My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

My guest today is Erik Wolpaw, the American writer for some of the funniest video games yet made. In the nineties he and a friend founded the website Old Man Murray, a satirical online publication that poked fun at video gaming’s sacred cows, and established a tone still prevalent across the internet today. The site was read by Gabe Newell, creator of Half-Life, who later hired both writers.At Valve my guest collaborated on a new game in which a vindictive artificial intelligence chastises players as they solve a series of puzzle rooms using a gun that fires warp points. Portal became a smash hit; Stephen Merchant, co-creator of The Office, voiced a character in the sequel. Today my guest continues to work as a semi-retired contractor for Valve. “In defense of games, I want to point out that the writing in plays, including everything by August Strindberg and The Lion King, is 100% pure crap,” he once joked. “So, we’re doing better than they are, even though they have the benefit of mostly not being about space marines.”Play the console:Earthworm JimEverQuestGrand Theft Auto IIIDemon's SoulsSlay the SpireThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the English fantasy author and champion of the video game industry, Sir Ian Livingstone. In 1975, while in his mid-twenties, he founded a boardgame company, Games Workshop, which soon caught the attention of the American creators of a new tabletop game, Dungeons and Dragons.My guest brokered a deal to sell D&D in the UK as a mail order company, and in 1977 opened the company’s first retail shop in South London. In 1982 he published the first of the Fighting Fantasy books, which have now sold more than 20 million copies.He joined the video game industry and, at the publisher Eidos, helped bring the Tomb Raider and Hitman series to the world. In 2022 he was honoured with a knighthood for services to the games industry. “Play has always been seen as trivial,” he once said. “Yet when we arrive in this world, we all learn through play.”Play the console:Baseball (1980)Championship ManagerTomb Raider (1996)Virtua TennisGolf ClashThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the Scottish comedian, television presenter and writer, Susan Calman. While studying law at the University of Glasgow, she spent three months in North Carolina working with criminals on death row. After she graduated, she became a corporate lawyer, and soon started performing as a stand-up in the evenings. After seven years, she left the legal profession behind to become a full time comic, winning the Best New Scottish Comedian at the Real Radio Variety Awards in 2009.Since then she has become a fixture on British television and radio, a regular guest on Radio 4 panel shows The News Quiz and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. In 2018 she was honoured by the University of Glasgow for her work in broadcasting as well as her campaigning on issues related to LGBT rights and mental health.“A lot of comics of my generation play games,” she once said. “To me it’s a bigger issue than gaming: it’s the art direction, it’s the music, it’s the expression. It’s more than just some guys in their pants shooting things.”Play the console:GoldenEye 007Tomb Raider IISilent Hill 2Ratchet & ClankBatman: Arkham CityThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the Dutch video game designer and entrepreneur, Henk Rogers. While a student at the University of Hawaii, he’d while away the hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. After he moved to Japan, he bought a computer and used it to develop a role-playing game of his own, called Black Onyx, tailored to the Japanese market. When the game’s backer pulled out of the deal, he decided to self-publish the game, and borrowed $50,000 from a friend to set up Bullet-Proof Software.Black Onyx sold 150,000 copies and influenced the creation of the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. But it was a Russian game that made my guest truly famous when he helped broker the deal between the Soviet Union and Nintendo that brought Tetris to the world. That story has now been made into a film, set to debut on Apple TV this month.Play the console:Space InvadersM.U.L.E.MIDI MazeSpaceward Ho!Cinco PausThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the American designer of some of the finest strategy video games yet made. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Computer Science in 2000, he accepted a job to become a business consultant. Before he arrived for work, however, he saw an advertisement for position at Fireaxis, the development studio founded by the legendary designer, Sid Meier, which he successfully applied to.Having worked as a programmer on Civilization III and IV, in 2012 he relaunched the cult classic strategy series X-COM, a chess-like game in which players direct a squad of troops in skirmishes against alien invaders. More recently he steered the creation of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, one of the best games of 2022, that carried the lessons learned in X-Com into Marvel universe.Earlier in 2023 he announced his departure from Fireaxis, the company where he worked for more than 20 years. “My brain is on fire with a new dream,” he said. “Time to