The OntoCast 2: Mental Health Asylums As Horror Tropes

Van Gogh’s A Corridor in the Asylum

It’s time for the sec­ond episode of the Ontological Geek Podcast! In addi­tion to talk­ing about a few spe­cif­ic game sound­tracks, this episode delves into hor­ror games and the use of the “insane asy­lum” as a recur­ring, unin­ter­ro­gat­ed trope there­in. Special guests this episode are Amsel von Spreckelsen, long­time OntoGeek friend and games-blogger, and Rowan Noel Stokvis, a dis­abil­i­ty rights advo­cate.  Join us for some seri­ous analy­sis of why insane asy­lums are used so fre­quent­ly in hor­ror games, what they mean, and what this trend says about our soci­ety’s atti­tudes towards the men­tal­ly ill.

If you’d like to lis­ten to a ver­sion of the pod­cast which has com­plete cuts of all the musi­cal tracks which are sim­ply sam­pled below, head on over to http://​www​.mix​cloud​.com/​o​n​t​o​l​o​g​i​c​a​l​g​e​ek/ and lis­ten to that ver­sion there!

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00:00 — Introduction
01:36 — Mashup of Thief music by Eric Brosius
05:20 — Horror and hor­ror music in Games (Amnesia: the Dark Descent, et al.)
27:35 — Asylums in games (Outlast, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Batman: Arkham Asylum, et al.)
1:34:26 — Roundtable dis­cus­sion (Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, Dark Souls, To the Moon)

• Amsel’s blog: http://​www​.mad​nes​sand​play​.blogspot​.com
• Download Eric Brosius’ Thief Soundtracks and Scores: http://​www​.thief​-the​cir​cle​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​/​m​u​s​ic/ ; http://​www​.jayb​mu​sic​.net/​E​i​d​o​s​/​T​h​i​e​f​_​2​_​S​o​u​n​d​t​r​a​c​k​_​b​y​_​C​h​i​l​d​_​O​f​_​K​a​r​r​a​s​_​S​i​n​g​l​e​.​zip
• Blog on neuro-atypical expe­ri­ences where Rowan is co-admin: http://​ion​ce​hada​neu​rotyp​i​cal​tellme​.tum​blr​.com/
• Kieron Gillen’s arti­cle on the Shalebridge Cradle: http://​gillen​.cream​.org/​t​h​e​c​r​a​d​l​e​.​pdf
• Super Bunny Hop Critical Close-Up Video on Dark Souls: https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​h​c​B​C​C​V​G​b​VfA

The pod­cast is still tech­ni­cal­ly “under review” from iTunes before it can be for­mal­ly list­ed on the store, but in the mean­time, you can man­u­al­ly sub­scribe to auto­mat­i­cal­ly down­load new episodes with this RSS feed: http://​www​.onto​log​i​cal​geek​.com/​f​e​e​d​/​p​o​d​c​ast