Today’s episode will make you an expert on one of the biggest (and might I add sexiest) controversies in video game fandom. Ever.

To start, some history. I believe that we can pinpoint the exact moment video game fans grabbed the wheel of video game culture, yanking it from video game designers. In 2012, the team at BioWare culminated their blockbuster roleplaying game trilogy Mass Effect with the aptly named Mass Effect 3. The directors and marketing team had promised players decisions would influence the outcome of the story in crucial and profound ways, but a not-insignificant number of outspoken players claimed the ending failed to deliver on those statements.

The campaign, Retake Mass Effect, demanded the studio produce an ending that met their vague expectations. To be clear, this was hardly the first campaign of this kind, but it was the most effective. A month after release, BioWare promised a free DLC expansion, addressing fan concerns. And a mere three months after release, that expansion was made available to appease the fans.

Since then, gaming fandoms have felt increasingly empowered, from pressuring the creators of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie to redesign the character – perhaps a wise decision, considering the film’s exponential success – to the unquestionably shitty and evil GamerGate movement. The latter used pressure campaigns to harass women and people of color across game development and media, kill ad partnerships, and intimidate game publishers who acknowledged the existence of diversity.

These days, a month can’t pass without some fan campaign making demands of the media they claim to love. And though fan demands reach across all of entertainment, they remain particularly intense in gaming. Some anime game doesn’t have the localization they want. Perhaps a Nintendo game has been, in their view, censored. Meanwhile, game developer executives pander to fans on social media and convention stages as they make sweeping layoffs across their workforces.

I can’t count the number of fandom campaigns I’ve witnessed over my career, and yet, a new fandom controversy is so big, so personal, and so oddly overlooked by mainstream media, that I have found myself, for the first time in years, surprised.

Love and Deepspace, a romance video game, has become an international phenomenon on the backs of its five dashing men, who cater to a variety of romantic preferences, from the withholding and dominant to the doting and sappy.

But a new character’s kinks, along with years of mounting demand for new content, have turned that fiery passion into an inextinguishable flaming rage. The frustration isn’t simply between fans and game makers, but fans against fans, government censors against artists, and one culture’s romantic norms versus another’s.

It’s an unbelievable story, and that it’s not the hot-button conversation in entertainment, let alone games, raises questions about who does and doesn’t get to steer popular culture.

To get those questions answered, and guide us through this international shitshow, I’ve invited not one, but two experts.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: The Sexy Game That’s Taken Over the World

• Act 2: A Werewolf Man, Dung Deliveries, and the Chinese Government

• Act 3: Loving a Game That Will One Day Disappear

• Patreon Bonus: Just How Bad Is the EA Sale?

Guests:

• Ash Parrish: Senior reporter, Kotaku

• Natalie Checo: Community + social media manager and writer, Sunset Visitor

• Rebekah Valentine: Senior reporter, Kotaku

• Closing Song: “Band on the Run (16 Bit, SNES)” by spaceyori

Bonus episodes!

Keep Post Games alive by supporting the show on Patreon for $5! Every bonus segment! Every bonus episode! No ads!

The subscription includes the freshly released Patreon-exclusive episode “The History of Metroid,” featuring Mothership co-founder and Triple Click co-host Maddy Myers. Easily one of my favorite bonus eps yet. Join now at Patreon.com/PostGam

Act 1: The Sexy Game That’s Taken Over the World

• In Love And Deepspace, Intimacy Is The Ultimate Gooner Bait (Kotaku)

• Nobody Told Me One Of The Biggest Games On The Planet Is Super Horny (Kotaku)

• Hit Romance Gacha Game Love And Deepspace Circumvents Strict NSFW Laws By Using Stick Figures For Horny Scenes (Kotaku)

• Love And Deepspace Has Brought Out My Inner Video Game Developer (Kotaku)

• The Love And Deepspace Werewolf Man Is Possibly Dead For Good After The Drama’s Latest Twist (Kotaku)

Act 2: A Werewolf Man, Dung Deliveries, and the Chinese Government

• Love and Deepspace – Official Valko: Chasing Night Trailer (GameTrailers/YouTube)

• Meet My Love and Deepspace Boyfriends: How I’m Juggling a Vampire, a Sea God, and Spacefleet Colonel in This Mobile Dating Game (IGN)

• Characters (Love and Deepspace Wiki)

• Gooner (Merriam-Webster)

• A Tale Of Two Gooners (Defector)

• Yandare (Wiki)

Act 3: Loving a Game That Will One Day Disappear

• Love And Deepspace Isn’t Printing Money Like It Used To After Cancelling Werewolf Lover (Kotaku)

• Caleb (Love and Deepspace Wiki)

• Spending Money in Free-to-Play Games: Sociodemographic Characteristics, Motives, Impulsivity and Internet Gaming Disorder Specificities (National Library of Medicine)

• How do you use workout feature? (and work/study as well) (r/LoveAndDeepspace)

Patreon Bonus: Just How Bad Is the EA Sale?

• Hear the full segment at Patreon.com/PostGames

A listener’s update on the LADS controversy!

[Above: The YouTube channel mentioned by Sierra, AngelsCornerr.]

From Sierra on the Post Games Patreon: Great episode! Love Ash’s and Natalie’s perspective about the LaDS controversy and why this game has such a hold on player emotions. Literally nobody is catering to this market except for LaDS (there is one competitor I’m aware of on the horizon, but there is no release date yet) and I feel like this is a major reason why this controversy has gotten so much scrutiny - for better and worse, Infold is setting the precident for this untapped “girl gooner game” market (and yes I do mean “and” because they do some great things and some stupid things).

One of the limiting things about producing such a high-quality podcast is that it can only ever be a snapshot in time. This conversation does a great job of covering a specific time period in the controversy, but the situation has evolved! Long story short, in subsequent weeks, due in part to positive actions by pro-Valko fans (like raising money for wolf conservation organizations), more discussion has come out from branches of the Chinese government and media about how while Valko’s marketing was a miss, upon further investigation the character itself wasn’t “guilty” of promoting things like domestic abuse. There has also been reporting about how while the game is rated 18+ in China, minors have been going to some wild measures to get accounts, and then spending thousands of their parents’ money on the game, leading to more discussions about how to keep kids out of spaces they’re not supposed to be in.

If this fantastic episode piqued your interest in the situation, I highly recommend checking out the @AngelsCornerr YouTube channel. She has a few episodes out explaining the situation as it progresses, what it means for the lore and creative integrity of the game, and the evolving conversation in China. While this whole situation is bleak, honestly, I’m not ready to bury my werewolf husband’s code yet. I think the Chinese game market could seriously suffer if harassment campaigns like this end up controlling what developers can and can’t release.

This Week in Video Game Links

• Your Guide to August’s Family Friendly Video Games (Crossplay)

• BEAST OF REINCARNATION REVIEW: It’s not perfect, but this parry-centric scrapper has a distinctive mood and often excellent combat. (PCGamer)

• The Steam Library of Babel (Matthew Seiji Burns)

• I miss touching my waifu (The Stacks)

• Dear Brother, Have Some Sake With Me (Stop Caring)

Free Game of the Week: 500 Finger Filet demo

From the game’s summary: 500 STABS. 20 MINUTES TO ESCAPE. A horror roguelite about stabbing yourself in the hand 500 times to escape a deadly trap. Can you make it out with all your fingers? Or will you bleed out on the table? (Steam)

“The demo for 500 FINGER FILLET taught me that none of you should let me anywhere near a kitchen knife, also can someone call a doctor” (RPS)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Inside James Turrell’s 100th and most ambitious Skyspace (BBC Global/YouTube)

• Fred Armisen & Carrie Brownstein on the Best Music Films | Adventures in Moviegoing (Excerpt) (Criterion)

• Antonio Banderas’s Acts of Faith (The New Yorker)

Song of the Week: “Band On The Run (16 Bit, SNES)” by spaceyorick

A cover of “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and Wings.

One of the many challenges of being a solo creator is relying (mostly) on my gut. I think I know what folks want from Post Games, but I don’t have co-workers to bounce ideas off. So, I end up guessing more than I’d like.

To get some guiding lights in the darkness, I’m turning to you.

I’ve included one simple survey question below, but please use the comments section to tell me your likes and dislikes. What interviews have been your favorite? What corners of games would you like to know more about? How would you like to see the show evolve in the coming months and year?

Thank you for listening, for taking the time to provide feedback, and for helping make the show something special.

I’d been waiting years for a game to elegantly (or perhaps perversely?) capture the hypersensory overload of those viral videos in which a jittery teen plays Subway Surfers while watching pirated episodes of Family Guy. Friends: the wait is over.

In Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World, most of the screen shows a truck driving through a 3D city, hitting locals so hard that they zip into another dimension. But look beneath the truck, and you’ll see a little window to another realm, a pixelized fantasy RPG in which an armor-clad woman fights orcs and dragons in hopes of returning to that 3D city. Truck-kun looks, and at times feels, like playing two games at once.

Is this a preview of our hybrid-gaming future? A warning about our multi-screen present? Or just an anomaly detached from time?

To learn how games will evolve to hold our entire attention, I reached out to the game’s director, Xalavier Nelson Jr. Step one: give players a reason to give a shit.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: This One Game Is Two Games

• Act 2: Fighting for Attention in the Age of Endless Distraction

• Patreon Bonus: Making Games with Christian Faith

Guests:

• Xalavier Nelson Jr.: Studio head, designer, and writer, Strange Scaffold

Patreon Summer Sale: One Month for $1!

From now until 11:59 pm PT on Sunday, August 9th, new Patreon subscribers can get their first month of Post Games bonus content for $1. No strings attached!

Every bonus segment! Every bonus episode! No ads!

This deal includes the freshly released Patreon-exclusive episode “The History of Metroid,” featuring Mothership co-founder and Triple Click co-host Maddy Myers. Easily one of my favorite bonus eps yet. Join now at Patreon.com/PostGames!

Act 1: This One Game Is Two Games

• Truck-kun is Supporting Me from Another World?! (Steam)

• How Xalavier Nelson Does It (Aftermath)

• When making lots of small games is more sustainable than making one big one (Polygon)

• how does an indie game get made? (Noodle)

• Clickolding (Steam)

• Moonchild (Webtoon)

Act 2: Fighting for Attention in the Age of Endless Distraction

• New Fantasy Driving Game Has An Absurd Name And An Even More Absurd Premise (Kotaku)

• Frosty Pop (frostypop.com)

• Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator (Steam)

• El Paso, Elsewhere (Steam)

• Snakes on a Plane (Wiki)

Patreon Bonus: Making Games with Christian Faith

Xalavier Nelson Jr. sticks around to talk about the challenges and rewards of making games and running a studio while practicing his faith. This is one of my favorite bonus segments yet. Even better: You can listen for a $1 during the Post Games Patreon Summer Sale!

This Week in Video Game Links

• Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Fans Are Really Curious What A Change In The Remake’s ESRB Rating Means (Kotaku)

• Hater Week (Aftermath)

• The Abyssal Crown | Rebirth Chapter - NOW AVAILABLE! (Lycarina/YouTube)

• Why date when Love and Deepspace exists? (Mothership)

• “The Case of the Golden Idol-style deduction meets The X-Files”: Former BioWare devs unveil supernatural detective game The Eventide (RPS)

Free Game of the Week: Reelism 2

From the official website: “Can you wade through five sixty-second rounds fending off swarms of monsters? Under normal circumstances, sure, but in Reelism 2, every round throws out the rulebook, with a slot-machine style display dictating a fresh gameplay modifier and what monsters and enemies will spawn that round!” (reelism.dog)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• A History of Image Manipulation (The Stacks)

• Jason And The Argonauts (1963) (YouTube)

How do you follow up the biggest video game franchise on the planet? For thirty years, the creators of Pokémon have been trying to solve that riddle. This summer, they just might do it.

