Helene Utterback is a practitioner and advocate of polyamory, or transparently having multiple romantic partners. As an alternative lifestyle to traditional monogamy, polyamory allows individuals to have various emotional and physical needs met by more than one person. It’s a form of romance rarely seen in video games, a medium that instead allows or encourages players to “romance” no more than one non-player character (NPC) at a time.
In this podcast, Helene and I chat about the communication tools and skills necessary to participate in polyamory; how polyamorous individuals work through feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and possessiveness; why society stigmatizes polyamory, leading it to be rarely represented in gaming; the game mods and expansions that allow polyamory to exist in games such as The Sims 4 and Stardew Valley; and how polyamory doesn’t reduce storytelling opportunities, but greatly expands it.
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.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:34 — 73.7MB) | Embed
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