go chase it.”Play the console:Ultima V: Warriors of DestinyUFO: Enemy Unknown a.k.a XCOM: UFO DefenceCastlevania: Symphony of the NightRock BandMinecraftThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the British-Malaysian stand-up comedian and comedy writer Phil Wang. Born in the UK, when he was one week old his parents moved to Malaysia, where he attended school until the age of sixteen. The family then returned to England, moving to Bath in Somerset, which my guest once described as “a spa town for people who find Cheltenham too ethnic'.While studying Engineering at King’s College Cambridge, he joined the Footlights drama club, of which he later became president. Since graduating, Wang has performed with the sketch comedy group Daphne, and become a fixture on British televisions, appearing on Have I Got News for You, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and as a contestant on the seventh season of Taskmaster.He also co-hosts the podcast Budpod with his friend and fellow comedian, Pierre Novelli, where, among many other things, the pair often discuss video games.Play the console:SkiFreeRome: Total WarShadow of the ColossusPapers, PleaseGod of War (2018)Thank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shahid Ahmad was a schoolboy living on a London council estate when he sold his prized BMX bike to raise money for programming books and taught himself to write computer games. After several knock-backs, in 1983, at the age of seventeen, he sold a game for £300 to a commercial publisher. He soon made a name for himself in the emerging Britsoft scene, programming the Commodore 64 version of Jet Set Willy, which sold more than a million copies. Having worked on dozens of his own games, included Chimera and Pandora, in 2005 he joined Sony PlayStation where he commissioned more than a hundred titles including the hits No Man’s Sky and Hellblade. Today he mentors industry newcomers, produces games designed to promote mental health, and sits on the board of the British Games Institute, the video game equivalent of the BFI.Play the console:Star RaidersKnight LoreGauntletSpeedball 2: Brutal DeluxeUltima Underworld: The Stygian AbyssThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the reclusive designer of one of the greatest video games yet made. He studied game design in Montreal and, after a brief stint working at Ubisoft, left to begin work on a game of his own, a platformer that combined the art style of the Super Nintendo classics of his youth, with perspective-shifting innovations of his own.Six years in the making, Fez launched in 2012 to near universal acclaim, part of the first wave of so-called indie games. After featuring heavily in the  film documentary Indie Game: the Movie, my guest, who is passionately outspoken, became the subject of co-ordinated online attacks, which culminated in his retreat from public platforms, nearly a decade ago. Play the console:Ridge Racer Type 4RezDishonoredHitman: World of AssassinationThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is an Emmy-nominated writer, sketch comedian, voice actor and performer. As a teenager she studied improv comedy at the famous ImprovOlympic studio in her home city of Chicago, training that prepared her for when she later starred on Whose Line Is It Anyway and the sketch comedy show Key and Peele.She has worked on the writing staff of Saturday Night Live, The Twilight Zone and, most recently, the sixth season of Rick & Morty. Throughout her career she has also written and talked about video games, not least in her current role as one of the hosts of the popular games-related podcast, Get Played.“Comedy and video-games are the same thing: fantasies within set rules,” she once said. “I love both of them, equally. When I can marry the two in some future project, I'll be complete.”Play the console:TetrisStreet Fighter IIIThe Last of UsFortniteDisco ElysiumThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the American co-creator of one of the longest-running and most popular independent games yet made. In high school he and his older brother Zach designed adventure games based on fantasy and science fiction stories they invented together. He taught himself computer programming and received fifteen offers to enrol in PhD math programs.At Stanford University, he and his brother continued work on a procedural adventure game called Dwarf Fortress, in which players guide successive generations of dwarves to build and maintain a settlement.He quit university to work on the game full-time; in 2011 the New York Times described an early version as “perhaps the most complex video game ever made”. Dwarf Fortress became his life’s work, with a vast and committed cult following, but it remained a work in progress until December 2022, when a commercial version finally released, and promptly sold half a million copies.Play the console:Cosmic ArkBeastRagnarokTransport TycoonCaves of QudThank you for listening to My Perfect Console. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter; your small monthly subscription will help to make the podcast sustainable for the long term, and you'll receive bonus content, and access to the My Perfect Console community: https://www.patreon.com/myperfectconsoleBecome a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.