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In this month's podcast, Betsy Brey, Pierson Browne and Chris Lawrence discussed pervasive cultural anxieties that manifest in games set in outer space. They discuss how games like No Man's Sky and Stellaris, with their imperatives to colonize, harvest and exploit, usually enjoin players to become despots. That said, there's no denying how fun it can be to command and conquer; to paint the map one's chosen colour, to revel in the revealed dimensions of one's burgeoning empire. This month, we talk about how recognizing these mechanics can offer ironic ways of engaging with and reading against them.