Episode 86: We Have To Talk About Summer Game Fest

This week, Alex and Adrian discuss the intersection of pop culture and real-life protests, especially the recent No Kings protest, and the line between memes as community building and memes as a distraction from the cause.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Caitlin discuss the new movie 28 Years Later, its takes on masculinity, manhood, and coming-of-age, and why infection horror persists as a social commentary genre. Full spoilers ahead!

EA Sports revived a community with EA Sports College Football 25 last year. Now, the development team is growing that community by expanding their investment in the quality of life elements that make Dynasty the leading mode of their game in EA Sports College Football 26 (CFB 26). During the media preview event, we spoke with Ben Haumiller, CFB 26's Principal Game Designer, who has been with EA for 25 years.  The first thing to note is that Ben Haumiller loves college football. More importantly, the NCAA series of games is what made him want to be a developer to begin with. Now, 25 years later, he shared his story on how he began working on EA's top-selling sports game.    To read the interview:  https://butwhytho.net/2025/06/college-football-26-dynasty-dealbreakers/

This week, we're doing things a little differently. Kate is joined by Luis Alamilla and Luis Gutierrez to talk about Summer Game Fest. Yes, we talk about our favorite games, but the focus is something more important: What it's like covering a game event as Latinos when ICE raids, protests, and violent police are surrounding you. It's an emotional and sensitive conversation, but we encourage you to listen, learn, and take action.  Organizations to support below. Union del Barrio: https://www.instagram.com/uniondelbarrio/ RAICES Texas: https://raicestexas.org/ Latinx In Gaming:  https://www.latinxingaming.com/    

This week, Alex, Kate, and guest Jess Cogswell from Gamespot discuss their types, the pluses and minuses of archetypes and stereotypes, and the importance of seeing people as full, complex people.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt discuss generative AI being used to revive the dead, the consequences of Fortnite's Darth Vader dupe, and what larger conversation we need to be having to prevent the worst of generative AI's consequences.

We're doing something a little different today! To celebrate Pride Month, we're launchign our new BL podcast called Yaoi Hands! Every week, Kate & Matthew talk about BL and bara. They dive into the tropes, what works, what doesn't, and why we're all so in love with reading messy, chaotic romances. From manga to manhwa and more, they go through it all. To get access to our premium version, head over to butwhytho.net/support and subscribe!  

This week, Kate, Alex, and Kapi talk about Soulslike games, where they first got into them, why they love them, and what "get good" really means in the context of Soulslikes.

This week, Alex and Adrian discuss the upcoming summer movie slate, what they're excited about, and what they wish summer movies were doing more of like they used to.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt discuss why disaster movies tend to always center major American cities and why the recent Argentinian series Eternaut is breaking the mold for the end of the world.