NPR’s \u003c/em>Join the Game\u003cem> and a producer on \u003c/em>1A\u003cem>. She is a native of New Jersey, a lifelong gamer, and a former gaming YouTuber. She tweets at \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kaitykline?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@kaitykline\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Tom+Nook%2C+Take+Me+Away%21+%27Animal+Crossing%3A+New+Horizons%27+Is+A+Perfect+Escape&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-do-list-listen-to-this-weeks-picks-including-copyslut-an-immi-pop-up-and-more",
"title": "The Do List: Listen to This Week's Picks, Including Copyslut, an Immi Pop-Up and More",
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"content": "\u003cp>Looking for things to do in the Bay Area this weekend? The Do List has you covered with concerts, festivals, exhibitions, plays, performances and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can listen to this week’s episode with KQED’s Gabe Meline, Grace Cheung, Pendarvis Harshaw and Nastia Voynovskaya above, or read about our picks below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Richard Thompson\u003c/strong>: We start our picks this week with a guy who only has 10 fingers—but plays guitar like he’s got 20. If you’ve never been to one of Richard Thompson’s shows, we can’t recommend it enough—he’s smart, funny, and a master storyteller with his between-song patter. “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOCZwKmjR6E\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">1952 Black Vincent Lightning\u003c/a>” belongs in the Library of Congress as one of the all-time great love songs, and he even usually does a segment in his shows called “1,000 Years of Popular Music,” where he plays songs, yes, stretching back a thousand years. Richard Thompson plays Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and the next night, Nov. 8, at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz. \u003ca href=\"https://www.richardthompson-music.com/tour-dates\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Immi/Tartine Pop-Up Dinner\u003c/strong>: This Sunday, local institution Tartine Manufactory teams up with a pop-up called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/immi.sf/?hl=en\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Immi\u003c/a> (short for immigrant) for a special dinner collaboration. The founders of Immi bring foods they remember from their childhood to the table, with influences from their experience in professional kitchens like State Bird Provisions—they’ve done a rice pilaf dish, for example, that was inspired by a family recipe, but with a modern twist. At this next pop-up, based on hints from social media, it looks like scallion pancakes, long life noodles and Tartine country bread panzanella with an Immi stir fry are all hints of what’s to come. That’s Sunday, Nov. 10, at Tartine Manufactory. \u003ca href=\"https://www.opentable.com/s/?covers=2&dateTime=2019-11-10%2019%3A00&enableSimpleCuisines=true&includeTicketedAvailability=true&metroId=4&pageType=0&pinnedRids%5B0%5D=252190®ionIds=5&userlatitude=37.7795&userlongitude=-122.4195\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oakland Game Fest ’19\u003c/strong>: Have you ever wanted to test your gaming prowess against E-40? At Oakland Game Fest ’19, select attendees will get the change to play video games against a who’s-who of local stars, including E-40, Mistah FAB, Ryan Nicole, Just Blaze and more. In addition to squaring off against a bunch of young folks in a video game battle royale, they’ll speak on panels and discuss shared wisdom between the rap hustle and the game developer hustle. Happening during AfroTech, it’s a way to “give the conference-goers and travelers an authentic Oakland experience while they’re in town,” says its founder Charlese Banks. That’s on Saturday, Nov. 9, at Esports Arena in Oakland. \u003ca href=\"https://thetownexperience.com/product/game-fest-19/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Copyslut and Wizard Apprentice\u003c/strong>: This rock’n’roll quartet puts on a theatrical, campy live show, and musically they sound a little bit like Heart mixed with Sleater-Kinney; they also use their platform to advocate for sex workers. Joining them at this show is Wizard Apprentice, a singer who makes ultra-introspective bedroom pop that’s all about interrogating feelings of jealousy or inadequacy. Their live show is really unusual too—after performing a song, they disappear while a robotic-sounding avatar of them shares something vulnerable about the lyrics. Wizard Apprentice, Copyslut, Louda and Blacker Face perform on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"http://www.bottomofthehill.com/20191112.html#.XcRYD5JKjdQ\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sylvia Fein\u003c/strong>: When Sylvia Fein isn’t tending to her olive orchard in Martinez, she does what’s made her a nationally known artist: painting egg tempera paintings inspired by surrealism and magical realism. Born in Milwaukee, Fein lived in Mexico City for a while before ultimately settling in the Bay Area. In the 1940s, her work was shown alongside that of Max Ernst and Jackson Pollack at the Whitney Annual—and now, later this month, she’ll turn 100 years old. She’s still vibrant, and working, and will be in person for the opening of her solo show, \u003cem>Sylvia Fein/Matrix275\u003c/em>, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at BAMPFA in Berkeley. The show runs through March of next year. \u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/program/sylvia-fein-matrix-275\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oaktown Jazz Workshops 25th Anniversary\u003c/strong>: Oaktown Jazz Workshops has been training Oakland’s finest young musicians since 1994, and the program has some impressive alumni, including trumpet player Ambrose Akinmusire and bassist \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13852456/rightnowish-bassist-aneesa-strings-love-for-music-started-in-oakland-schools\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Aneesa Strings\u003c/a>. Some of its most stellar faculty, alumni, current students and friends perform together at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Nov. 12 to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary and raise money for its programming. Pianist and MC Kev Choice saxophonist Richard Howell and Latin jazz star percussionist John Santos are only a few musicians you can expect to see. \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oaktown-jazz-workshops-25th-anniversary-celebration-tickets-66620635113\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Looking for things to do in the Bay Area this weekend? The Do List has you covered with concerts, festivals, exhibitions, plays, performances and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can listen to this week’s episode with KQED’s Gabe Meline, Grace Cheung, Pendarvis Harshaw and Nastia Voynovskaya above, or read about our picks below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Richard Thompson\u003c/strong>: We start our picks this week with a guy who only has 10 fingers—but plays guitar like he’s got 20. If you’ve never been to one of Richard Thompson’s shows, we can’t recommend it enough—he’s smart, funny, and a master storyteller with his between-song patter. “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOCZwKmjR6E\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">1952 Black Vincent Lightning\u003c/a>” belongs in the Library of Congress as one of the all-time great love songs, and he even usually does a segment in his shows called “1,000 Years of Popular Music,” where he plays songs, yes, stretching back a thousand years. Richard Thompson plays Thursday, Nov. 7, at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and the next night, Nov. 8, at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz. \u003ca href=\"https://www.richardthompson-music.com/tour-dates\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Immi/Tartine Pop-Up Dinner\u003c/strong>: This Sunday, local institution Tartine Manufactory teams up with a pop-up called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/immi.sf/?hl=en\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Immi\u003c/a> (short for immigrant) for a special dinner collaboration. The founders of Immi bring foods they remember from their childhood to the table, with influences from their experience in professional kitchens like State Bird Provisions—they’ve done a rice pilaf dish, for example, that was inspired by a family recipe, but with a modern twist. At this next pop-up, based on hints from social media, it looks like scallion pancakes, long life noodles and Tartine country bread panzanella with an Immi stir fry are all hints of what’s to come. That’s Sunday, Nov. 10, at Tartine Manufactory. \u003ca href=\"https://www.opentable.com/s/?covers=2&dateTime=2019-11-10%2019%3A00&enableSimpleCuisines=true&includeTicketedAvailability=true&metroId=4&pageType=0&pinnedRids%5B0%5D=252190®ionIds=5&userlatitude=37.7795&userlongitude=-122.4195\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oakland Game Fest ’19\u003c/strong>: Have you ever wanted to test your gaming prowess against E-40? At Oakland Game Fest ’19, select attendees will get the change to play video games against a who’s-who of local stars, including E-40, Mistah FAB, Ryan Nicole, Just Blaze and more. In addition to squaring off against a bunch of young folks in a video game battle royale, they’ll speak on panels and discuss shared wisdom between the rap hustle and the game developer hustle. Happening during AfroTech, it’s a way to “give the conference-goers and travelers an authentic Oakland experience while they’re in town,” says its founder Charlese Banks. That’s on Saturday, Nov. 9, at Esports Arena in Oakland. \u003ca href=\"https://thetownexperience.com/product/game-fest-19/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Copyslut and Wizard Apprentice\u003c/strong>: This rock’n’roll quartet puts on a theatrical, campy live show, and musically they sound a little bit like Heart mixed with Sleater-Kinney; they also use their platform to advocate for sex workers. Joining them at this show is Wizard Apprentice, a singer who makes ultra-introspective bedroom pop that’s all about interrogating feelings of jealousy or inadequacy. Their live show is really unusual too—after performing a song, they disappear while a robotic-sounding avatar of them shares something vulnerable about the lyrics. Wizard Apprentice, Copyslut, Louda and Blacker Face perform on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"http://www.bottomofthehill.com/20191112.html#.XcRYD5JKjdQ\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sylvia Fein\u003c/strong>: When Sylvia Fein isn’t tending to her olive orchard in Martinez, she does what’s made her a nationally known artist: painting egg tempera paintings inspired by surrealism and magical realism. Born in Milwaukee, Fein lived in Mexico City for a while before ultimately settling in the Bay Area. In the 1940s, her work was shown alongside that of Max Ernst and Jackson Pollack at the Whitney Annual—and now, later this month, she’ll turn 100 years old. She’s still vibrant, and working, and will be in person for the opening of her solo show, \u003cem>Sylvia Fein/Matrix275\u003c/em>, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at BAMPFA in Berkeley. The show runs through March of next year. \u003ca href=\"https://bampfa.org/program/sylvia-fein-matrix-275\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oaktown Jazz Workshops 25th Anniversary\u003c/strong>: Oaktown Jazz Workshops has been training Oakland’s finest young musicians since 1994, and the program has some impressive alumni, including trumpet player Ambrose Akinmusire and bassist \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13852456/rightnowish-bassist-aneesa-strings-love-for-music-started-in-oakland-schools\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Aneesa Strings\u003c/a>. Some of its most stellar faculty, alumni, current students and friends perform together at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Nov. 12 to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary and raise money for its programming. Pianist and MC Kev Choice saxophonist Richard Howell and Latin jazz star percussionist John Santos are only a few musicians you can expect to see. \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oaktown-jazz-workshops-25th-anniversary-celebration-tickets-66620635113\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>An estimated 28,000 gamers and industry insiders have descended on San Francisco this week for this year’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.gdconf.