Podcast

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

It's a news episode this week, and you know what that means: people getting cross about AI. The results are at least entertaining, though, starting with NVIDIA's DLSS technology which promises to yassify game characters regardless of circumstance or the artistic decisions of their creators. This is seemingly in service of photorealism, which has been the final goal of graphics card manufacturers since the days when they put weird CGI fairies on the boxes, but has never really been creatively interesting and never will be because we already know what reality looks like.

Total Playtime Episode 31: Stoatal Playtime; Our DLSS 5 Is ON

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It nevertheless appears inevitable that the technology will be both widely available and widely used despite making the output actively worse, making it the videogame equivalent of TVs using motion smoothing by default, but in the meantime the memes have been pretty good and that's the best we can hope for in the grim darkness of the far

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

Once again we find ourselves in a situation where I, Alice, was not there to record this episode, but am here to write the description for it. I can call Jonty a big smelly poohead and there's nothing he can do about it! Haha! You should have come up with a Podcast Post Editing Simulator, Jonty. That's the theme this week: coming up with pastimes to make simulation games about, but which have not already been simulated by ambitious and fast-moving developers. It turns out there are a lot of sim games.

Total Playtime: Henry Rollins Pirate Accountant Sim

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Nevertheless, the lads were able to come up with several concepts, as follows:

• Philosophy Professor Simulator
• Henry Rollins Pirate Accountant Simulator
• Lin Manuel Miranda's Bin Man Hell Uganda
• Left Wing Roid Monster Olympics (not the name Nate actually gave it but I feel mine is more evocative and not open to a lawsuit from Andy Samburg)
• Local Election Sim
• Museum Attendant Simulator

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

This week's episode is unsusually quiet and on-topic, because both Alice and Nate were away and that really cuts down the level of free-form improv and extended complaining about people on the internet. It fell to Brendy and myself to hold the fort, which does at least mean it's an all-Jank show to merit this post.

Total Playtime: The Phil Spencer Xbox Explosion

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The lead talking point was Phil Spencer's departure from Xbox, in which I attempt to present him positively and Brendan counter-argues that executives should not be treated like humans. Humanity is further cited in discussion of the entity wearing Videogamer.com's skin pumping out AI-written articles, including a Resident Evil review which briefly appeared on Metacritic. Brendy has already made clear our view on AI-written reviews, which the article in question handily backed up by being extremely dull and offering no useful insight.

Having a games writer phographed wearing a shirt and suit jacket, rather than a black T-shirt and

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

This week's Patreon episode is another demonstration of our fearless defiance of editorial convention, as we not only run our big quiz of the year in February, but do so by traversing the Egyptian underworld and resolving the gaming-related trials of Anubis.

Total Playtime: The Trials of Anubis

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Thrill as Nate breaks out the voice changer, Alice upgrades her eagle, Brendy challenges Nate on the single worst topic imaginable and we face a surfeit of burning snakes. Truly no other podcast combines questions about sales figures and GTA trailers with an extremely in-depth knowledge of ancient Egyptian belief systems. Which, not to be dismissive of other cultures, are remarkably complicated and a real hassle to navigate when you're simply trying to escape the grip of the underworld.

Plus: asking Shaq what a basketball is, "an enigmatic and barely understandable point in the journey", and the return of a beloved RPS regular. You can listen to the podcast right here on this page, and

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

It is once again time for Total Playtime, which this week sees Alice, Brendy and myself gather to pick over the major news topics of the moment: AI-based hardware shortages, the ongoing mishaps of Highguard, and the political implications of asking a lot of people to make cat noises. I must warn you that this is preceded by a lengthy preamble on parents injuring themselves, the absolute bullshit that is being middle-aged, and Big Pharma's devious attempts to distract you from the altogether more affordable health solutions of Medium Bee.

Total Playtime 29: Extremely Online Beef People

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These matters dealt with, we can move on the major issues. First up: the insatiable demand for vibe coding, fake girlfriends and plagiarism is sucking all the RAM out of the market and that problem is spreading from PCs to consoles and also everything else, because everything has a memory chip in it now because how can it possibly show you targeted advertising without one. The

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

This week's episode is a Premium instalment for paying subscribers, which means we can abandon our already tenuous grasp on current events and succumb to the intoxication of high concept. This week: as the world lurches into self-improvement at the start of the year, which videogame characters would we choose to coach us into living better?

Total Playtime: Game-Themed 2026 Wellness Teams For Great Prosperity

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You can see the picks of Brendy, Nate and myself below, and you can listen to the episode to hear our reasoning. Alice was away this week, but wished to make clear that she considered our answers poorly- thought-out and also that her choices would be Aloy off of Horizon Zero Dawn, Officer Dooley from The Darkside Detective, and that posh one off of Final Fantasy XV.

Fitness

Jonty: Ezio from Assassn's Creed

Brendy: Kiryu Kazuma from Yakuza

Nate: Schelemeus from Hades II

Motivation

Jonty: Skelly off from Hades

Brendy: Little Lion from Skin Deep GLaDOS from Portal

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

It’s Thursday, so that means a new episode of Total Playtime, and as part of our current partnership I am compelled to bring it to your attention. This week’s episode, after an extended aside about shrimp (real; either annoying or delicious) and ahead of a discussion of Silt Striders (not real; valuable public infrastructure), is anchored by the news that progress has been made on the Split Fiction movie, which Alice cited as a transparent segue into her talking about the fact that she has been playing Split Fiction and is extremely furious about it.

Total Playtime Episode 28: Bugpunk

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I will not attempt to summarise her argument but the topline is that the characters, narrative and game itself are all bad in ways seemingly calculated to enrage. Some of these views are shared by Graham and, to a degree, Brendy - I have not played the game so I will not judge, but that’s okay because Alice offers judgment