This week, Richard and Bill welcomed their first guest into the studio: Andrew Reinhard. We convinced Andrew to talk to us about his research on Archaeogaming which is the archaeology in and of video games. We became particularly interested in his assertion that “meatspace” is no different than the virtual space of games. This, as you might guess, triggered some vigorous discussion that eventually devolved into Bill citing Pierre Bourdieu and railing against capitalism, Richard interviewing his 8-year-old son and comparing capitalism and video games to religion, and the homunculus who operates Andrew’s flesh robot almost leaping out of his head. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

The opening and closing track on the podcast is 80-R’s Pacific Rim. You can listen to it in its entirely here.

Over 19 million people have bought the PC version of Minecraft.

There are only three characters you need to know about in Minecraft:

Steve– your default character

Herobrine– your nightmare:

Notch – the Creator:

Read a bit about Herobrine.  Then read a bit more.   This seems to be the ur-CreepyPasta.

Good lord, do you live in a box?  Learn about CreepyPasta.

And, well, we only briefly touch on him, but Slender Man is mixed up in the this a bit – he is the inspiration for the Endermen.  You should probably be aware of the tragic, bizarre and sad, Slender Man stabbing perpetrated by two 12 year old girls in Wisconsin.

A super-brief explanation of why Minecraft is so popular at Kotaku

Richard’s son Matt reminded him that his prattle about Minecraft needs to be informed by an appreciation of DWARF FORTRESS. Fair enough.  Richard, a historian, responds ZORK – a version of which he played on the mainframe at CampVandyland a million years ago.  But Richard also concedes that Zork is not the same.

We don’t recommend going down this rabbit hole, but here are approximately 2,880,000 videos about Herobrine on YouTube.  (For perspective, Richard’s count is 19, Bill’s is 18, and Dionysus’s is 41,800).

Links:

Meatspace.

Minecraft: Savior of Education and Marginalized Kids, according to the Fargo Forum.

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Mancamp Moment of the Week:  ManCamps in Grand Forks, North Dakota!  It won’t be different in the sense that every type of workforce housing that exists in the world exists in Williston.