Mythic Mind Fellowship

About Mythic Mind Fellowship

Pursuing wisdom through primary and secondary worlds. Mythic Mind Games is a conversation about video games as secondary worlds. We look at story, design, and the moral imagination of play: what games train us to love, fear, hope for, and become. This is not a review show and not a strategy guide. Episodes sit with particular games and ask what they are doing to the soul: The Elder Scrolls (Skyrim and Oblivion), Fallout, Final Fantasy VII, Red Dead Redemption, Outer Wilds, Chrono Trigger, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and more, often with Tolkien, myth, and Kierkegaard close at hand. Grief, home, identity, freedom, and wonder show up here as often as bosses and endings. Hosted by Andrew Snyder, Ph.D., alongside friends from the Fellowship. Listen on your own, then continue the discussion in the Mythic Mind Fellowship: https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membership (https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membership)

Publisher

Andrew Snyder

Category

leisure · religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Aug 2023

Latest episode

23 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

66 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   23 Oct 2026

   55 - Is Choosing From a Script Still Freedom? The Stanley Parable

   The Stanley Parable offers you freedom, then shows you that every path was already built for you. But a script you did not write is not necessarily a prison: meaning can be discovered rather than invented, and real freedom needs limits to push against. In this fellowship conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder and guests Max and David compare their runs through The Stanley Parable and its Ultra Deluxe edition: obeying or defying the narrator, the escape ending's claim that Stanley was dead all along, the trophies and nostalgia jokes that poke fun at how games spend our time, and whether the illusion of choice makes Stanley's office a kind of hell. Along the way they connect the game to its Half-Life 2 mod roots, Portal, Severance, Backrooms, and The Truman Show, and ask whether generative AI could ever deliver total agency in games. They draw on Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death, C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man and The Great Divorce, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Tolkien's claim that a fairy story cannot make fun of its own magic, before asking whether the game is art or art criticism. Chapters: 00:00 Is choosing from a script still creation? 00:44 Obey or defy the narrator? First impressions 07:07 The appearance of agency and the scripted path 10:14 The escape ending and where meaning comes from 15:04 Trophies, Ultra Deluxe, and the lie of nostalgia 20:03 Severance, Backrooms, and the search for meaning 23:08 Generative AI and the promise of total freedom 27:51 Lewis, Kierkegaard, and why freedom needs limits 31:31 Is Stanley's world a kind of hell? 33:18 "The end is never the end": favorite endings 37:51 Portal, GLaDOS, and the uncanny Source engine 43:16 Is The Stanley Parable art or art criticism? Video Games and the Psyche: Agency, Anxiety, and Upbuilding (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 52): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BS688rdNW8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BS688rdNW8) Oblivion's Sheogorath and Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 34): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUgEUzaBXU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUgEUzaBXU) Are Video Games a Waste of Time? Art and Upbuilding Value (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 10): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7g7z-PmVwU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7g7z-PmVwU) 📚 Books discussed The Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard: https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780691020280 (https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780691020280) The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis: https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780060652944 (https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780060652944) The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis: https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780060652951 (https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780060652951) Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship: https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membership (https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membership) Listen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts: - Mythic Mind - Mythic Mind Games - Mythic Mind Movies #MythicMind #MythicMindGames #VideoGames #Philosophy #StanleyParable #FreeWill #Kierkegaard #CSLewis

2. 

