{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 3: Elden Ring: Endless Purgatorio","description":"In episode three of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi welcome fellow faculty and videogame connoisseur Joseph Earl Thomas to talk about Elden Ring, the acclaimed 2022 RPG videogame, directed and created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and Japan\u2019s FromSoftware studio (alongside some \u201cworldbuilding\u201d by Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin.) After a few preliminaries (a revisit to Andor and discussions of the recent Sight and Sound \u201cbest movies\u201d poll, Pokemon, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as communist allegory, and more), the talk turns to Elden Ring\u2018s \u201cendless purgatorio,\u201d its \u201cnihilistic\u201d setting, its \u201copen-world\u201d structure (just how \u201copen\u201d are open worlds?), the meaning and limits of agency in videogame play, taking pleasure in difficulty, \u201caffective difficulty,\u201d why videogame playing might be like dancing (with reference to BISR\u2019s late Jeffrey Escoffier), affect theory (and feeling bad about killing), gender, playing dress-up, and much more besides. ","author_name":"(Pop) Cultural Marxism","author_url":"http:\/\/thebrooklyninstitute.com","html":"