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game Developers Conference\u003c/a> (GDC). But despite the fact millions of women worldwide \u003ci>play\u003c/i> games, there’s still a giant gender divide on the development side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13827545,arts_13843649' label='Related Coverage']Every year, conference organizers conduct a survey of attendees. This year, the split is roughly 80/20; as in, 77 percent male attendees, 19 percent female, two percent “other” and two percent declined to answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a small but noticeable shift from last year, when 80 percent of survey respondents identified as ‘male’ and just 17 percent identified as ‘female,’” wrote GDC spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, the gaming workforce looks quite similar to the tech workforce in general, from a gender perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the topic du jour at this week’s Microsoft Women in Gaming Rally, a GDC-adjacent mixer in San Francisco with about 1,000 attendees, mostly women, who gathered to mingle and enjoy the feeling of dominating a room for a few hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13853441\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13853441\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-800x476.png\" alt=\"Male avatars, like Octavio Silva from EA's "Apex Legend Season 1," still outnumber females avatars by a wide margin. Female gamers say they want more female avatars, with a wider variety of back stories.\" width=\"800\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-800x476.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-160x95.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-768x457.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-1020x606.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-1200x714.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM.png 1480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Male avatars, like Octavio Silva from EA’s ‘Apex Legend Season 1,’ still outnumber female avatars by a wide margin. Females gamers say they want more female avatars, with a wider variety of back stories. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Electronic Arts)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m not alone, and there are so many powerful women out here. It’s fantastic,” said Kristie Ramirez, a program manager at \u003ca href=\"https://www.ea.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Electronic Arts\u003c/a>, who’s been in gaming for seven years now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to addressing gender disparities, gaming could also be a lot more welcoming to people of color, going beyond mixers and \u003ca href=\"https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/gaming-for-everyone/communities/women\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">community groups\u003c/a> to attract, hire and retain talent. Ramirez suggested the industry make an effort to get the word out to generations coming up, starting in middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can be a lawyer here [in gaming]. You can be an accountant. You can be a marketer. You don’t just have to be a developer. Just get in here. We want you. We want your perspective!” Ramirez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, many women want to develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura Dell first realized she wanted to when she was 14 years old. “I got into games because of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Sims\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which is my favorite all-time game. They released a developer diary, and [watching it] I suddenly had this epiphany that people make games. They don’t just exist!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13853447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13853447 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-800x651.png\" alt=\"Microsoft publicly posts its diversity statistics. Gender-wise in tech, the split is roughly 80/20 male to female.\" width=\"800\" height=\"651\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-800x651.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-768x625.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-1020x830.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-1200x976.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM.png 1716w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Microsoft publicly posts its diversity statistics. Gender-wise in tech, the split is roughly 80/20 male to female. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Microsoft)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Naomi McArthur, a game designer for \u003ca href=\"https://www.riotgames.com/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Riot Games,\u003c/a> used to be an academic studying applied neuroscience. “I was given a lot of opportunities, and I had a lot of mentorship. I feel really lucky for that, because it let me grow into the game designer I am today,” McArthur said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women at the Microsoft event reported their experiences varied greatly from one company to another. “How can we be really intentional about including all different types of gamers, making sure inclusion is a part of the narrative from the very beginning?” asked Katy Jo Wright, director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/gaming-for-everyone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gaming for Everyone\u003c/a> at Xbox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-05-playgroundz-women-now-make-up-22-percent-of-esports-teams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent study\u003c/a> from the gaming company \u003ca href=\"https://www.playgroundz.io\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Playgroundz\u003c/a> found that most women stick to the mobile gaming world these days: \u003ca href=\"https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Pokémon Go\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.angrybirds.com/games/angry-birds-match/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Angry Birds Match\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, as opposed to games popular on \u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitch\u003c/a> and esports, like \u003cem>Fortnite\u003c/em>. Today, women make up only 30% of gamers on YouTube, 22% of esports team members, and 19.5% of gamers on Twitch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In part, it’s a question of continuing evidence of toxicity in the culture (recent news that \u003ca href=\"https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240304050758\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the game \u003cem>Rape Day\u003c/em> will not ship on Steam\u003c/a> notwithstanding).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also a question of representation. It was literally days ago that Chiquita Evans (a.k.a. Chiquitae126) became the first woman ever drafted into the \u003ca href=\"https://2kleague.nba.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NBA 2K League\u003c/a>. It’s a milestone, but one that leaves people wondering why progress is coming so slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z4SvZW8fYU]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashley Columbo of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ubisoft\u003c/a> would like to see a change-up in the story lines. “This rugged-dude-going-on-an-adventure kind of thing is the main image you see in the industry. So while it’s moving in the right direction, I feel that’s what needs to change: the stories we’re seeing,” Columbo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Maria Ramos, who runs the YouTube channel \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJQxPvs-Xsy-chtX9KdCuvw/featured\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grown Women Gaming\u003c/a>, more and better female avatars would help change gaming culture. Ramos plays everything: \u003ca href=\"https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Cyperpunk 2077\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Tom Clancy’s \u003ca href=\"https://tomclancy-thedivision.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/the-division-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Division 2\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.guerrilla-games.com/play/horizon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Horizon Zero Dawn\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, you name it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how I decompress. That’s my glass of beer, you know, at the end of the day,” Ramos said. When I ask what she wants to see more of, she replied, “More women lead roles in video games. I don’t want the cliche ‘sexy girl,’ or the ‘damsel in distress,’ or anything of that nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Hannah Wolf, director of digital operations at Ubisoft, argued women don’t necessarily want avatars that look like them; and for that matter, neither do men. Her own 16 year-old son, for example, likes to play female characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are far more constructive ways to engage in personalities and personas that are different from who they are in real life,” Wolf said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>An estimated 28,000 gamers and industry insiders have descended on San Francisco this week for this year’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.gdconf.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game Developers Conference\u003c/a> (GDC). But despite the fact millions of women worldwide \u003ci>play\u003c/i> games, there’s still a giant gender divide on the development side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Every year, conference organizers conduct a survey of attendees. This year, the split is roughly 80/20; as in, 77 percent male attendees, 19 percent female, two percent “other” and two percent declined to answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a small but noticeable shift from last year, when 80 percent of survey respondents identified as ‘male’ and just 17 percent identified as ‘female,’” wrote GDC spokesperson Chrissy Kelleher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, the gaming workforce looks quite similar to the tech workforce in general, from a gender perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the topic du jour at this week’s Microsoft Women in Gaming Rally, a GDC-adjacent mixer in San Francisco with about 1,000 attendees, mostly women, who gathered to mingle and enjoy the feeling of dominating a room for a few hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13853441\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13853441\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-800x476.png\" alt=\"Male avatars, like Octavio Silva from EA's "Apex Legend Season 1," still outnumber females avatars by a wide margin. Female gamers say they want more female avatars, with a wider variety of back stories.