Even if you’ve never heard of Game Freak, you know the general outline of its story. In the mid-1990s, the Japanese game studio published a long, troubled Game Boy game called Pocket Monsters. A year later, the series arrived in the US as Pokémon. And from then until now, Game Freak has spent the majority of its money, time, and talent on growing the series into an intellectual property that lives in the rarefied air alongside Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty.

But few game designers say “I want to be an IP maintainer when I grow up.”

Early in Pokémon’s success, some members of Game Freak began to feel constrained by their own success. The studio, which began life as a video game zine run by picky arcade gamers, had fostered a culture of innovation and risk-taking – something that protecting Pikachu and pals at best discourages, and at worst, prohibits.

Nonetheless, every few years, a passion project would gain traction amongst the team, like Drill Dozer in 2005 and HarmoKnight in 2012. By 2019, over twenty years into Pokémon, Game Freak leadership shifted these passion projects into genuine priorities, empowering a non-Pokémon team dubbed Gear Project to create new series.

In an interview with VGC in 2019, Game Freak programmer and director Masayuki Onoue explained: “There are two different production teams here, simply named Production Team 1 and Production Team 2. “Team 1 is fully dedicated to Gear Project, while Team 2 is for the Pokémon operation. [...] What that means is that Game Freak as a company is prioritising Gear Project, which is production team number one, more than Pokémon in general. We are always trying to create something that is equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon.”

Even with Gear Project as the priority, seven years have passed since the studio published a non-Pokémon game, the poorly received and largely forgotten Little Town Hero from 2019.

This summer, Game Freak hopes to at last prove that it can, as Onoue said, create something that is “equally exciting, or more exciting than Pokémon.” Beast of Reincarnation is a 3D-action RPG set in a distant post-apocalyptic Japan. And early impressions are glowing.

Ahead of the game’s release, I wanted to learn about Game Freak’s thirty-year journey to follow-up Pokemon. Naturally, I contacted game designer and historian Robert Sephazon, who's known in the games community as the person with an encyclopedic knowledge of Game Freak’s history, from Pulseman to Tembo the Badass Elephant and beyond.

This is a story of the many beloved, but ultimately overlooked attempts to create a worthy successor to Pokémon. It’s a story of the makers of Pikachu struggling to make lightning strike twice. It’s a story of always wanting more.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Game Freak’s Thirty Years of Brilliant False Starts

• Act 2: Beast of Reincarnation Won’t Be Ignored

• Patreon Bonus: Game Freak’s Top 5 Games (That Aren’t Pokémon)

• Act 3: A New Game Magazine? In This Economy?!

Guests:

• Robert Sephazon: Game designer, producer, historian, and curator

• Ryan Rigney: Editor-in-chief, Chisel

Support Post Games on Patreon and Get…

Early access to ad-free episodes, weekly bonus segments, and monthly bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Past Games, where experts share the histories of beloved games. You might enjoy this episode on the history of The Legend of Zelda with Max Nichols, game designer, educator, and operator of Hyrule Interviews!

Act 1: Game Freaks Thirty Years of Brilliant False Starts

• The Pokémon origin story (Post Games)

• Fans treat Nintendo differently (Post Games)

• Pokémon Red And Blue: The Kotaku Retro Review (Kotaku)

• Pocket Card Jockey (Wiki)

• HarmoKnight (Wiki)

• The Ultimate Game Freak (Time)

Act 2: Beast of Reincarnation Won’t Be Ignored

• Beast of Reincarnation (Steam)

• Game Freak ‘prioritising’ original game projects (VGC)

• Drill Dozer – 2005 Developer Interview (shmuplations)

• The Plucky Squire (Steam)

• James Turner (Bulbapedia)

• Beast of Reincarnation Game Director Answers All Our Burning Questions About the Pokemon Developer’s Upcoming Action Game (IGN)

• Beast of Reincarnation: Parrying Helps Your Dog (Game Informer)

Patreon Bonus: Game Freak’s Top 5 Games (That Aren’t Pokemon)

• 5. Pocket Card Jockey (Wiki)

• Umamusume: Pretty Derby (Wiki)

• Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! review – saddle up for eccentricity (The Guardian)

• 4. HarmoKnight (Wiki)

• HarmoKnight Review - BNGR! (Balrog/YouTube)

• 3. Mario & Wario (Wiki)

• Mario & Wario (SNES) Playthrough (NintendoComplete/YouTube)

• 2. Pulseman (Wiki)

• Pulseman playthrough Longplay (FCPlaythroughs/YouTube)

• 1. Drill Dozer (Wiki)

• Drill Dozer Review (IGN)

Act 3: A New Game Magazine? In This Economy?!

• Chisel (ChiselMag.com)

• The Historian of Speed: A YouTuber began telling the stories behind video game world records, and discovered an audience of millions (Chisel)

• Objects of Power: Two recent books imagine strange institutions filled with spooky artifacts (Chisel)

• Game File (gamefile.news)

• Mothership (Mothership.blog)

• Push to Talk (pushtotalk.gg)

This Week in Video Game Links

• The best games of 2026 so far, picked by NPR’s staff (NPR)

• Revisit E3 Like You’ve Never Seen it Before (The Video Game History Foundation/YouTube)

• In An Era Of AI Slop, Meccha Chameleon Embraces Human-Crafted Chaos (GameSpot)

• How much AI do players want in their games? (The GameDiscoverCo Show)

• The Women Who Kill Are the Ones That Saved Me (Stop Caring)

• Red Kiss – guiding vampires through a blood-soaked cold war Berlin (The Guardian)

• The PS6 sure sounds like a handheld (The Verge)

• How Videogames Feed the War Machine (ArtReview)

• Best Of Both Worlds: Capcom is in the midst of a Golden Age, and we spoke with producer Masachika Kawata about how the publisher / developer has managed this during an era of extreme industry volatility (Game Informer)

• The Addams Family pinball: An oral history (Design Room)

Free Game of the Week: MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls open beta

This open beta runs from now until Sunday at 11:59pm PT.

I’ll be real. I’ve never “gotten good” at a fighting game. But every couple of years, I convince myself I finally will make the time for some new fighters that looks totally sick. This year, Marvel Tokon is said game. From the Steam summary: “Assemble your team of legendary Marvel characters in the ultimate 4v4 tag team fighter.” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• The Breeders - Five songs - 1993 MTV Studios (YouTube)

• Broke: Pack the Supreme Court. Woke: Pack ALL of the Courts (Jamelle Bouie/YouTube)

• Comic Shops Set Records in 2025. This Year has Left it in the Dust. (SKTCHD)

Listen to this week’ episode

Today’s episode might make some listeners a little grumpy. After all, my guest — author, game designer, and philosopher Ian Bogost — isn’t afraid to make claims like this one about the early-2010’s video game boom

“ I didn’t love the quality of the conversations that I was able to have about games and art in the games community at that time. They felt unsophisticated and, I started to feel like, Wow, this whole, this whole world of game people is just Philistines. They’re not interested in anything. They don’t know about anything.”

But while Bogost is one of gaming’s toughest critics, he’s also a passionate evangelist of the fundamental human experience of play. And with his new book, The Small Stuff, he dives deeper into sensorial pleasure. His guidance could help you reclaim some of the pleasures in life that have been removed, in large part, by tech companies that have replaced the sensual pleasures of life with frictionless, joyless apps.

So, this week, I encourage you to approach the interview with an open mind. Resist reacting. Maybe grab some bubble wrap to pop, to trigger some pleasurable chemical reactions in your brain. Because, as Bogost pre-emptively warns, “People who are interested in games have too much of their identities bound up with their interest in games compared to almost anything else that I’ve encountered.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong. But Ian Bogost is always reliable for starting an interesting conversation.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: A Life Making Sense of Games

• Act 2: The Pleasure in Noticing the Small Things

• Patreon Bonus: Behind-the-Scenes of Grand Theft Auto’s Press Events

• Bonus: An Excerpt from “The Small Stuff” Audiobook

Guests:

• Ian Bogost: Game designer, essayist, professor, and author of “The Small Stuff”

• Closing Song: “The Path of the Wind (from My Neighbor Totoro)” performed by Gentle Love

Support Post Games on Patreon and Get…

Early access to ad-free episodes, weekly bonus segments, and monthly bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Past Games, where experts share the histories of beloved games.

Now live: The History of the Original Tomb Raider!

Act 1: A Life Making Sense of Games

• The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life (Simon & Schuster)

• Why Anything but Games Matters (Game Developer)

• Persuasive Games (Wiki)

• ‘Advergames’: how games platform Roblox became a corporate marketing playground (The Guardian)

• Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind The Howard Dean for Iowa Game (Electronic Book Review)

• Movie marketers compete in ‘advergames’ (Variety)

• Public Thinker: Ian Bogost on Games, Doorknobs, and General Readers (Public Books)

• How to Write about Videogames (Public Books)

• Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press)

• Cow Clicker (Wiki)

Act 2: The Pleasure in Noticing the Small Things

• The End of Manual Transmission (The Atlantic)

• Video Games Are Better Without Stories (The Atlantic)

• Video Games Are Better Without Characters (The Atlantic)

• In The Shadow of the Holodeck (Charles J Pratt)

• How to Be an Alien: Ian Bogost’s “Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing” (LA Review of Books)

Patreon Bonus: Behind-the-Scenes of Grand Theft Auto’s Press Events

• Visualization: A Weird Experience With Beaterator (Kotaku)

• Grand Theft Auto 5 review: golden years (Polygon)

• Grand Theft Auto 5 - Review (Polygon/YouTube)

• New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ finds new ways to outrage critics (CNBC)

• Grand Theft Auto V Is a Return to the Comedy of Violence (NYTimes)

• Opinion: The secret reason so many people love Grand Theft Auto (Polygon)

• Red Dead Redemption 2 review (Polygon)

• The Making of Red Dead Redemption 2 (NYMag)

Song of the Week: “The Path of the Wind (from My Neighbor Totoro)” performed by Gentle Love

From the album Prescription for Sleep: Ghibli, now available for pre-order

The Small Stuff Excerpt

• Here’s a link to the full audiobook: https://bit.ly/3TDKKNG

• Copyright © 2026 by Ian Bogost. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, from the audiobook The Small Stuff by Ian Bogost, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC.

This Week in Video Game Links

• Shigeru Miyamoto x Kenji Eno (1996) (shmuplations)

• It’s everywhere: Rape culture, Cyberpunk 2077, and would-be Senators (Mothership)

• ASSASSIN’S CREED BLACK FLAG RESYNCED REVIEW (PC Gamer)

• 47 revelatory hours with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (Game File)

• Did We Finally Figure Out Video Game Movies? | Mike Drucker | (Sam Brown University TV)

• If The Odyssey film is anything like The Odyssey adventure game from 2012, Matt Damon will spend the entire first hour trying to solve a single loom puzzle (PCGamer)

• “There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft”: Xbox owners accused of cultivating a “disposable worker mentality” in damning report on layoffs (RPS)

Free Game of the Week: Radiator Forever

From the summary: “Short experimental 3D game collection about sexuality and masculinity. Spanking, sucking, driving, showering.” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Sam Neill on ‘New Zealand Cinema’ (filmSCHOOLarchive/YouTube)

• The Simple Genius of Jon Klassen (The New Yorker)

• ‘Citizen Vigilante’ Is The Latest Product Of The Culture Of Petulance (Defector)

Post Games is an NPR-style podcast about video games.