   7 Oct 2026

   54 - Grief in Video Games

   Watch the video: https://youtu.be/Jlc-KB1Oa2k (https://youtu.be/Jlc-KB1Oa2k) Video games do not merely distract from sorrow. Through time spent with characters, player agency, and participation in sub-creation, they can become a unique art form for facing grief, mortality, and what loss teaches the soul. In this fellowship conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder and guests ask why games are especially suited to sorrow: long attachment to characters, choices that feel like your own, and stories that turn grief toward wisdom rather than mere amusement. The panel moves through Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Trails of the Sky, Lost Odyssey, GRIS, The Last of Us, BioShock, Horizon Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy IV, Red Dead Redemption 2, Final Fantasy VII, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Final Fantasy VI. Along the way it draws on Tolkien's idea of sub-creation, C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, and the image of grief as waves that still come but change over time, before closing with 007 First Light on refusing to let grief harden the moral self. Chapters: 00:00 Why video games can bear the weight of grief 08:22 Ocarina of Time: lost time and subtle sorrow 17:41 Majora's Mask and memento mori 21:13 Kingdom Come: Deliverance, revenge, and reconstruction 30:12 Trails of the Sky and Lost Odyssey 37:27 The Last of Us and the cost of vengeance 44:54 Apocalyptic logs: BioShock and Horizon Zero Dawn 47:05 Final Fantasy IV and confronting the self 48:11 Red Dead Redemption 2 and Arthur Morgan's mortality 50:48 A Grief Observed and beauty amid loss 52:49 Final Fantasy VII, Expedition 33, and moving on 58:33 Counseling grief, meaning, and the waves 01:06:55 007 First Light: do not let grief change you 01:11:14 Closing: from amusement to musing Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship: https://mythicmindfellowship.com (https://mythicmindfellowship.com) Related episodes: Expedition 33: Art, Grief, and Sub-Creation (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 41) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfOFa9eOnsg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfOFa9eOnsg) Facing Fate in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 51) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi0kgEKEEmg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi0kgEKEEmg) Final Fantasy VI and the Will to Meaning (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 21) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d44YewC12w (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d44YewC12w) Listen to and watch Mythic Mind podcasts: - Mythic Mind - Mythic Mind Games - Mythic Mind Movies & Shows #MythicMind #MythicMindGames #VideoGames #Grief #Philosophy

3. 

   28 Sept 2026

   53 - Red Dead Redemption 2: Arthur Morgan, Ivan Ilyich & Memento Mori (revisit)

   Watch the video: https://youtu.be/ynV50tCh6oc (https://youtu.be/ynV50tCh6oc) Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan and Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich both teach memento mori: facing death can renew how you live. After Arthur's tuberculosis diagnosis he turns from outlaw vanity toward an honorable redemption; after Ivan's fatal illness he sees that a respectable career and middle-class image were a false life. In this Mythic Mind Games solo essay, Dr. Andrew Snyder reads RDR2 against The Death of Ivan Ilyich. He traces Ivan's acquaintances who think "it is he who is dead and not I," the widow's inconvenience over grief, Gerasim's honest acceptance of mortality, and Ivan's spiral of denial until the end. Then he sets Arthur beside that arc: a bad man who wants to be good, collapsing into TB, asking whether he has wanted the right things, and redeeming what remains of his life by living well. The shared archetype is mortality that reorders desire; the medieval Latin reminder is not morbid retreat but a call to responsibility, virtue, and the form of a human life (Aristotle, Westminster). Along the way Andrew argues that video games can approach the literary and connect us to the true, good, and beautiful. Continue the Red Dead thread with: - RDR2 panel (ep. 5) https://youtu.be/WpViR-BQwCg (https://youtu.be/WpViR-BQwCg) - Red Dead Redemption  https://youtu.be/cqrr3_p1hmw (https://youtu.be/cqrr3_p1hmw). For the series frame on games as fairy-stories and literary value, see: - Video Games and Fairy-Stories (ep. 1) https://youtu.be/lYzzMFDus9U (https://youtu.be/lYzzMFDus9U) - The Value of Video Games (ep. 10) https://youtu.be/C7g7z-PmVwU.<... (https://youtu.be/C7g7z-PmVwU.) /> Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship: https://mythicmindfellowship.c... (https://mythicmindfellowship.com) Listen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts: - Mythic Mind - Mythic Mind Games - Mythic Mind Movies #MythicMind #MythicMindGames #RedDeadRedemption2 #RDR2 #ArthurMorgan #IvanIlyich #Tolstoy #MementoMori #Death #Redemption #Philosophy #VideoGames

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