\" width=\"800\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-800x476.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-160x95.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-768x457.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-1020x606.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM-1200x714.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-21-at-10.04.11-AM.png 1480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Male avatars, like Octavio Silva from EA’s ‘Apex Legend Season 1,’ still outnumber female avatars by a wide margin. Females gamers say they want more female avatars, with a wider variety of back stories. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Electronic Arts)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m not alone, and there are so many powerful women out here. It’s fantastic,” said Kristie Ramirez, a program manager at \u003ca href=\"https://www.ea.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Electronic Arts\u003c/a>, who’s been in gaming for seven years now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to addressing gender disparities, gaming could also be a lot more welcoming to people of color, going beyond mixers and \u003ca href=\"https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/gaming-for-everyone/communities/women\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">community groups\u003c/a> to attract, hire and retain talent. Ramirez suggested the industry make an effort to get the word out to generations coming up, starting in middle school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can be a lawyer here [in gaming]. You can be an accountant. You can be a marketer. You don’t just have to be a developer. Just get in here. We want you. We want your perspective!” Ramirez said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, many women want to develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laura Dell first realized she wanted to when she was 14 years old. “I got into games because of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Sims\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which is my favorite all-time game. They released a developer diary, and [watching it] I suddenly had this epiphany that people make games. They don’t just exist!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13853447\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13853447 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-800x651.png\" alt=\"Microsoft publicly posts its diversity statistics. Gender-wise in tech, the split is roughly 80/20 male to female.\" width=\"800\" height=\"651\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-800x651.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-768x625.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-1020x830.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM-1200x976.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.40.02-PM.png 1716w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Microsoft publicly posts its diversity statistics. Gender-wise in tech, the split is roughly 80/20 male to female. \u003ccite>(Photo: Courtesy of Microsoft)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Naomi McArthur, a game designer for \u003ca href=\"https://www.riotgames.com/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Riot Games,\u003c/a> used to be an academic studying applied neuroscience. “I was given a lot of opportunities, and I had a lot of mentorship. I feel really lucky for that, because it let me grow into the game designer I am today,” McArthur said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women at the Microsoft event reported their experiences varied greatly from one company to another. “How can we be really intentional about including all different types of gamers, making sure inclusion is a part of the narrative from the very beginning?” asked Katy Jo Wright, director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/gaming-for-everyone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gaming for Everyone\u003c/a> at Xbox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-12-05-playgroundz-women-now-make-up-22-percent-of-esports-teams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent study\u003c/a> from the gaming company \u003ca href=\"https://www.playgroundz.io\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Playgroundz\u003c/a> found that most women stick to the mobile gaming world these days: \u003ca href=\"https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Pokémon Go\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.angrybirds.com/games/angry-birds-match/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Angry Birds Match\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, as opposed to games popular on \u003ca href=\"https://www.twitch.tv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitch\u003c/a> and esports, like \u003cem>Fortnite\u003c/em>. Today, women make up only 30% of gamers on YouTube, 22% of esports team members, and 19.5% of gamers on Twitch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In part, it’s a question of continuing evidence of toxicity in the culture (recent news that \u003ca href=\"https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240304050758\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the game \u003cem>Rape Day\u003c/em> will not ship on Steam\u003c/a> notwithstanding).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also a question of representation. It was literally days ago that Chiquita Evans (a.k.a. Chiquitae126) became the first woman ever drafted into the \u003ca href=\"https://2kleague.nba.