Each week, games media veteran Chris Plante (co-founder of Polygon, co-host of The Besties) tackles a new topic with the help of guest experts. This episode is a tasting menu: four conversations with four very different experts.

YouTuber AnyAustin reflects on growing old as a gaming YouTuber. Author Keza MacDonald gives us a hint of Nintendo’s future. Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen explains how metrics and optimization have infected our favorite games. And critic and game designer Tim Rogers recommends the perfect starting point for Dragon Quest.

This is the perfect entry point for newcomers and a taste of what’s available for paid subscribers on the Patreon!

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Getting Old as a Professional Gaming YouTuber

• Act 2: Nintendo’s Future

•  Act 3: How Metrics Infected Video Games

•  Bonus Act: Tim Rogers Recommends You Play This Dragon Quest First

Guests:

• Any Austin: Gaming YouTuber

• Keza MacDonald: Journalist and author of Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play

• C. Thi Nguyen: Philosopher, educator, and author. His latest book is The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game

• Tim Rogers: Critic and designer at Action Button

Support Post Games on Patreon and Get…

• Early access to ad-free episodes

• Weekly bonus segments

• Monthly bonus episodes, including…

  • 8 episodes of Past Games, where experts share the histories of beloved games

  • The 5-part video series Video Games Journalism 101, adapted from NYU Game Center’s games media course

• Surprise specials, including

  • The Making of Street Fighter: The Movie (Audiobook)

  • A Full-Spoilers Titanium Court Convo with Designer AP Thomson

  • A Full-Spoilers Perfect Tides: Station to Station Convo with Designer Meredith Gran

• Access to the Post Games Patreon Group Chat

• And more!

Act 1: Getting Old as a Professional YouTuber

• How to See the Profound Beauty in Gaming’s Tiniest Details (Post Games)

• Pat O’Brien’s (https://patobriens.com/)

• Bubby’s Yokohama (Google Maps)

• Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey (Wiki)

• Toy Story | I will Go Sailing No More HD 720p (YouTube)

• Green Dot Aviation (YouTube)

• a youtuber is normal about planes (normal about it)

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (www.flightsimulator.com)

• What Worries Me Most About ‘Abundance’ (The Ezra Klein Show)

Act 2: The Future of Nintendo

• Nintendo Gets the History Book It Deserves (Post Games)

• The genius behind Zelda is at the peak of his power — and feeling his age (Washington Post)

• Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games (YouTube)

• Walking Tour of Nintendo Global Headquarters in Kyoto, Japan (Kit & Krysta)

• Nintendo’s shiny new museum needs more dirt (The Verge)

Act 3: How Metrics Infected Video Games

• Games Should Save Us from the Daily Grind (Post Games)

• Starlight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula (Wiki)

• Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (Wiki)

• Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll (Princeton University Press)

• Playfulness, “World”-Travelling, and Loving Perception by María Lugones (JSTOR)

Bonus Act: Tim Rogers Recommends You Play This Dragon Quest First

• A History of Dragon Quest (and Why To Try It Now) (Post Games)

• Dragon Quest XI: The Kotaku Review (YouTube)

• Action Button (YouTube)

• action button reviews boku no natsuyasumi (YouTube)

• ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS Cyberpunk 2077 (YouTube)

• ACTION BUTTON PICTURES PRESENTS “LOS ANGELES NOIRE” (YouTube)

What can a game review accomplish? How do scores work at different publications? And why are critics often treated like popular parasocial pals and recurring main characters in social media discourse?

Every month or so through the rest of the year, I’ll be chatting with critics across text, audio, video, and beyond to learn how the craft works for some of its top practitioners. And along the way, I’ll show you the countless ways a review can be prepared.

This week, you’ll hear my conversation with Harper Jay, a meticulous and thoughtful critic who wrote an essay on the craft that inspires me to this day: Video Game Criticism Is a Kindness. And in August, you’ll hear my chat with Christian Donlan, the award-winning critic and author who finds the human in every little piece of software that his fingers tap. (This conversation was originally scheduled to air next week, but I’m recovering from laryngitis. So, next week listeners will get a remix of some of my favorite Patreon bonus segments.)

These are two spectacular conversations that left me inspired. I hope they do the same for you. These conversations focus largely on text, but as summer turns to fall, the series will expand!

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Why Game Criticism Is a Kindness

• Act 2: What a Game Review Can and Can’t Do

• Patreon Bonus: The Real Reason Review Scores Make People So Mad

Guests:

• Harper Jay: Critic and Writer

Patreon Sale and Bonus Segment:

Until July 9th, first-time Patreon supporters get their first month for $2. That includes everything: the bonus segments for every episode; Past Games, the monthly series on the histories of classic games; the book club series, in which I have full-spoiler conversations with directors of hit games.

For this week’s 25-minute bonus section, I invited Patreon subscribers to submit their questions about game reviews, including…

• Why don’t most outlets use the full 10-point scale?

• What’s the difference between criticism and reviews?

• Do formats (text, video, audio) change the way critics think about games?

Hear the answers when you support the long-term health of this show for just two bucks!

Act 1: Why Game Criticism Is a Kindness

• Games Criticism Is A Kindness (Kotaku)

• Kieron Gillen (Wiki)

• The New Games Journalism (Kieron Gillen’s workblog)

• Art for Art’s Sake (The Art Story)

• Alan Moore Interview: Magical Consciousness, Disowned Works, and the Long London Quintet (Retrofuturista)

• PsychOdyssey: The Making of Psychonauts 2 (Double Fine)

• Trash, art, and the movies by Pauline Kael (Harper’s)

Act 2: What a Game Review Can and Can’t Do

• The Arcade Review: Issues 1-3 (StoryBundle)

• The New Games Journalism, Same As The Old Games Journalism (Aftermath)

• A Dialogue with Austin Walker (Unwinnable)

• The Final Fantasy VII Letters, Part 1 (AV Club)

• Bow N***** (Always Black/Archive.org)

• Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (New Yorker)

Patreon Bonus: The Real Reason Review Scores Make People So Mad

• Available on Patreon.com/postgames

This Week in Video Game Links

• Maps, mice, and moody hues: The making of Mina the Hollower (Mothership)

• Killing Discs Could Mean More Expensive Games, And Fewer Discounts: ‘This Move Is All About Profitability And Control’ (Kotaku)

• Xbox testing disc-to-digital feature that digitizes a physical game collection (The Verge)

• Consoles continue their trend of just becoming worse PCs (PCGamer)

• Rhythm Paradise Groove review - a joyful and generous celebration of beat-matching (Eurogamer)

• Krafton Agrees to Pay ‘Subnautica 2’ Bonuses as Developer’s CEO Resigns (Bloomberg)

Free Game of the Week: Concerning the Dog Days

“An interactive meditation on all things contradictory in dog-human relationship.” (Itch.io via Warp Door)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean goes high tech. And it’s losing its mystique (LA Times)

• ‘Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep’ is full of beautifully written grotesqueries (NPR)

• The Leopard Man (1943) Original Motion Picture - Film Noir (YouTube)

• Guide to Horror (Neil Cicierega)

Skeptics of the Nintendo Switch 2 claim Nintendo is resting on the boring and safe. They see, in this year-old hardware, a company following up a groundbreaking hybrid handheld and home console with more of the same.

Of course, more of the same is what big video game companies tend to do, but not Nintendo. Nintendo, at its best, has the capacity to be unabashedly weird. It has sold novelty controllers made from flaps of cardboard. It created a talking flower that will tell you the time, intentionally incorrectly. It pitched the world on motion-control bowling and dual-screen, touch-screen handhelds when such things were seen as silly, childish, and well… weird.

“Weird” starts as a negative, but then stores can’t keep the latest Nintendo on shelves, and suddenly “weird” is the highest of praise. The secret sauce. The superpower.

The Switch 2, however, was never weird. It was a presumed hit. The name itself proudly proclaims it’s a sequel, an update, an echo. So, in that way, the critics are undeniably correct.

And yet, when I look at the games available on the Switch 2, I see, well… a lot of weirdness, from a life-sim that lets you play matchmaker between Peter Griffin and a sentient shoebox. Or Pokémon Pokopia, a Pokémon game set in a world without humans? Or the upcoming Rhythm Heaven Groove, the first entry in the Rhythm Heaven series in 11 years, which promises to let you compete with friends in plucking chin hairs from an anthropomorphic onion.

Has Nintendo’s weirdness been hidden in plain sight? Are these games merely the weird final gasps of an earlier, stranger era? To answer those questions, I needed to learn what Weird Nintendo actually is.

So, I called the one person I was certain could give me an answer. Beloved game historian, documentarian, and podcast host Jeremy Parish. He provided me not one answer, but ten.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Defining ‘Weird Nintendo’

• Act 2: Weird Nintendo, #10-6

• Act 3: Weird Nintendo, #5-1

• Patreon Bonus: The Nintendo Story I Could Never Tell

Guests:

• Jeremy Parish: host and author of Video Works, co-host and co-founder of Retronauts

Act 1: Defining ‘Weird Nintendo’

• THE NES ERA VOL. 1 (HARDCOVER) (Limited Run)

• The full Video Works collections (Jeremy Parish/YouTube)

• Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (Nintendo)

• The Best (And Most Cursed) Tomodachi Life Miis We’ve Seen So Far (NintendoLife)

• Pictonico (Nintendo)

• Rhythm Heaven Groove (Nintendo)

• Ultra Hand (Fandom)

• EP. 10: NINTENDO’S GUNPEI YOKOI’S HISTORY WITH MATT ALT (Video Game History Foundation)

• Gunpei Yokoi - Humility in the World of Video Games (Yokogao)

• Gunpei Yokoi’s Life Story: The Man Who Made Nintendo (DidYouKnowGaming)

• lateral thinking with withered technology (You’ve Run Out of Complimentary Articles)

• Weird Nintendo never went away (The Verge)

This newsletter is brought to you by my friends at Overworld: “Games media is scattered. The digital town square has become clusters spread across different platforms. It’s harder than ever to keep up with the industry without bouncing between mountains of tabs and feeds. Overworld gives you a high vantage point. We aggregate, sort, and curate the most interesting news, reviews, and analysis from across multiple sources and deliver it in a single space.”

