The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Tonight on GeekNights, we review The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It's one of the best pieces of entertainment software ever made. 11/10. S-Tier. A case study in good game design. Just go play it if you aren't already. In the news, Overwatch 2 is banning 5,000 cheaters a week, Street Fighter 6's control modes are looking pretty good, and Wizards of the Coast called the Pinkertons on a youtuber.
Suzume (2022)

Tonight on GeekNights, we review Makoto Shinkai's 2022 film Suzume (すずめの戸締まり). It's a road trip movie about shared and distant trauma. And a chair. In the news, The Owl House stuck the landing and Shin Kamen Rider is screening in the US!
Computer Noise

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the noise that computers make. It used to be a lot worse, but most of you are probably too young to have experienced this era. In the news, Rym went to a Star Trek convention, Google supports passkeys, actually read this article and not just the headline, and Rym is running in the New York Marathon in November!
Retooling GeekNights Wednesday

Tonight on GeekNights we talk about GeekNights. Particularly, GeekNights Wednesdays. It's the odd duck of the show, focused not just entirely on the passive consumption of media, but constrained to specific types of media. A meta show! In the news, the Venture Brothers Movie is coming, the original Ken Sugimori Pokemon artwork is on the Internet, Makoto Shinkai's Suzume is in theaters, and there is some important meta information about this movie.
Our Panel from PAX East 2023
Due to very important developments, there won't be any GeekNights tonight! Instead, we're premiering the video of our most recent new panel from PAX East 2023!
Can Competitive and Casual Coexist?
Live Premiere Tuesday May 2 @ 7pm ET
Watch live on Youtube!
Can Competitive and Casual Coexist?
PAX East 2023
Fortnite rolled out changes to make the game more competitive, and then promptly had to roll them back. Overwatch struggles to balance how characters are used competitively versus casually. With Root we even see balance patches in TABLETOP games. Game balance in a vacuum is one thing, but how do you balance a game across all possible levels of player skill? Across normal and professional/esport play? And most to the point, across a varied player base where people often have diametrically-opposed reasons for playing?
Book Club - The Satanic Verses

For this choice, I wanted to present Scott with two books that are famous, important, by extremely well-regarded authors, and which I had never read in full. Either way, I would fill a serious gap in my literary exploration. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses not only both fill such a gap, but were both published in the same year: 1988.
Inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, The Satanic Verses' title is in reference to the "satanic verses" and the work is steeped in magical realism. It achieved wide critical acclaim. Muhammad Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas."
Extremists, egged on by Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration that Rushdie must be assassinated, have repeatedly attempted to murder the author. He was violently stabbed just this last summer in August 2022, losing an eye and the use of his hand and barely surviving. He remains to this day, 35 years later, under constant thread of murder.