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NBA 2K League\u003c/a>. It’s a milestone, but one that leaves people wondering why progress is coming so slowly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/7Z4SvZW8fYU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/7Z4SvZW8fYU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashley Columbo of \u003ca href=\"https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ubisoft\u003c/a> would like to see a change-up in the story lines. “This rugged-dude-going-on-an-adventure kind of thing is the main image you see in the industry. So while it’s moving in the right direction, I feel that’s what needs to change: the stories we’re seeing,” Columbo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Maria Ramos, who runs the YouTube channel \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJQxPvs-Xsy-chtX9KdCuvw/featured\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grown Women Gaming\u003c/a>, more and better female avatars would help change gaming culture. Ramos plays everything: \u003ca href=\"https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Cyperpunk 2077\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Tom Clancy’s \u003ca href=\"https://tomclancy-thedivision.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/the-division-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>The Division 2\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.guerrilla-games.com/play/horizon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Horizon Zero Dawn\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, you name it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how I decompress. That’s my glass of beer, you know, at the end of the day,” Ramos said. When I ask what she wants to see more of, she replied, “More women lead roles in video games. I don’t want the cliche ‘sexy girl,’ or the ‘damsel in distress,’ or anything of that nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Hannah Wolf, director of digital operations at Ubisoft, argued women don’t necessarily want avatars that look like them; and for that matter, neither do men. Her own 16 year-old son, for example, likes to play female characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are far more constructive ways to engage in personalities and personas that are different from who they are in real life,” Wolf said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://telltale.com/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Telltale Games\u003c/a>, an independent game developer based in San Rafael, announced Wednesday that it has made a deal with Netflix to produce a video game based on the hit show, \u003ci>Stranger Things.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Telltale Games revealed few details about the game, announcing the news while also announcing that Netflix would be streaming an interactive version of Telltale’s game \u003ci>Minecraft: Story Mode.\u003c/i> Telltale had little to say about either project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our partnership with Netflix is something we’re incredibly proud of, and while we don’t have anything more to share right now, we’re excited to reveal details on these projects later in the year,” Telltale \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/telltalegames/status/1006996305082630144\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">posted on Twitter \u003c/a>Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three former LucasArts employees — Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander — founded Telltale in 2004, following LucasArts’s cancellation of a game they worked on together called \u003ci>Sam & Max Hit the Road.\u003c/i> The company went on to create games for movies such as \u003cem>Back to the Future\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Jurassic Park\u003c/em>. But Telltale saw its first big success with the episodic game it created based on \u003ci>The Walking Dead\u003c/i> comic and television series. Upon its release in 2012, the game sold a million copies in 20 days. Telltale went on to develop four more games in the series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13835104\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot from 'Minecraft: Story Mode'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13835104\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot from ‘Minecraft: Story Mode.’ \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Building on its cinematic, episodic style developed for the \u003ci>The Walking Dead\u003c/i> games, it then produced games for notable properties such as \u003ci>Game of Thrones\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Guardians of the Galaxy.\u003c/i> Continuing successes led the company to grow to 400 employees, but the company couldn’t sustain the staffing level and it \u003ca href=\"https://www.usgamer.net/articles/exclusive-how-a-culture-of-crunch-brought-telltale-from-critical-darlings-to-layoffs\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">laid off 90 employees\u003c/a> — 25 percent of its staff — last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal Telltale inked with Netflix means two different products for the two licensed properties, \u003ci> Minecraft\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Stranger Things.