Act 2: Weird Nintendo, #10-6

• #10. Fascination (Nintendo Wiki)

• $9. Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School (Wiki)

• #8. EarthBound series (WikiBound)

• #7. Metroid Prime: Federation Force (IGN)

• #6. I am a Teacher: Super Mario Sweater (Wiki)

• The Portopia Serial Murder Case (Wiki)

•  Miho Nakayama (Wiki)

• Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School Prize Tape [VHS Rip] (Jeremy Parish|Video Works)

• The Life of Shigesato Itoi (HG101)

• How Earthbound Led to a Marriage and a Career (Polygon)

Act 3: Weird Nintendo, #5-1

• #5. Elektroplankton (Wiki)

• #4. Pokémon Mini (Wiki)

• #3. Game Boy Camera (Wiki)

• #2. Odama (GameSpot)

• #1. WarioWare series (Wiki)

• Sutte Hakkun Review (SNES) (NintendoLife)

• Dave Eggers (Wiki)

• Dave Barry (https://www. .com/)

• Werner Herzog (Wiki)

• Gameboy Camera : the journey (Sébastien Tourneux)

• Miyamoto talks Odama (Eurogamer)

• Yoot Saito (Wiki)

• Yoot Saito’s Odama Hands-On (GameSpot)

• Yoot Saito on His Classic Sega Game Where You Take Abuse from a Fish (Vice)

• Nester’s Funky Bowling (Virtual Boy) 2D Playthrough (NintendoComplete)

Patreon Bonus: The Nintendo Story I Could Never Tell

• Meet the collectors - #4 - Isao Yamazaki (BeforeMario)

• Nintendo Museum exhibition, Osaka (2007) (BeforeMario)

• Mamaberika (Fandom)

• Here’s What Nintendo’s HQ Looked Like In 1889 (Kotaku)

This Week in Video Game Links

• investigating corporate puzzleslop (Juniper Dev)

• First Look: They Actually Made a Sonic the Hedgehog Pinball Machine!? (Retro Ralph)

• ‘Shareholder Greed’ And How Publicly Traded Companies Actually Work (Jason Schreier)

• Why Jason Schreier started a YouTube channel (ReaderGrev)

• This Fangame Took 20 Years to Finish (MonkeyNess/YouTube)

Free Game of the Week: Another Door demo

From the Steam summary: “Another Door is a multiplayer, turn-based roguelike with monsters, despair, risk and betrayal. Hide your intentions, bluff to survive and bet on your luck. Will you back out, or venture through Another Door?” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Sheep in the Box - Official Trailer (YouTube)

• BITTER CHRISTMAS | Official UK & IRE Trailer (YouTube)

• Is AI a good thing or a bad thing? Yes (Made By Humans for Humans)

Every week, I wonder how video games got to this mess of a moment in which a company celebrates creative risk-taking and announces new games at the beginning of a week, and closes multiple studios and cancels games by the end of the week. And yet, this is also a time in which more people have more access to games created by and for a wider range of perspectives than ever before.

Have things always been this chaotic, or is the current instability more noticeable thanks to ever more transparent social media and reporting? Or, is this moment uniquely difficult compared to the eras that came before it? Or, is each era of video games complicated and confounding in its own way?

To get answers, I spoke with one of the few people who has led successful teams on beloved games through multiple gaming epochs: Rob Pardo, whose CV includes senior roles on World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone. And who has spent over a decade building a new studio and a new game outside of AAA publishing.

Pardo has one of the widest and deepest views of the games industry from AAA to tiny teams, the 1990s to today. The conversation is the entirety of today’s episode, a sprawling examination of the history of how and why video games are made. And where this moment fits into the puzzle.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: The Primordial Ooze of the Modern Game Industry

• Act 2: No Time Like the Present

• Act 3: How to Get People to See a Game in 2026

• Patreon Bonus: What the Hell Is Happening at Xbox?

Guests:

• Rob Pardo: CEO of Bonfire Studios, former CCO of Blizzard Entertainment

• Jason Schreier: reporter at Bloomberg, co-host of Triple Click

Patreon Bonus: The Two Big Bets That Led to Xbox’s Problems (With Jason Schreier)

• Studios in Microsoft’s Xbox Division Brace for Closures (Bloomberg)

• Jason Schreier on Bluesky (Bsky.app)

• How Things Got So Bad At Xbox (YouTube)

• Microsoft reportedly negotiating closures of multiple Xbox studios, including Psychonauts’ Double Fine, South of Midnight’s Compulsion and Hellblade’s Ninja Theory (Eurogamer)

Act 1: The Primordial Ooze of the Modern Game Industry

• Rob Pardo’s Lecture on Blizzard’s Game Design Philosophy (Daniel Scrivner)

• Bonfire Studios (https://bonfirestudios.com/)

• Arkheron (https://www.arkheron.com/Steam)

• Arkheron - Reveal Trailer (YouTube)

• Arkheron Preview: A Promising Battle Royale (No, Seriously) (Game Informer)

• List of largest video game mergers and acquisitions (Wiki)

• ROB PARDO DEPARTS BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT (BlizzPlanet)

• Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment (Hachette)

Act 2: No Time Like the Present

• A New Phase for World of Warcraft’s Lead Designer: His Own Start-Up (NYTimes)

• Andreessen Horowitz (Wiki)

• Riot Games (Wiki)

• Venture Capital (Wiki)

• The Games Fund (https://www.gamesfund.vc/)

• The state of video games with Matthew Ball – Part One (The Game Business)

• Game investments continue at record pace in first half of 2019 (GamesIndustry.biz)

• FORMER BIOWARE VETERAN WARNS AAA GAMING IS TOO DEPENDENT ON LIVE-SERVICE TITLES (Insider Gaming)

• IF MIYAMOTO NEVER SAID HIS MOST FAMOUS QUOTE, WHO DID? (A Critical Hit!)

Act 3: How to Get People to See a Game in 2026

• GDC 2026 Keynote - An Odyssey in Building Games That Last (GDC/YouTube)

• Blizzard veteran Rob Pardo says ‘love’ is the most important development milestone (Game Developer)

• Some Nominated Devs Can’t Even Afford To Be A Part Of The Game Awards (Kotaku)

• Highguard is permanently shutting down, barely a month after its debut (Game Developer)

• Another MOBA gives up: Supervive, developed by former Riot devs, is closing in February, just 7 months after it launched (PCGamer)

This Week in Video Game Links

• He Won’t Stop Building a Map to an Imaginary Place (People Make Games/YouTube)

• Gitaroo Man Soundtrack is now streaming (Spotify/YouTube Music)

• 5 things The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake shouldn’t change at all (Polygon)

• 18 embargoes from Summer Game Fest just lifted, so let’s rank everything I saw in LA (PCGamer)

• What are we all playing this Steam Next Fest? (RPS)

• DAVE THE DIVER: IN THE JUNGLE REVIEW (PCGamer)

• Signet City is an RPG where you play a brain fungus feeding off the emotions of your host, like a mushroom-themed Monsters, Inc (RPS)

Free Game of the Week: About Fishing demo

My favorite Steam Next Fest demo comes from The Water Museum, the studio behind the magnificent Arctic Eggs. Here’s the Steam Summary for About Fishing: “Cast your line into calm waters and feel the quiet pull beneath the surface. Each cast brings rewards, but some things you reel in were never meant to be found.” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Loss was just the start of Ctrl-Alt-Delete’s unhinged canon (Rogue/YouTube)

• Can the New Anti-Heroine Heal My Inner Black Girl? (RogerEbert.com)

• A virtual Criterion Closet (https://the-criterion-closet.vercel.app)

The Earliest Game of the Year Awards, a.k.a. The EGOTYs, isn’t the most spectacular awards show. It’s certainly not the most exhaustive. But it is, as the name claims, the earliest. And that’s the point.

The beauty of the EGOTY is found in its limitation to the first five months of the year, with winners selected before the Summer Game Festival and all the major fall releases.

The EGOTYs celebrate the winter and spring games that are too often forgotten or overlooked when the GOTY voting begins in the fall. Once viewed as a publishing black hole, the first half of the year has become an exciting season for games of every size. Major studios like Capcom have made the first quarter their preferred landing zone for huge releases, while indie studios hope players buy small, new games to counter the winter doldrums. According to SteamDB, over 10,500 games have been released in 2026. And it’s only the middle of June.

There’s no voting in the EGOTYs. Instead, 50 critics, designers, directors, reporters, authors, and comedians share their individual picks for EGOTY. Because some people are bound to pick the same game, I prompted my guests as follows:

Tell folks a little about how your EGOTY works, but more importantly, share a specific single detail (design choice, stage, character, story moment) that makes the game so memorable.

Yes, you will hear multiple people praise Marathon and a couple of other games. But never will the champion their EGOTY in the same way. Because even when we love the same games, we love them for our own, special reasons.

Patreon supporters will also hear a special bonus segment, right in the middle of the episode. I share my Top 10 games from the first half of 2026, and dig into what about them has stuck in my heart, my brain, and my gut.

Thank you so much for joining me for the 1st Annual EGOTYS. Be sure to share your EGOTY in the comments!

Listen to this week’s episode

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: The EGOTYs

• Patreon Bonus: My Top 10 Games of 2026… so far

• Act 2: The EGOTYs, Continued

Guests:

• See the full list of guests and their EGOTY picks below!

On the Patreon for $5

Want to hear the history of 40 years of Batman video games? The latest episode of Past Games is now available! Hear the full exclusive Past Games series, weekly bonus segments, and early-access, ad-free episodes for $5! Join at patreon.com/PostGames.

The Games:

• Mixtape (Steam)

• Transfer Point (Steam)

• Cairn (Steam)

• Marathon (Steam)

• Minishoot’ Adventures (Steam)

• Sol Celsto (Steam)

• Titanium Court (Post Games/Steam)

• Perfect Tides: Station to Station (Post Games/Steam)

• Love and Deepspace (Android/iOS)

• Resident Evil Requiem (Steam)

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon (Steam)

• Island Off Outer Darkness (Steam)

• Derelict Star (Steam)

• Creature Kitchen (Steam)

• Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors (Steam)

• Windrose (Steam)

• Pokémon Pokopia (Nintendo)

• Moves of the Diamond Hand (Steam)

• It Has My Face (Steam)

• Slay the Spire 2 (Steam)

•  Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake (Steam)

• On-Together: Virtual Co-Working (Steam)

• Pokémon Champions (Pokémon)

• Scam Line (Steam)

• Amberspire (Steam)

• Love Eternal (Steam)

• Sektori (Steam)

• Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (Steam)

• Pokémon Pinball Machine (Post Games/Stern)

• Nova Roma (Steam)

• Screamer (Steam)

• Marvel Cosmic Invasion (Steam)

• Better Than Dead (Steam)

• Tiling Forest - Tiling Town demo (Steam)

The Guests:

• Greg Miller - Mixtape

• Nina Freeman - Transfer Point

• Kirk Hamilton - Cairn

• Adam Conover - Minishoot Adventures’

• Winnie Song - Marathon

• Giovanni Colantonio - Sol Cesto

• Danielle Riendeau - Titanium Court

• AP Thomson - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Ash Parrish - Love and Deepspace

• Matt Apodaca - Resident Evil: Requiem

• Harper Jay - The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon

• Austin Walker - Island Off Outer Darkness

• Gabe Cuzzillo & Bennett Foddy - Derelict Star

• Mary Kish - Creature Kitchen

• Lily Alexandre - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Danny O’Dwyer - Windrose

• Maddy Myers - Pokemon Pokopia

• Khee Hoon Chan - Moves of the Diamond Hand

• Peter Hunt Szpytek - Marathon

• Xalavier Nelson Jr. - It Has My Face

• Jacob Geller - Slay the Spire II

• Ashley Bardhan - Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake

• Teddy Dief - On-Together

• Geoff Thew - Pokemon Champions

• Kaitlyn Tremblay - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Brendon Bigley - Vampire Crawlers

• Chandana Ekanayake - Creature Kitchen

• Mike Drucker - Sektori

• Gita Jackson - Marathon

• Jeff Grubb - Scam Line

• Nicole Carpenter - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Cameron Kunzelman - Amberspire

• Wallace Truesdale - Love Eternal

• Rebekah Valentine - Titanium Court

• Grayson Morley - Dragon Quest 6 Reimagined

• Cass Marshall - Cairn

• Garrett Martin - Pokémon Pinball Machine

• Niko Stratis - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Mike Rugnetta - Nova Roma

• Megan Farokhmanesh - Pokemon Pokopia

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. - Screamer

• Moises Taveras - Marathon

• Casey Newton - Marvel Cosmic Invasion

• Carolyn Petit - Perfect Tides: Station to Station

• Yussef Cole - Better Than Dead

• Stephen Totilo - Tiling Forest: A Tiling Town demo

• Matthew Gallant - Titanium Court

What is Persona Summer? How does Persona Summer work? Will Persona Summer make you a better person and improve your relationships with family, friends, and co-workers?

