Kickstarter | Polygamer

Polygamer #125: Game to Grow

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Ken Gagne

Game to Grow is a non-profit that promotes the therapeutic, educational, and community growth benefits of gaming. With structured online sessions of Dungeons & Dragons and Minecraft, as well as their own tabletop game called Critical Core, Game to Grow teaches gamers of all ages and to become more confident, creative, and socially capable.

In this episode, Game to Grow executive director Adam Davis and director of education and training Dr. Elizabeth D. Kilmer join Ken to discuss the history of gaming therapy; what makes a game more conducive to therapeutic benefits; why Game to Grow is for everyone, not just those with diagnoses; what led Game to Grow to create Critical Core; how games such as Dark Souls and Celeste can encourage a growth mindset; and why de-escalation is a valuable skill, even (or especially) among collaborative players.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for a transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Polygamer #97: Dr. Carly Kocurek of Save Point & Games for Girls

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Ken Gagne

Dr. Carly Kocurek is an associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Her work in the analysis and preservation of games includes Save Point, a zine about the history of video games whose second issue is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. She is also researching the “Games for Girls” movement of the 1990s, courtesy a grant from the National Science Foundation.

In this podcast interview, we discuss why a zine is a format uniquely suited to this topic; how Save Point is able to be published with such a modest budget; how to make academic subjects accessible to a lay audience; what the “Games for Girls” movement was, and how it’s evolved over the last 25 years; the research that the NSF grant enables her to conduct; and how listeners can support game preservation efforts.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Polygamer #96: Caspian Whistler of A Profound Waste of Time

Posted on December 11, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Caspian Whistler is the founder and creative director of A Profound Waste of Time, an independent magazine inspired by video games. Each issue is available in hardcopy only, and each page is uniquely illustrated, combining prose and design from renowned gaming journalists, critics, and developers into a thoughtful collection of essays. The first issue of APWOT shipped in 2018 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, with the Kickstarter for the second issue currently underway.

In this interview, Cas and I talk about the value of a print publication in an industry that moves quickly; the magazine’s origins in the zine scene; how he attracted an all-star editorial cast, including Polygamer alumni Susan Arendt and Jonathan Holmes, to his first issue; how design can be beautiful while still enhancing readability; what he learned from the first Kickstarter; how often we’ll see future issues of APWOT; and how his dyslexia influences his editorial process.

Full disclosure: I backed both APWOT Kickstarters.

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Polygamer #94: Jeri Ellsworth of Tilt Five

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Jeri Ellsworth recently launched the Kickstarter for Tilt Five, a mixed-reality headset and game board. Its proprietary approach to augmented reality allows gamers to bring Dungeons & Dragons, racing, pinball, and other games to life, using either symmetrical or asymmetrical gameplay, both locally and online. Having successfully reached its crowdfunding goal of $450,000 in just 17 hours, Tilt Five is on track to ship in the summer of 2020.

In this podcast interview, Jeri and I talk about what makes Tilt Five unique among todays many approaches to mixed reality (MR); how its technology and applications differ from professional-grade devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens; whether Tilt Five is aimed more at video gamers or board gamers; what lessons Jeri learned from her previous MR project, castAR; what she’s doing differently this time to avoid the obstacles castAR encountered; and Tilt Five’s reception at PAX West and JoCoCruise.

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Polygamer #87: Tifa Robles and The Explorers of Azullucent

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Tifa Robles is the author of The Explorers of Azullucent, a young-adult fantasy novel currently on Kickstarter. Over 16 years in the making, this book features a trio of diverse female protagonists on an epic adventure of discovery. Tifa is no stranger to writing, being a regular contributor to the board game website Tabletop-Test. Her love for gaming continues as co-host GenCon’s TableTakes show and as founder and former organizer of the Lady Planeswalker Society, a community for introducing players to Magic: The Gathering.

In this episode, Tifa and I reunite after three years since her last appearance on Polygamer. We chat about how her book has evolved over almost two decades; the advantages of going the crowdfunding, self-published route; who she turned to for help with peer reviews, art design, and crowdfunding; how a degree in creative writing informs her non-fiction writing; how a minor in biological anthropology can be essential to developing empathy; the challenges and tricks to being a writer with dyslexia; and how she juggles it all with being a mom.

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Polygamer #81: Cynthia Lowen, director of NETIZENS

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Cynthia Lowen is the director and producer of NETIZENS, a documentary that details the proliferation of online harassment faced by women. The film follows feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, attorney Carrie Goldberg, and businesswoman Tina Reine as they fight back against the online harassment that has threatened their careers and livelihoods. Lowen ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for NETIZENS in late 2016 and is now showing the movie on the film festival circuit prior to its general release.

In this interview, I chat with Lowen about what inspired her to make this film; why she chose to focus on gendered online harassment broadly and not just in online gaming; whether the past few years have made the Internet safer or more dangerous for women; the role that men and video games can play in solving the problem of online harassment; how NETIZENS compares with her previous film, Bully; her experience with crowdfunding; and when we can look forward to NETIZENS‘s wide release.

This interview was recorded on Friday, September 21, 2018, while Lowen was in Switzerland as part of the film tour. Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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