Is it wrong to love 'podcast games'?

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When we talk about playing games, we generally mean a specific approach: a player focused on the game at hand, with as few distractions as possible taking them out of the experience. Many of the biggest games out there are specifically designed to encourage this immersion, often actively punishing players if they fall asleep.

This is not how I would describe my relationship with games. You may be familiar with the notion of “podcast game”, a game that can be played comfortably with only a fraction of your full attention, the audio muted or ignored while a podcast, TV show or Twitch stream plays in the background. This has gone from being something I do occasionally to being how I spend most of my time gaming, and is even a factor in determining which games I play in the first place. What started as a kind of guilty habit has, over time, become a new way of understanding how we “play” games.

What makes for a good “podcast game” may vary depending on who you ask, but the best ones share a common DNA. They need as little story and dialogue as possible, can be challenging but don’t require your constant attention, and, perhaps most importantly, should have at least some elements of repetitive mundaneness. Grinding is a good example: I’ve spent much of my life leveling up without thinking about Pokémon, a series of podcasts that keep me entertained while concentrating on the game enough to avoid dying.

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