Three Persona experts answer those questions and more on the latest episode of Post Games. But there’s one question I can answer from the top: Why is it Persona Summer?

If you are an adult with any financial obligations and responsibilities, then you are keenly aware that everything is getting more expensive. Gas. Groceries. And of course, games. It would be oddly comforting if I could point to a single reason for this inflation, but that’s not the case.

The current financial hell we face every time we open our wallets stems from a perfect storm of disastrous political decisions, unstable oil markets, expanding wealth disparity, unregulated prediction markets, under regulated traditional markets, and most pressing for today’s episode RAM shortages from data centers gobbling up current stock and claiming future stock for months and in some cases years to come.

Think of RAM like a computer’s short-term memory, living alongside the long-term memory of your SSD or hard drive. It’s crucial to every bit of computing technology, from your PC to your smartphone to your video game console. Your Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch can’t live without it. So, RAM prices go up. Consoles go up.

Last week, Valve’s top-end Steam Deck increased from $649 to $949 — a $300 spike! And I’ve heard concerns from leaders at major game studios that top-end consoles could pass the $1,000 mark before the holidays. New video games on new video game consoles have long been limited to the financially comfortable. But as prices of both games and hardware begin to climb over the course of a generation (rather than fall, like normal) video game culture risks splitting even further and further between the haves and the have-nots.

There are alternatives. Indie games that play on old hardware or low-end laptops. Borrowing new games from public libraries, if you’re fortunate enough to be near one that stocks them. I personally like to encourage players to break free from the social or internal pressure to keep up with every major release and find joy in their backlog on older hardware.

Therefore, I have declared this summer Persona Summer. Now more than ever, we should feel encouraged to give our wallets relief and collectively clear some major games from our backlogs. And what bigger, better backlog series than Persona, games that nearly everyone has heard of, many have started but not finished, and plenty have never tried despite grabbing one during a sale.

To provide support for everyone, from first-time Persona players to obsessive fans who know their Shin Megami Tensei from their Metaphor Refantazio, I have collected a crack team of experts.

The episode opens with a Patreon Bonus segment, however, because it’s Persona Summer, a time of goodwill, it’s available to listeners on the free feed, too.

Into the Aether’s Brendon Bigley and Stephen Hilger, who have recorded hours-long analyses of Persona games, help us set the ground rules to live the best Persona Summer possible.

After that, game narrative designer and former games journalist Leigh Alexander explains what Persona is, then demystifies a series that can be intimidating even to fans.

And lastly, a bonus for the news section, totally unrelated to Persona, Senior Programmer of the Tribeca Festival, Casey Baron, joins the show to share how the festival has dramatically expanded its games events and programming. And how festivals like Tribeca have the long-term ambitions to help get money in the pockets of bold independent game makers.

Plus, to put a bow on everything, I have an exclusive big band cover of the Persona song Aria of the Soul. Yes, you will absolutely want to stay until the end to hear this one!

Big show. Let’s get to it!

Listen to this wek’s episode

This Week on Post Games:

• Patreon Bonus: The Rules of Persona Summer

• Act 1: Persona, Explained!

• Act 2: Where to Start (or Continue) with Persona

• Act 3: Why Tribeca Festival Includes Video Games

Guests:

• Brendon Bigley and Stephen Hilger: co-hosts of Into the Aether

• Leigh Alexander: narrative designer, writer, and former games journalist

• Casey Baron: Senior Programmer of the Tribeca Festival

• Closing Song:   “Aria of the Soul” by The Blueshift Big Band (The Persona 30th Anniversary Jazz Album)

Patreon Bonus: The Rules of Persona Summer

• The Persona Summer game lists (Displayed above, courtesy Stephen Hilger)

• Persona 4 Revival Gets February Release Date In First Gameplay Trailer (Game Informer)

• Persona 6 - Teaser Trailer (YouTube)

• Into the Aether (https://intothecast.online/)

• Persona 4 Golden: Bonus Episode (Into the Aether)

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons & Persona 5 Royal (Into the Aether)

• The PlayStation Vita: A Retrospective (Into the Aether on Spotify)

• Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore (RPGFan)

• An Introduction to the Sega Dreamcast w/ Chris Plante (Into the Aether)

Act 1: Persona, Explained!

• the entire history of persona, i guess (Courtney)

• Persona (series) (Wiki)

• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Review (IGN)

• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (AV Club)

• What I Discovered From Gaming Like A Girl (Kotaku)

Act 2: Where to Start (or Continue) with Persona

• Persona 3 Portable (Steam)

• Persona 3 Reload (Steam)

• Persona 4 Golden (Steam)

• Persona 5 Royal (Steam)

• Persona 4 The Animation (Crunchyroll)

• Persona 5 The Animation (Crunchyroll)

Act 3: Why Tribeca Fest Includes Video Games

• Games Events at Tribeca (Tribeca Festival)

• 9: The Last Resort (Wiki)

• De Niro Con (Tribeca Festival)

• LAN Party (Wiki)

• The Future of Gaming at Tribeca’s 25th Anniversary with Casey Baron (Spawn on Me)

• Susan O’Connor (The Narrative Department)

• The NYU Game Center Incubator (NYU Game Center)

• The Birth of Tribeca Festival (Tribeca Festival)

• Despelote (Steam)

• DRIFTED (Tribeca Film Festival)

• Kidbash: Super Legend (Tribeca Festival)

• Rebounder (Tribeca Festival)

• Rivage (Tribeca Festival)

• Gumbo Collective (https://gumbonyc.org/)

• LOFSÖNG (Tribeca Festival)

• Virtue and a Sledgehammer (Tribeca Festival)

This Week in Video Game Links

• Overworld is the video game news aggregator of my dreams! (Overworld)

• Xbox and PlayStation have a lot to prove (The Verge)

• The Console Wars are Good, Actually (One More Round)

• An Essential Cyberpunk Roguelike Returns In 868-BACK (Kotaku)

• Valve, the Anticorporate Hero of the Games Industry, Has Its Antitrust Moment (Bloomberg)

• Pictonico! review: new Nintendo WarioWare-like is a silly blast (Screen Hub)

• 007 First Light’s Bond Is as Big a Character Shakeup as Daniel Craig’s Version, and I Love It (PC Gamer)

• The Uncomfortable Truth About Pragmata (peterspittech/YouTube)

• Why Did EarthBound Fail in America? (The Video Game History Foundation/YouTube)

Free Game of the Week: Future? No Thanks! demo

The latest game from the brilliant Molleindustria has a free demo! Here’s the Steam summary: “Future? No Thanks! is a narrative-driven, open-world adventure set in an ecosocialist utopia. You’re old, bitter, and scheduled for euthanasia. Enjoy your last day in a future that works for everyone but you.” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Charlie Parker (NYTimes)

• Summerween Vlog 🎃 | Horror Books, Spooky Picnic & Video Store Nostalgia (Ghoul Host)

• Gelli Haha - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) (KEXP/YouTube)

Song of the Week: “Aria of the Soul” by The Blueshift Big Band

From The Persona 30th Anniversary Jazz Album, available for pre-order until June 8 on iam8bit.

From the 1980s into the 2000s, Bond games arrived with greater frequency than Bond films. From the first officially licensed game in 1983, the aptly titled James Bond 007, to 007 Legends in 2012, 25 Bond games hit store shelves. For context, the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die, was the 25th film.

But since Activision released 007 Legends 14 years ago, we’ve been without a major new Bond game. That is, until the recent debut of 007 First Light. What happened? How did one of the most popular video game spinoffs go on a decade-and-a-half hiatus?

The answer has less to do with video games than it does with Bond and his owners. Well, previous owners. In the 2000s, under the careful oversight of Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, Bond was slowly adapted for modern sensibilities. Like the games, the film’s cadence slowed too. Alongside production, the pair began to reckon with a billionaire super villain worthy of their own, as Jeff Bezos’ Amazon worked to wrest control of the IP.

In 2025, following the controversial death of the Daniel Craig-era James Bond and years of behind-the-scenes drama, Amazon MGM acquired full control of the character.

007 First Light began development in one era of Bond, and is releasing within another. So before playing the new game, I wanted to learn more about these two stories of Bond, the evolution of the character, and the changing hands of his creative overseer.

Naturally, I contacted the most beloved James Bond fan on the planet, Matt Gourley, to hear about the hero’s history. And to learn more about the 007 First Light creative team’s vision for a modern James Bond, I spoke with the game’s Narrative and Cinematic Director, Martin Emborg.

The result is an episode that’s a bit different, not looking purely at games but the bigger cultural questions and machinations that influenced one big title’s creation.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Everything You Need to Know about Bond

• Act 2: Why Bond Games and Movies Have Become So Tough to Make

• Patreon Bonus: A History of Bond Games in Five Titles

• Act 3: 007 First Light’s Narrative Director on Creating a New Bond

Guests:

• Matt Gourley: co-host of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, James Bondings, With Gourley & Rust, and many other great podcasts

• Martin Emborg: Narrative and Cinematic Director, 007 First Light

On the Patreon for $5

Want to hear the history of 40 years of Batman video games? The latest episode of Past Games is now available! Hear the full exclusive Past Games series, weekly bonus segments, and early-access, ad-free episodes for $5! Join at patreon.com/PostGames.