\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.techradar.com/news/netflix-to-add-games-to-its-service-including-stranger-things-and-minecraft\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> TechRadar reports\u003c/a> that \u003cem>Minecraft: Story Mode\u003c/em> is a five-part interactive story series similar to other Netflix properties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an extension of our other interactive stories we have on our service like \u003cem>Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile\u003c/em>,” a Netflix representative \u003ca href=\"https://www.polygon.com/tv/2018/6/13/17460834/netflix-telltale-minecraft-story-mode-stranger-things-game\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Polygon\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the \u003ci>Stranger Things\u003c/i> game will not be available for streaming on Netflix, as it is just a part of the streaming service’s marketing strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have any plans to get into gaming,” Netflix told TechRadar. “There’s a broad spectrum of entertainment available today. Games have become increasingly cinematic, but we view this as interactive narrative storytelling on our service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Stranger Things,\u003c/i> a sci-fi horror series steeped in ’80s nostalgia, premiered on Netflix in 2016, becoming a sensation practically overnight. The third season of the show is currently in production.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://telltale.com/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Telltale Games\u003c/a>, an independent game developer based in San Rafael, announced Wednesday that it has made a deal with Netflix to produce a video game based on the hit show, \u003ci>Stranger Things.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Telltale Games revealed few details about the game, announcing the news while also announcing that Netflix would be streaming an interactive version of Telltale’s game \u003ci>Minecraft: Story Mode.\u003c/i> Telltale had little to say about either project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our partnership with Netflix is something we’re incredibly proud of, and while we don’t have anything more to share right now, we’re excited to reveal details on these projects later in the year,” Telltale \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/telltalegames/status/1006996305082630144\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">posted on Twitter \u003c/a>Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three former LucasArts employees — Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander — founded Telltale in 2004, following LucasArts’s cancellation of a game they worked on together called \u003ci>Sam & Max Hit the Road.\u003c/i> The company went on to create games for movies such as \u003cem>Back to the Future\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Jurassic Park\u003c/em>. But Telltale saw its first big success with the episodic game it created based on \u003ci>The Walking Dead\u003c/i> comic and television series. Upon its release in 2012, the game sold a million copies in 20 days. Telltale went on to develop four more games in the series.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13835104\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot from 'Minecraft: Story Mode'\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13835104\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/06/Minecraft-screenshot-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot from ‘Minecraft: Story Mode.’ \u003ccite>(Netflix)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Building on its cinematic, episodic style developed for the \u003ci>The Walking Dead\u003c/i> games, it then produced games for notable properties such as \u003ci>Game of Thrones\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Guardians of the Galaxy.\u003c/i> Continuing successes led the company to grow to 400 employees, but the company couldn’t sustain the staffing level and it \u003ca href=\"https://www.usgamer.net/articles/exclusive-how-a-culture-of-crunch-brought-telltale-from-critical-darlings-to-layoffs\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">laid off 90 employees\u003c/a> — 25 percent of its staff — last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The deal Telltale inked with Netflix means two different products for the two licensed properties, \u003ci> Minecraft\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Stranger Things.\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.techradar.com/news/netflix-to-add-games-to-its-service-including-stranger-things-and-minecraft\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> TechRadar reports\u003c/a> that \u003cem>Minecraft: Story Mode\u003c/em> is a five-part interactive story series similar to other Netflix properties. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an extension of our other interactive stories we have on our service like \u003cem>Stretch Armstrong: The Breakout\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile\u003c/em>,” a Netflix representative \u003ca href=\"https://www.polygon.com/tv/2018/6/13/17460834/netflix-telltale-minecraft-story-mode-stranger-things-game\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told Polygon\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, the \u003ci>Stranger Things\u003c/i> game will not be available for streaming on Netflix, as it is just a part of the streaming service’s marketing strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t have any plans to get into gaming,” Netflix told TechRadar. “There’s a broad spectrum of entertainment available today. Games have become increasingly cinematic, but we view this as interactive narrative storytelling on our service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Stranger Things,\u003c/i> a sci-fi horror series steeped in ’80s nostalgia, premiered on Netflix in 2016, becoming a sensation practically overnight. The third season of the show is currently in production.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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}
},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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},
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
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"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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},
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"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
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