Today’s interview is with Dr. Natalie Coyle (aka @PlatinumParagon), an academic who I’ve followed and enjoyed for a couple years now. Dr. Coyle writes about video games and related topics with a strong desire to share information and tell the truth.

Part of what drew me to her work was that it avoided the problem that plagues more academic writing on the topic: she knows the communities and forces at work, and it doesn’t come off as someone trying to go on safari somewhere unfamiliar.

While you could argue that academic writing benefits from a little bit of ignorance (instead of bringing in your own biases), I think that gaming suffers from a lack of closeness when it comes to people writing “serious” things about the medium and industry.

I think we can all think of articles by gaming outlets that parrot something “a study has found”, for better or for worse. While it can be easy to take the victories or dunk on ignorance, that kind of scoreboarding feels like a waste of time. I enjoy Natalie’s work because it speaks to subjects I’m passionate about (personal improvement, psychology, mental health) and they never feel like a waste of time.

Go check them out here.

Housekeeping

I wrote a new tutorial about recording podcasts with Voicemeeter. You can find that on my dotcom.

I also decided to start an infodump on my Github for specific software, sites and services that I use on the daily. Sometimes there's just a "I didn't know I needed this until I knew it existed" feeling with certain things, and eff it.

Thanks for the love. I stream on Fridays and Tuesdays. Join the Discord for events and content notifications.

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