Act 1: Everything You Should Know about James Bond

• James Bonding (Apple Podcasts)

• Matt Gourley Tests Conan & Sona’s James Bond Knowledge | Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend (Team Coco on YouTube)

• List of James Bond novels and short stories (Wiki)

• Octopussy (JustWatch)

• Bond, James Bond Ranked (James Bonding)

• James Bond 007 | EVERY “BOND, JAMES BOND” (YouTube)

• The Man with the Golden Gun (1/10) Movie CLIP - Meeting Andrea (1974) HD (Movieclips on YouTube)

• JFK loved James Bond: How Ian Fleming’s spy novels influenced the CIA (Slate)

• Tomorrow Never Dies (JustWatch)

Act 2: Why Bond Games and Movies Have Become So Tough to Make

• Women want to be with him, men want to be him – and other phrases (James Bond Memes)

• Covid: James Bond film No Time To Die delayed for third time (BBC)

• Amazon Paid $20 Million for Control of James Bond, But There’s Fine Print That Isn’t Public (The Hollywood Reporter)

• James Bond Auditions Have Officially Started, ‘Game of Thrones’ Casting Vet Nina Gold Tapped to Find Next 007 (Variety)

• James Bond Auditions Are Officially Underway, and These Actors May Be at the Top of the List (Vanity Fair)

• Callum Turner Goes Silent When Asked About James Bond (Vanity Fair)

• Layer Cake (Letterboxd)

• Remington Steele (IMDB)

• Eon Productions (Wiki)

• Young Bond (Wiki)

• Denis Villeneuve (IMDB)

• James Bond Jr (Full Episodes) (YouTube)

• Eton College (Wiki)

• r/JamesBond (Reddit)

• The Spy Who Loved Me (C64 Longplay) (YouTube)

• Sega Master System (Fandom)

• Why were Sega Master System games made with a cheap cover? (Reddit)

• Quantum of Solace review (Eurogamer)

• James Bond 007: Blood Stone Review (GameSpot)

• James Bond 007 (Game Boy) Review (Nintendo Life)

• 007 First Light Title Sequence – Lana Del Rey (IO Interactive on YouTube)

• The Man with the Golden Gun Opening Title Sequence (YouTube)

Patreon Bonus: A History of Bond Games in Five Titles

• Shaken But Not Stirred (Wiki)

• GoldenEye 007 (GameSpot)

• James Bond 007 for Game Boy (IGN)

• 007 Legends (IGN)

• GoldenEye 007 on Switch (NME)

Act 3: 007 First Light’s Narrative Director on Creating a New Bond

• 007 First Light (Steam)

• JAMES BOND | Casino Royale “Daniel Craig” Screen Test (YouTube)

• Patrick Gibson (IMDB)

• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Wiki)

• Solo: A Star Wars Story - How Han Got His Name (YouTube)

• What’s Bonds body count? (r/JamesBond)

• Michael G. Wilson (James Bond Wiki)

• Licence to Kill Longplay (C64) [50 FPS] (YouTube)

This Week in Video Game Links

• Mina the Hollower’s creators put “Game Genie cheats” in their Zelda Soulslike mashup (Mothership)

• Mixed Up Tapes (Innerspiral)

• Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make (Jason Schreier)

• 007 First Light In-Depth: The Big Digital Foundry Tech Review (Digital Foundry)

• Extreme Strong Female Characters and the Transfem Gender Callus (NEET Ozma)

• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 - Official Reveal Trailer (YouTube)

Free Game of the Week: Normal Golf Game demo

From its Steam summary: “Hazy memories. A $100,000 fee. No sign of an exit. Welcome to my Normal Golf Game. Well, the demo of it at least. This demo is the first 30 minutes(ish) of the full game. You only have access to the small area around the clubhouse, while in the full game, you eventually unlock access to a full 9-hole golf course.” (Steam via PCGamer)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Robert De Niro’s Closet Picks (Criterion)

• The bubble is getting a lot bubblier, folks (Garbage Day)

• Obsession (Letterboxd)

• The Shout (Letterboxd)

Song of the Week: “The Man with the Golden Gun”

The audio isn’t included in the show for copyright reasons, but you can read the full lyrics on Genius.

Grand Theft Auto isn’t the biggest franchise in the world because of its stories, which are shameless pastiches of superior crime films. Grand Theft Auto isn’t the biggest franchise in the world because of its third-person shooting, which is clunky and fussy and pales in comparison to its contemporaries. Grand Theft Auto is the biggest franchise in the world because of the tiny details.

A runner jogging with a dog stops for their pet to take a piss. A pickup truck obeys a pedestrian crossing. Planes flying overhead land at the airport, then head off to the next destination. In the trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, a gas station door is covered in individual stickers and handwritten signs.

The facsimile is so meticulously considered that, when sprinting through a life of crime, no individual decision is noticed; it’s felt. The effect is holistic — for a time.

Now, if you’ve spent months or years in these elaborate worlds after you’ve rolled credits, you’ve probably found yourself asking questions about just how real these worlds actually are. Do GTA 5’s street signs comply with California law?

Of course, these sorts of questions extend far beyond Grand Theft Auto to any elaborate modern video game world. What is the unemployment rate in Pokémon’s biggest city? Would the water system in Cyberpunk 2077 actually work? Where does the simulation end?

I hold onto questions like these for a few moments before allowing them to escape my brain as my mental load redirects to a car chase or a heist. But today’s guest is different. AnyAustin has built an audience of over 1.4 million YouTube subscribers by not just theorizing about these questions, but spending weeks getting the answers.

What’s the oldest building in Grand Theft Auto 5? Turns out you can make a very informed guess if you, as AnyAustin was, are willing to learn about the history of Southern California architecture dating back to the late 19th century.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: Try Not to Lose 100 Followers

• Act 2: How to Look Closely at Gaming’s Little Details

• Patreon Bonus: Getting Old as a Professional YouTuber

Guests:

• Any Austin: Gaming YouTuber

• Closing Song: “He’s Out There” (Screaming Savage Blood Death)

On the Patreon for $5

Want to hear the history of 40 years of Batman video games? The latest episode of Past Games airs next Monday!

Want more Past Games? Hear the full exclusive series, weekly bonus segments, and ad-free episodes for $5! Join at patreon.com/PostGames.

Act 1: Try Not to Lose 100 Followers

• Any Austin (YouTube)

• Eggbusters - Season One (Any Austin)

• gamers go outside for the first time (gl;hf podcast)

• The Strange Details of Call of Duty’s Most Atmospheric Mission (Any Austin)

• The expert on finding weird places in Skyrim, GTA 5, and others does it out of love (Polygon)

• ‪@any_austin‬ on the Hermeneutics of Video Games (Conversations with Tyler)

• Middle Kick Button, with Any Austin - Insert Credit Show 389 (insert credit)

Act 2: How to Look Closely at Gaming’s Little Details

• Can You Live An Average Life In Skyrim? (Any Austin)

• Any Austin — Enjoying the Hyper-Mundane Aspects of Video Games (Always Choose Orange)

• Titanium Court (Steam)

• The Post Games episode on Titanium Court (Post.Games)

• Iran War Timeline: Key Moments and Attacks (NYTimes)

• Dwarf Fortress (Steam)

• Caves of Qud (Steam)

• Procedural vs. Randomly Generated Content in Game Design (Game Developer)

• AI Generation VS Procedural Generation (Goutrial)

Patreon Bonus: Getting Old as a Professional YouTuber

• Full segment and links available at Patreon.com/PostGames

This Week in Video Game Links

• There is no discovery on this earth more pure than a closet full of your dad’s ‘90s big box PC games (PCGamer)

• Bungie Plans Layoffs After Ending ‘Destiny 2’ Development (Bloomberg)

• Bubsy 4D Is the Future of Gaming (Delayed Input)

• Hyrule’s broken sword (Mothership)

• I Waited A Month To Beat The Final Boss Of A Game I Love, And Now I’m Full Of Regret (Aftermath)

• The 13 most-anticipated games of the summer (Polygon)

• Everything We Know About Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, The Remake Of The Pirate One Everybody Loves (Kotaku)

• My Son’s Math Homework Is Essentially Just Pokémon (The Atlantic)

(Not Quite) Free Game of the Week: halfmoon

I know, I know! I try to keep this section free. But halfmoon is available for $1.99, and it’s too interesting to let the rules get in the way. Here’s the Steam summary: “halfmoon is a short adventure game set in an information center for the dead before they move on.” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Gelli Haha (YouTube)

• The Battle Over 3D Printer Software Licensing Matters For Everyone (Aftermath)

• The Mangler (1995) [Vinegar Syndrome 4K UHD & Blu-ray Promo Trailer] (YouTube)

Song of the Week: “He’s Out There”

From the upcoming game Screaming Savage Blood Death (Steam)

This weekend marks the 1st Anniversary of Post Games! I can finally exhale.

To celebrate, I’m running a sale that won’t return any time soon. Because, pals, it’s not ideal for my finances! However, times are tough for everyone, and you deserve nice things!

Until Sunday at 11:59 pm PT, new subscribers can get an annual Post Games subscription for $40. That’s $10 off the normal annual price and $20 cheaper than paying the standard $5 per month across 12 months.

Join at Patreon.com/PostGames

What do Patreon supporters get?

• Ad-free episodes available early on Fridays

• Weekly bonus segments

• Monthly bonus episodes in the ongoing series, Past Games

• Access to my 5-part video series, Games Journalism 101

• Access to game clubs, including developer conversations and Patreon group chats

• And more!

If you’ve been considering a subscription, I promise this is the best deal you will see this year. And if you already support the show, I can’t thank you enough for making Post Games possible! I can’t wait to share the big projects I have in the works for Season 2.

Plus, you’ll get early access to the latest episode with Any Austin — easily one of my favorite interviews to date.

We gather here today to celebrate the life of one of gaming’s most iconic mascots that isn’t named Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, Kirby, Shantae, Banjo, Kazooie, Conker, Croc, Donkey Kong, Gex, or Glover. No, the spotlight belongs to the most misunderstood mascot of them all. Bubsy.

Inspired by the success of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Bubsy entered the 1990s with positive reviews and promising sales. But a pair of sequels, one with little ambition, the other with too much, would tie the wise-cracking cat to a culture of cutesy cash grabs. Over the following decades, Bubsy devolved into a Shrek-like inside joke amongst gaming nerds.

And yet, somehow, in the year 2026, Bubsy has returned in a video game created by some of the most talented platformer designers working today. Bubsy 4D launches on May 22 on PC and all modern gaming consoles.

How did this happen?

To learn the (purr-haps surprisingly) complicated answer, I’ve produced an in-depth history of a character that, in the eyes of the people who know him best, deserves not reconsideration, but some respect.

Plus… Analyzing Mixtape with an expert in mixtapes

For the News of the Week segment, former Pitchfork news director and current punk newsletter proprietor Evan Minsker joins the show to share the history, function, and secrets of mixtapes. Minsker recently completed Mixtape, and he generously shares his thoughts on what does and doesn’t work about its discourse-inspiring playlist.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1: The History of Bubsy 2D

• Act 1.5: The Case for Bubsy 3D

• Act 2: The Making of Bubsy 4D

• Patreon Bonus: The Bubsy Parody About Loving Modern Art

• Act 3: The News of the Week

Guests:

• Fabian Rastorfer and Ben Miller: co-leads of Fabraz, Bubsy 4D

• Ben Esposito: Designer on Neon White, Donut County, and Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective

• Evan Minsker: Proprietor, critic, and reporter at see/saw

• Closing Song: “Techno Syndrome 2026” by Benjamin Wallfisch from Mortal Kombat 2: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

On the Patreon for $5

Want to hear the full history of Dark Souls from the two people who wrote the definitive book on the series? The latest episode of Past Games is now available as a bonus episode on the Post Games Patreon!

Want more Past Games? You can listen to the Patreon-exclusive “The History of L.A. Noire” with special guest Tim Rogers. Hear the full exclusive series, weekly bonus segments, and ad-free episodes for $5! Join at patreon.com/PostGames.

