WE’RE BACK! HAPPY NEW YEAR! This week I’m joined by two very special guests – Jazza John and James Young. We’re taking about gaming and data collection with a focus on Netflix’ latest Black Mirror episode entitled: Bandersnatch.

Last year we woke up to the consequences of Facebook collecting huge amounts of data about us. So for the first episode of the new series I wanted to take a look at the data collection that happens within games and games companies. Whereas 20 years ago, all your gaming data was stored on a local drive attached to your PlayStation or Nintendo, today that data is fed back to the gaming industry. Netflix launched a new game over Christmas as part of the new Black Mirror series called “Bandersnatch”. Should we be concerned about whether this behavioural data will be fed into their recommendation algorithm? Or instead is the biggest concern about the creativity of game designers? Will data collection mean that there are fewer innovative ideas and games as every developer seeks to make the next blockbuster?

James Young is a documentary maker. His recent documentaries have appeared on BBC3; Can Robots Love Us? and Sex Robots & Us: The Future of Sex. Jazza John is a Youtuber, podcaster and a professional internet show off. We all know a fair bit about technology and love a good game.

Interesting links mentioned in “Data, Games and Bandersnatch”

My article in Quartz called: “Black Mirror isn’t just predicting the future – it’s causing it” This pretty much summarises my point of view on Netflix and Bandersnatch

We talked a bit about #Gamergate and narrative-driven gaming. My favourite article on Gamergate is in Vox and written by Todd VanDerWerff – check it out here.

One of my favourite mobile and console games is called Kingdom. Check it out.

Last year we recorded an episode with Jazza on Cambridge Analytica and the scandal that erupted. Check out that ep here.

There is NO LINK between playing violent video games and increased real-life violence

This is a really important point, and I feel we didn’t hammer this home enough in the episode. For more information check out the Oxford Internet Institute’s research here: “Poor behaviour ‘linked to time spent gaming not types of games'”

Tell all your friends and family and enemies about us

This is a new series so please do help us spread the word that we’re back! Feel free to give us a 5* review on your platform of choice, drop me a line telling me you love me (alice [at] twaaats [dot] com or @alicelthwaite on Twitter) or sharing this ep online.

Til next time!