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Published by Nathan Wainstein and Bryan Counter
A podcast on video games and aesthetic theory hosted by two Living Failures.
On the charts
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The Mato Topic Intelligence Platform does not report this podcast as charting in a published category in this snapshot.
From the feed
The latest episodes published to this podcast’s own RSS feed. Titles and descriptions are the publisher’s.
Bryan and Nathan are back with another Formless One. They discuss the Diablo franchise and a handful of books: Vacated Landscape by Jean Lahougue; Train Lord by Oliver Mol; The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson; Living on After Failure by Irving Goh; and The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Bryan's appearance on Reel Rap to discuss Vacated Landscape : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vacated-landscape-by-jean-lahougue-with-bryan-counter/id1792646198?i=1000774623175 Tristram Village theme from Diablo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnMR6SOBa9k&list=RDAnMR6SOBa9k&start_radio=1 Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
In this episode, Bryan and Nathan discuss FromSoftware’s 2016 game Dark Souls III . They talk about the game’s traversability, fan service, repetition, memory, and its relationship to the other games in the trilogy. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
In this episode, Bryan and Nathan are joined by special guest Luke Barnhart to discuss the work of American painter Cy Twombly. Luke's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luke.a.barnhart/ Fifty Days at Iliam: https://www.philamuseum.org/objects/85709 Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
After a break, the podcast is back with another Formless One. Bryan and Nathan discuss the YouTube channel Eleftherios, the 2016 remake of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (originally released in 2007), Fallout 4 (2015) and the series more generally, and the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
In this episode, Bryan and Nathan are joined by special guests James Martell and Erik Larsen to discuss Dead by Daylight . They discuss experiences with multiplayer games, ideas about horror and Lovecraftian tropes, and the ephemerality of that first time. James Martell is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Lyon College, and was a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge in 2025. He is the author of Beckett and Derrida (2024) and Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal (2019), and the editor of Understanding Sade, Understanding Modernism (2025). His current projects are Thinking Surfaces in French Contemporary Thought and Foiled Reflections: Mirror Stages for Stupid Times in Literature, Art, Film, Psychoanalysis, and Philosophy . Erik Larsen is an associate professor of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester. His research and teaching focus on biopolitics, critical theory and medicine, and the many intersections of narrative and healthcare. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Notre Dame. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan talk about the 2023 action role-playing game Lies of P . They think through some impressions (or lack of impressions) of it, wonder about the intertwined roles of the clown and the puppet in the game and in horror more broadly, and briefly touch on Heinrich Von Kleist’s 1810 story “On the Marionette Theater” to consider the relationship between the automaton and the human. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan are joined by games writer Martin Dolan to discuss indie games. Read Martin's essay "Indie Squeeze": https://strangematters.coop/indie-games-renaissance-is-over-what-comes-next/ Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
In this episode, Nathan and Bryan return to Ebisugaoka to talk more about Silent Hill f . They discuss the abstract nature of horror, Hinako’s two worlds, and the worst room in the game. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan welcome back friend of the show Justin Carpenter to talk about Metal Gear Solid 3 and the larger Metal Gear saga. Here's a link to Justin's recent essay on Kentucky Route Zero (subscription or library access required): https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/abcsj-2025-0022 Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan return to Silent Hill to discuss Silent Hill f (2025). They talk about the question of origin, moments of horror in gameplay, the banality of horror, and the horror of banality. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan wrap up their discussion of Metal Gear Solid 2 by talking about the trippy sequence in the game's final location, and begin their discussion of Metal Gear Solid 3 with Bryan's initial impressions of the game. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Join us for a special holiday chat. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan continue their discussion of Metal Gear Solid 2 . They talk about its elaborate structure of nested simulations, the importance of chance, and why "postmodern" feels like an unsatisfying term to apply to the game. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan are back with another Formless One. Bryan starts off the episode recounting his recent experience seeing the metal band Ulcerate, while Nathan shares some thoughts on the 2002 remake of the original Resident Evil . They then turn to Algernon Blackwood's eldritch short story "Secret Worship" to discuss Abstract Horror, Blackwood's relation to H. P. Lovecraft, and whether a demon is still a demon if it's just the outline of a man. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan are joined by Michael Barr to discuss David Kanaga's experimental indie game Oikospiel (2017). Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan begin their discussion of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001). They talk about the game's unique interplay between immersion and abstraction, its deep silliness, and the complexity of its simulated embodiment. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Please enjoy this bonus Halloween episode on Bloodborne ’s The Old Hunters DLC. We'll post a full episode next Monday as usual. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
In this episode, Bryan and Nathan discuss Jonathan Boulter’s 2015 book Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience , published by Wayne State University Press. They discuss the concept of posthumanism and how games help us elaborate on it. Nathan proposes an alternate framing (“prehumanism”) and talks about why Boulter’s book feels so prescient in the context of the Metal Gear Solid series in particular. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan discuss Chill Games, "Smart Games," Dumb Games, and Dumb Smart Games, and Bryan shares his early impressions of Metal Gear Solid 2 (the topic of an upcoming episode). They also cover the second half of Kentucky Route Zero , including the brilliant Xanadu sequence and the risks of narrative complexity creep. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Bryan and Nathan get "enfrenzied" as they continue their discussion of Bloodborne . They discuss the role of madness, the empty form of knowledge, and why scholars need so much sedative. Find us on YouTube at youtube.com/@authorsdietwice Have questions or comments? Email us at authorsdietwice@gmail.com
Ranking source
Apple Podcasts rankings via the Mato Topic Intelligence Platform.
Observed September 16, 2026. Cached outside the daily freshness window; the positions keep the date they were taken on.
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