Act 1: The History of Bubsy

• Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection (Steam)

• Playing Catch-Up: Bubsy’s Michael Berlyn (Gamasutra via Archive)

• Michael Berlyn (Wiki)

• Nintendo Power, Issue 56 (Archive)

• GamePro, Issue 36 (Archive)

• Game Informer, Issue 9 (Archive)

• Sega v. Accolade (Wiki)

• Casting a Stone | The Sega v. Accolade Lawsuit (Talking Pixels)

Act 2: Bubsy 4D

• Bubsy 4D (Steam)

• CEO Wade Rosen On Atari’s Future, Acquiring Nightdive, Avoiding Layoffs (MinnMax)

• Hey, what if Bubsy 4D is the next Super Mario Odyssey? (Polygon)

• Bubsy 4D | Developer Interview (Hypocritic GG)

• Demon Tides (Steam)

• Demon Turf (Steam)

Patreon Bonus: The Bubsy Parody About Loving Modern Art

• The full segment and show notes are available at Patreon.com/PostGames

Act 3: The News of the Week

• see/saw (see-saw.fun)

• Punk This Week podcast (Apple Podcasts)

• Mixtape review (IGN)

• Shoegaze (Wiki)

• Susan Sings Songs from Sesame Street (Fandom)

This Week in Video Game Links

• Pokopia is my post-gender utopia (Mothership)

• The Supernatural And Mysterious Nature Of Creativity (Game Informer)

• The Repulsive New Star Fox Characters Are Good - Delayed Input (Kyle Bosman)

• All This Over… Mixtape? (Aftermath)

• Shovel Knight team’s homage to Zelda is going to be a very big deal (Polygon)

• This city-smashing monster sim is the first game I’ve ever played where my reward for beating a level is getting a nuke dropped on my head (PCGamer)

• The Hues of These New Colors - What Lessons in Love Means to Me (Mimidoshima)

• Vice-Chancellor’s Talks: Nina Freeman, 23 April 2026 (YouTube)

• Buck Bumble Theme (perfect loop) [1h] (YouTube)

Free Game of the Week: NOVA SONATA

From the itch.io summary: “NOVA SONATA is an on-rails shooter where every action creates the soundtrack. The world is your instrument: every vine you hit, every meteor you destroy becomes another layer in the song.” (Itch.io via Warp Door)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Wildwood – Official Teaser Trailer (YouTube)

• ‘The Sheep Detectives’ Review: A Murder Most Fleecy (NYTimes)

• “I Went to the Stanley Kubrick Film School”: Richard Linklater on His First Film (Criterion)

Song of the Week: “Techno Syndrome 2026”

By Benjamin Wallfisch from Mortal Kombat 2: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Spotify)

Editor’s Note:

It’s the show’s first anniversary! To celebrate, and to give myself some time to prep the summer episodes, I’m sharing one of the monthly Patreon-exclusive episodes. This is the history of the original The Legend of Zelda, featuring one of the series’ foremost experts and historians.

If you like this episode, I’m positive you’ll enjoy the rest of Past Games. Each month, I talk with a different expert about a game or moment celebrating an anniversary this year. Previous episodes include L.A. Noire with Tim Rogers, along with histories of Dark Souls and Animal Crossing with the people who quite literally wrote the books on each.

Subscribe at Patreon.com/PostGames for $5 to get Past Games, bonus segments, and ad-free episodes.

Today’s guest is Max Nichols, video game designer, educator, and Zelda historian.

By day, Max has worked on some of the biggest franchises in gaming. But it’s Nichol’s expertise in Zelda that’s brought him to Post Games. Nichols oversees the Hyrule Interviews, a website database that contains over a thousand interviews with members of the many different Legend of Zelda teams. The Q&As range from 1986 to earlier this year, with subjects ranging from the macro, like high-level plans for Zelda adaptations across media, to the micro, like a designer’s social media message about color bleeding.

Our conversation begins with the origins of the original Legend of Zelda, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Did you know it began as a sci-fi game? I certainly didn’t. Or many of the other details Nichols shares.

After that, Nichols speedruns us through the series’ history. And to wrap things up, we chat about the parallel history of Zelda fandom.

Nichols references tons of useful resources, and shared an extended list following our conversation. I’ve included it below.

On This Past Games:

• Act 1: The Making of The Legend of Zelda

• Act 2: The 30-Year Evolution of Zelda Games

• Act 3: A History of the Zelda Fan Community

Guest:

• Max Nichols: Game designer, educator, and operator of Hyrule Interviews

• Closing Song: “Boléro” Maurice Ravel. Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Parism. Conducted by Manuel Rosenthal

Act 1: The Making of The Legend of Zelda

• Hyrule Interviews (Hyruleinterviews.com)

• Hyrule Interviews on Bluesky (Blueksky)

• Ultima (Wiki)

• The Black Onyx (Wiki)

• Hydlide (Wiki)

• Xanadu (Wiki)

• Legend of Zelda – 1994 Developer Interview (shmuplations)

• How The First Zelda Was Made and Featured a First-Person Perspective Initially (ThatGuyGlen)

Act 2: The 30-Year Evolution of Zelda Games

• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link Review (IGN)

• Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Review (GameSpot)

• Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review (IGN)

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess review (Eurogamer)

• The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Review - Link To The Past (GameSpot)

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review (Game Informer)

• Critical Compilation: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Critical Distance)

Act 3: A History of the Zelda Fan Community

• Zelda.com - Then and Now (r/Zelda)

• The North Castle (Northcastle.co.uk)

• Zelda HQ (ZHQ.com via Archive.org)

• History of Hyrule (Historyofhyrule.com)

• Miyamoto’s interview in Time Magazine for Kids (WordPress)

• Minako Hamano (Fandom)

• Satomi Asakawa (Fandom)

• Gaming Alexandria (Gamingalexandria.com)

• Retromags (Retromags.com)

• The Hyrule Journals (YouTube)

Max’s Bonus Show Notes:

People:

• Melora Hart, who runs History of Hyrule.

  • By FAR the most prolific scanner of Zelda books, guides, and other art, and she’s been doing it since 2002 or 2003. The absolute pillar of the Zelda community for the last twenty years IMO, and the one who inspired me to make Hyrule Interviews

• Joshua Lindquist is a Zelda fandom historian. He runs Zelda Archive, a collection of info on the various Zelda fansites from the history of the fandom, and he even recreates some of the old sites. He is also a webmaster at Zeldauniverse.net

• Mases Hagopian is one of the webmasters over at Zelda Dungeon, and he is kinda quietly responsible for a lot of old Japanese guides getting scanned. He’s scanned many himself, and provided Melora with many for her to scan.

• Spritecell runs the Shigeru Miyamoto Archive, a big directory of Shigeru Miyamoto interviews

• Clyde Mandelin runs the blog Legends of Localization and has written a book about Zelda localization. Professional translator for stuff like One Piece, Attack on Titan

• Keza MacDonald is a long-time journalist who’s done many interviews with Zelda devs. She just published a Nintendo history book, Super Nintendo

• Chris Kohler is another long-time journalist who’s written books and done tons of interviews with Zelda devs.

  • He is also a game developer himself nowadays, working at Digital Eclipse

• Alex Highsmith runs Shmuplations, which isn’t specifically Zelda-focused but is the biggest repository of translations of Japanese interviews out there. He’s translated many interviews with folks who worked on Zelda.

• Aria “Glitterberri” Tanner has a site where she posts translations of Japanese interviews, and has a particular focus on Zelda. She was actually involved with the official translation of the Hyrule Historia book, too.

• Mr. Talida, who runs Keshi Corner, where he 3D scans old collectible miniature figures from Japan. He’s done a lot of Zelda ones

• Two extremely prolific Zelda collectors who share a lot of media about their collections:

  • Linksliltri4ce

  • Ikhana Kingdom - I think she has the Guinness World Record for the biggest Zelda collection? Or did at one point.

Notable Websites/Communities:

• History of Hyrule - Biggest and longest-running collection of scanned Zelda material.

• The two biggest Zelda fan sites are still actively maintained today:

  • https://zeldauniverse.net/

  • https://www.zeldadungeon.net/

• Zeldawiki.wiki – the biggest independent (ie, not Fandom) Zelda wiki.

• Hyrule Interviews - My own site

• Shigeru Miyamoto Archive

• Zelda Archive - Fansite archive

• Shmuplations - Interview translations

• Gaming Alexandria is a group dedicated to scanning old gaming material, especially from Japan.

• Retromags “The Vintage Video Game Magazine Archive”

• BS Zelda - A tiny little community that’s been trying to preserve the BS Zelda games for decades.

• First two (known) Zelda fansites:

  • Zelda Headquarters, founded by Niels t’Hooft in 1996. Defunct. Archive.org link

  • North Castle, founded by Juliet and Kirsty Singleton in 1997. Still live!

Sources for my more outlandish claims:

• Zelda started off as sci-fi (Source)(Source)

• Zelda was originally for Nintendo Vs System (Source)

• Zelda was originally going to be a dungeon maker, and then was just a dungeon crawler before adding an overworld (Source)

• Ravel’s Bolero was almost the title theme (Source)

• Zelda was influenced by Ultima and Black Onyx (Source)

• Miyamoto has a brother (source)

• Miyamoto drew one half of the Zelda 1 map, Tezuka drew the other half (Source)

[Editor’s note: I wanted everyone to have access to this episode due to its perpetually timely topic, so I’ve made it available the same day as the Patreon release. If you like my work at Post Games, please consider supporting Patreon.com/PostGames for $5.]

Is video games journalism dying? Or is it more vibrant than ever?

You now have access to my recent talk at NYU Game Center, previously only heard by 200 or so people in downtown Brooklyn. The lecture, given last Thursday, is titled “The Nine Lives of Video Games Journalism,” and in it, I suggest where the games media is heading by comparing the current trends to the past 50 years and the many publications that have come and gone.

You’ll hear me try and fail not to cry about halfway through, when it hits me mid-sentence that I’ve unintentionally written a eulogy for hundreds, if not thousands, of careers in this space – including potentially my own.

And yet, people who attended the talk – including people in games media – described it as moving, validating, and cathartic.

[The talk moves fast. I crammed about 90 minutes of lecture into an hour. So I’m making the Google Slides deck available for folks who’d like to follow along. You can find them below. I’ve also edited the audio to smooth the flow here and there. ]

*An unedited video version will be available on the NYU Game Center’s YouTube page in the coming weeks.

Patreon Bonus: A 30-Minute Post-Talk Q&A

Patrons get an extra ac: 30-minute post-lecture Q&A hosted by NYU Game Center’s assistant arts professor Charles Pratt, featuring additional questions from the audience! (Patreon.com/PostGames)

The Nine Lives of Games Journalism Slides

• Available here!

An Incomplete Catalogue of Games Media in 2026

• Available here!

5 Must-Listen Episodes: The Post Games Starter Pack

• Available here!

This Week in Video Game Links

• A Virtual Escape for Rikers Inmates (NYTimes)

• Meet the players who lost big money on Peter Molyneux’s failed Legacy (ArsTechnica)

• Can a game be ‘so bad it’s good’? (Jank)

• Titanium Court Makes You Reckon With Your Own Magic (Exalclaw)

• ‘Any objections, Lady?’: On linearity, subservience and feminine agency in Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Other M (Mothership)

• Love And Deepspace Gives The People What They Want (Aftermath)

Free Game of the Week: KuloNiku: Bowl Up! demo

From the Steam summary: “Prep your stations for a management-sim cooking game with attitude! Utilize long-honed recipes as you prepare unique meals for quirky small-town locals, upgrade and customize your shop, compete in thrilling cooking battles to become top chef, and protect your family’s long-running restaurant!” (Steam)

What Else I’m Enjoying

• Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone? (NYTimes)

• My Adventures With ‘The AI That Actually Does Things’ (Intelligencer)

• The Gods of Logic: Before and after artificial intelligence (Harper’s)

50 episodes! 50 episodes?! Where does a new listener start?

Typically, I tell folks the best place to start Post Games is whichever episode headline sounds the most appealing. After all, the show is created to be evergreen, so that you can listen to the whole catalogue today, tomorrow, or years from now.

But what if you want to speedrun the catalogue? I’ve collected five episodes that will allow you to hear the variety of interviews and topics that the show covers.

Already a regular listener? This is the perfect post to share with friends who might enjoy the show, too!

• Post Games free RSS feed

• Post Games Patreon — Only $5 a month

1. The “Too Many Games” Problem

Episode 21

The most successful and prolific video games reporter of our generation, Jason Schreier, talks about the “too many” games paradox. Even the most talented developers can’t guarantee their games will be discovered amongst the thousands of new releases each year. Meanwhile, the audience has never had more options in terms of scale, genre, and point of view.

