Welcome to The Longest Rainy Sunday Podcast, a production by Emory University students in David Morgen’s Play, Make, Write, Think class. Time has stopped, everything is uncertain, we’re physically distanced and socially disconnected as a pandemic and fights for justice rage around us. The world might be forever changed after the events of 2020 but where does that leave us in the meantime? It’s felt to a lot of us like one almost unending rainy afternoon staring at video screens, either to escape, to connect, or to imagine a better way forward. Even the World Health Organization, one year after designating video game addiction as a mental health disorder, is now urging people to play more video games and celebrating the “important messages” that the video games industry can communicate. So in this series, we’ll turn our critical gaze to the games we have been playing, examine what they have to offer right now. How do these games define identities, foster a sense of belonging, encourage empathy, or subvert systems? How do they encourage certain types of problem solving and learning? What sorts of values do they promote? The world hit pause, lets hit play.