Why?

Over the course of my first five months of episodes, I noticed a trend across my interviews with game makers: an intense anxiety around game discovery. My chats with both Schreier and GameDiscoverCo’s Simon Carless (Why Great Games Sometimes Flop) felt like the end of Post Game’s first anime arc.

Patreon Bonus Segment:

Schreier is a reporter at Bloomberg, making him one of a tiny few reporting on games for a mainstream publication. Naturally, we had an extended chat about mainstream media’s approach (and lack thereof) to gaming coverage.

2. 18 Reasons to Be Thankful for Video Games

Episode 27

Ahead of Thanksgiving, 19 of my favorite people in video games shared what about the hobby they’re thankful for. The guest list includes veteran game designers, recovering AAA executives, indie award winners, and a beloved comedian/superhero.

Why?

To differentiate Post Games from a games press driven by an ad-supported model that incentivizes reactive reporting and takes, I needed to build an editorial calendar and build a pipeline that allowed me to juggle lots of interviews and contacts at the same time. This episode was the first of the calendar’s fruit, a gargantuan project that could only be done with months of lead time. But it would be a dud without the guests themselves, who delivered thoughtful and heartfelt answers.

Patreon Bonus Segment:

I recorded my own extended self-reflection and titled it “Why I’m thankful for change (and how you can create your own).”

3. Two Blue Prince Interviews, Seven Months Apart

Episode 28

In early 2025, I began a year-long project that I assumed would run as a written feature on Polygon. Ahead of the release of Blue Prince, I spoke with its creator about his anxieties, hopes, and his state of being. Rather than transcribe and publish the conversation, I saved the file, planning to pair it with another interview at the end of the year. Weeks after that first interview, my time at Polygon came to an end. As Post Games gained momentum, I decided to revive the project, now in audio form. Polygon was kind enough to allow me to use the original interview, and Blue Prince’s Tonda Ros was generous enough to make time ahead of the Game Awards. It’s a podcast episode, but it’s also a time machine for everyone involved.

Why?

It’s a miracle! That everyone participated. That a single podcast episode could blend two eras of my career. That Blue Prince would become one of 2025’s most critically acclaimed games. This is the closest I’ve ever come to Babe Ruth calling his shit.

Patreon Bonus Segment:

Tonda Ros talks about his plans beyond Blue Prince, including why he’s not interested in a movie or a sequel.

4. Games About Death Improve Our Lives

Episode 11

Ahead of my 40th birthday, I found myself dwelling on death. Desperate to talk to someone with some perspective, I reached out to gaming’s foremost expert. Video game writer and narrative director Kaitlin Tremblay has co-written three games exploring the many sides of death: A Mortician’s Tale, Seasonala Cemetery, and the upcoming Ambrosia Sky.

Why?

This is the moment I had my first real taste of what Post Games could become. I’m proud of the episodes I made before this one, and I think they’re worth listening to. But here’s where I realize the secret isn’t knowing about games; it’s caring about people.

Patreon Bonus Segment:

Why I’ve been playing a game about death for half of my life. I reflect on a very short, very impactful game that I revisit every few years. And how it changes alongside me.

5. Edmund McMillen Wants You to Ask the Uncomfortable Questions

Episode 39

I had no interest in playing Mewgenics, nor did I want to talk to its creator, Edmund McMillen. His previous game, The Binding of Isaac, is one of the most successful and beloved indie games of the past decade, but its depiction of cleft lips had kept me at arm's distance. I didn’t feel mocked, but I was… well, skeptical. Fortunately, my friend and longtime collaborator Russ Frushtick encouraged me to hop on the phone with Edmun and talk through my discomfort with his work. In less than an hour, I learned that McMillen and I had more in common than I could have ever imagined.

Why?

This is the first time a guest cried on the show. It’s also the first time I cried on the show.

Patreon Bonus Segment:

Edmund stuck around to talk about the sunny side of life, including pinball and long walks on the beach. I’m serious.

Bonus:

6. The Pokémon Origin Story

Past Games, Episode 2 - Patreon Exclusive

Since December, I’ve been recording monthly bonus episodes in which an expert guides me through the history of a video game, series, or moment that’s celebrating an anniversary in 2026. I call the series Past Games, and to give folks a taste of its style, I made this episode on the history of the original Pokémon available to everyone.

Why?

Who wouldn’t want to hear how a video game zine maker would befriend Shigeru Miyamoto and create arguably the most successful media property since Mickey Mouse?

Patreon Bonus Segment:

The whole episode is a bonus for Patreon supporters, as is the rest of the Past Games series.

Last Thursday, I spoke at NYU Game Center about the future of games journalism and how 50 years of history can tell us which ongoing trends should terrify us and which should give us hope. One trend that’s an Unqualified Good is the current abundance of games media. Each publication in the image above is unique. And the slide represents a modest portion of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people using text, audio, and video to report, analyze, critique, contextualize, and archive the medium.

The image makes a bold first impression, but it’s not a particularly useful curation tool. So, I’ve assembled “An Incomplete Catalogue of Games Media in 2026.”

To start, this spreadsheet doesn’t include everything. How could it? For example, I didn’t attempt to catalogue Twitch streamers, and I only included a corner of YouTube. The list is focused on English-speaking publications, mostly from the United States. If folks want to build on it with their own forks, they’re totally welcome to!

Caveats aside, there’s a mountain of incredible stuff here! And it’s wonderfully overwhelming to see so much talent in a single space!

As for the lecture, the folks at NYU Game Center were kind enough to let me run the talk in full on Post Games. It will appear on the Post Games Patreon this Friday, along with a Patreon-exclusive Q&A segment that was recorded at the Game Center following the lecture. And the lecture will be available on Monday on the free feed for everybody to hear.

You can subscribe to the Post Games Patreon for $5. Or subscribe to the free feed on your podcast app of choice.

[I’m positive the list is missing publications that will be glaringly and embarrassingly obvious in hindsight, so please drop them in the comments!]

Arbor Day is Friday, April 24, in the United States, so you’re reading this after the holiday has passed. But don’t fret, friends, because Arbor Day is celebrated around the world across many different days and seasons. In the Central African Republic, National Tree Planting Day is July 22. In Colombia, it’s April 29. The Day of the Tree is observed every year on June 21 in Cuba. And in Egypt, the year opens with Arbor Day on January 15.

Arbor Day’s mission is elegant: everyone is encouraged to plant trees. I understand that some folks will find this to be a modest act in the face of climate collapse, and yet, I value its capacity to make individual acts (planting trees) into an act of shared, global consciousness (let’s heal our planet).

Planting a tree won’t save us from climate change. Nor will the most well-participated Arbor Day. Nonetheless, it’s as vital a piece as any other in the elaborate puzzle we’re trying to solve to provide our children with a sustainable planet.

To mark Arbor Day, I wanted to plant a little tree in your mind. The pan-European studio Three More Days blends video games, theater, and experimental art to get people thinking and, perhaps more importantly, feeling big things about climate change. They practice what they preach, as you’ll hear in our conversation when creative producer Maria Cârstian details the fight to protect a local park from corporate-backed arson.

But they too know the limits of any one protest, any one holiday, any one tree, and yes, any one video game. Their most recent project, Mini Mini Golf Golf, is, despite what its playful title suggests, a game about climate collapse. Though don’t expect it to solve the problem that could end the world.

Creative Friedrich Kirschner puts their ambitions in perspective:

 The one thing that we really didn’t want to do is have this sort of solutionist design thing, which I don’t want to throw shade on anybody who’s trying to find solutions for climate change. That’s really cool. It’s just not the thing that we wanted to do. We didn’t want you to clean up things and then everything’s fine. Or, rebuild things and then everything’s cool. Or, do the solar punk thing where, suddenly, you have flying windmills, and there’s only five people on earth. And then everything’s gonna be fine. And I think one of the key pillars in everything that we’ve wanted to do at the studio is, “Can we do this without imagining an enormous genocide?” And that makes it a lot harder.

Or as Cârstian says concisely:

Video games, and art in itself, can’t solve anything. But we can raise some awareness, and we can make people feel things. And sometimes maybe that’s enough.

Arbor Day is just an idea. Today, tomorrow, or this weekend, I encourage you to plant a tree. Not metaphorically. Literally. Not sure how to go about it? The Arbor Day Foundation, linked in the show notes, will gladly provide not just instructions but a sapling! Whatever it takes, get yourself on the dirt. Lower life into the planet. And feel it. The touch. The smell. That indescribable sense of not saving the planet, but changing it for the better.

This week on Post Games, I chat with Friedrich Kirschner and Maria Cârstian about Mini Mini Golf Golf, a game that begins as lighthearted mini golf and evolves into a narrative adventure set in a world in which we don’t prevent climate collapse and instead must learn to live with it.

This Week on Post Games:

• Act 1:     A Mini Golf Game at the Not-Quite End of the World

• Act 2: Making Fun Games about Big Problems

• Patreon Bonus: How to Stay Optimistic

Guests:

• Friedrich Kirschner: founder and Creative Director of Three More Years

• Maria Cârstian: creative producer of Three More Years

• Closing Song: “Nepturne” by 100 Rabbits (Oquoine)

On the Patreon for $5

Want to hear a full-spoilers discussion of Titanium Court with its creator, AP Thomson? It’s now available as a bonus episode on the Post Games Patreon!

Plus, you can listen to the Patreon-exclusive “The History of L.A. Noire” with special guest Tim Rogers. You can hear the full series, weekly bonus segments, and ad-free episodes for $5! Join at patreon.com/PostGames.

Act 1: A Mini Golf Game at the Not-Quite End of the World

• Mini Mini Golf Golf (Steam)

• Arbor Day Foundation (https://www.arborday.org/)

• Mini Mini Golf Golf Review (GameCritics)

• PLAY17: Friedrich Kirschner (Hochschule Ernst Busch) im Interview (InsideCreativeGaming)

• EA2020 – Real Time I (DEPART & Friedrich Kirschner) (Expanded Conference)

• Expanded Animation 2023 – Synaesthetic Syntax – Agency in Performance (Expanded Conference)

• Bodies of Extraction: Underneath the Ground of Islands (Limestone Bookshop)

Act 2: Making Fun Games about Big Problems

• A Permanent Echo (Steam)

• Zany Golf (Wiki)

• Technological fix (Wiki)

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (PDF)

• It’s a Wonderful Life (JustWatch)

Patreon Bonus: How to Stay Optimistic

• President of Romania (Wiki)

• Ars Electronica (https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/)

• Friedrich Kirschner (Monoskop)

This Week in Video Game Links

• Yakuza’s Shopfronts Are One Of Life’s Little Pleasures (Aftermath)

• The Best Sports Game Nobody Played (NakeyJakey)

• The amazing mail sent to a video game publisher (Game File)

• THE TRUE FIRST EASTER EGG: READY PLAYER ONE WAS WRONG (A Critical Hit)

Free Game of the Week: Everything Is Crab demo

From the Steam summary: “The Animal Evolution Roguelite. Hunt, Flee, Scavenge and Thrive in a living ecosystem. Choose from 100+ Evolutions and Specialisations for unique creature combinations in every run. Adapt to survive the natural curve in order to beat carcinisation... or get Darwin’d trying!” (Steam)

Song of the Week: “Nepturne” by Hundred Rabbits

From Oquoine, now available on Playdate.