Lists
Video Game Documentaries
Episode List
Video Game Documentaries
9
public
Feb 12th, 2025
Podcasts about video games — like most podcasts, I suppose — tend to go down the easy route: two or more people talk crap and make wisecracks about new games or old games (or both) and various things vaguely-connected to games. Some get into the tougher logistics of interviews or pre-planned conversations, sure, and th...
Episodes
Episode | Description | Date Aired | Reach | Contacts | Categories | Hosts | Episode Guests | Length | Curator's Notes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
December 5, 2017 | -- | -- | 43:49s | An ESPN deep dive into the beginnings of one of the most important video game franchises ever. Madden NFL not only changed sports video games; it also changed the NFL and sport AND video games. (Thanks @rustylbailey on Twitter for the tip on th | |||||||||
April 2, 2020 | 31:02s | Searching for the parallels between a real pandemic and a virtual one, in the hopes of finding lessons for the future? Hell yeah. Plus a cool games history lesson that delves into the fascinating world of _how_ people play games. | |||||||||||
April 29, 2009 | -- | 53:00s | Almost everyone of a certain age who shares a passion for videogames seems to have at least one "what am I doing with my life" phase. Every episode of A Life Well Wasted plays off the existential question of "why games" to some extent, but here | ||||||||||
January 27, 2009 | -- | 45:47s | A poignant tribute to a magazine that influenced a generation of video game fans, journalists, and developers. Come for the delightful stories of smashing traffic cones into the floor, and people who worked their dream jobs; stay for the decade | ||||||||||
December 23, 2019 | -- | 24:13s | One of my own stories, and a favourite among listeners of my show; I still laugh when I think about how a silly sound effect made by a type of unit in a strategy game has become a meme. But this is more than just a dive into the journey from so | ||||||||||
May 16, 2018 | -- | 43:48s | Former GameSpot video guy and now full-time crowdfunded-documentary-maker Danny O'Dwyer's first attempt at an audio doco was a very impressive one. His voiceover work sometimes lacks that sense of place that you need when working in sound alone | ||||||||||
April 15, 2020 | -- | 39:48s | Another one from my own show, detailing the strange history and legacy of Halo/Destiny-creator Bungie's long-recurring April Fools' joke. It's got tales of pimps, wise-cracks, improvised design meetings, a Gilligan's Island theme song spoof, a | ||||||||||
August 31, 2009 | -- | 1:00:28s | I find this one a little weird and disjointed, but the stories themselves are as well-told and beautifully-produced as everything else in A Life Well Wasted. | ||||||||||
June 29, 2017 | -- | 29:14s | A short trip inside the bewildering, endlessly-fascinating EVE Online universe, with amazing lines like "Russians and Australians control the nighttime." Here the focus is on players' war stories, and on one story in particular. | ||||||||||
August 2, 2020 | -- | 38:58s | Museums are more than temples of culture and history; they are places of memory. And here you get a taste of both of these, along with a bittersweet final act — an exciting expansion tempered by the heartache and economic uncertainty brought by | ||||||||||
November 11, 2017 | -- | 37:04s | Hear the story of the guy who translated Final Fantasy II, Earthbound Zero, and Chrono Trigger sequel Radical Dreamers — all through community-made tools, for no pay, before there were official translations of any of these — and who later went | ||||||||||
October 14, 2017 | -- | 32:16s | I'm sure there are a bunch of valuable marketing lessons in here, but the reason to listen is to hear about how one guy went to extraordinary measures to ensure that his company would pay for a booth at a tech convention he wanted to go to. And | ||||||||||
November 25, 2009 | -- | 45:00s | |||||||||||
June 23, 2010 | -- | 58:18s | |||||||||||
August 30, 2020 | -- | 40:01s | There was a time, not so long ago, when the most popular computer games were flight sims and golf sims. This story hearkens back to that time, when a game called Links was king of the PC, and it explores how Links reinvented virtual golf — then | ||||||||||
November 7, 2019 | -- | 36:39s | I love this story. When I interviewed Eric and Charlie about their gaming endeavours for my book The Secret History of Mac Gaming, I thought I'd be hearing the standard trials and tribulations of game development — just a bit harder because the | ||||||||||
December 25, 2019 | -- | 26:35s | I really wanted to like this story, but I really don't. While I can't fault the production, which is as excellent as you'd expect from a multi-person, multi-disciplinary professional team, I am still frustrated at the way it over-simplifies and | ||||||||||
September 30, 2017 | -- | 31:02s | Slightly-shaky audio quality notwithstanding, you won't hear a better rundown of how the best game art of the 1980s and '90s was made. Mark Ferrari is both a brilliant illustrator and a genius innovator. A must listen for anyone interested in g | ||||||||||
November 12, 2018 | -- | 27:23s | I loved hearing about the level of thought that went into making something as seemingly-insignificant as the sound you hear after you press the power button. On a related note, there's a wonderful episode of the podcast Welcome to Macintosh tha | ||||||||||
November 29, 2016 | -- | 12:21s | |||||||||||
July 24, 2019 | -- | 26:53s | I had a lot of fun integrating dialogue clips from the game to reinforce and support my points about Hogs of War's underappreciated WW1 satire. | ||||||||||
July 1, 2019 | -- | 25:29s | |||||||||||
June 7, 2019 | -- | 21:49s | |||||||||||
March 27, 2018 | -- | 29:43s | This was my first experiment in making a documentary without interviews, using just research, and I still believe it turned out really well. It kind of turned into a belated tribute — almost an obituary — to a game design and programming legend | ||||||||||
April 30, 2019 | -- | 24:33s | Pulled together from a myriad of sources, here's a narration-(and-music-)only deep dive into the history and legacy of mega-influential Apple II/multiplatform game Lode Runner — a brilliant action-puzzler that went through many iterations and m | ||||||||||
October 23, 2017 | -- | 31:23s | |||||||||||
September 15, 2017 | -- | 24:04s | This one deals with a time before we even had a games industry, when the people who made games just did it to impress their friends or to play with the technology at their disposal. It's amazing how ahead of their time both the PLATO system and | ||||||||||
October 3, 2017 | -- | 25:52s | An excellent primer on video game sound design, which is a massive topic with a rich history of its own, and which is ideally suited to the medium of audio documentary. | ||||||||||
December 22, 2017 | -- | 31:30s | |||||||||||
February 18, 2018 | -- | 37:38s | |||||||||||
March 20, 2013 | -- | 1:04:46s | |||||||||||
May 27, 2016 | -- | 33:28s | This could do with a couple of new editing and mastering passes, but it should be considered required listening for anyone who makes or loves "walking simulator" games - as here we have the story not only of the game that paved the way for mega | ||||||||||
November 22, 2019 | -- | 33:39s | |||||||||||
June 13, 2018 | -- | 32:59s | Surely the Petz games must be one of the best redirections of negative energy into positive creativity that the games industry has ever seen? | ||||||||||
March 3, 2009 | -- | 44:09s | My favourite episode of A Life Well Wasted. It comes in three parts: game collecting, with an interesting conversation between Robert and industry legend Mike Mika; pinball preservation, with a great contrast between the sound of excited kids p | ||||||||||
September 3, 2019 | -- | 30:21s | Ostensibly about the heyday and decline of a popular soccer management game, but secretly about the causes and symptoms of the growing consolidation of the sports game genre. | ||||||||||
February 18, 2015 | -- | 9:39s | A Roman Mars spin on the final segment from A Life Well Wasted's excellent Gotta Catch 'em All episode. | ||||||||||
June 12, 2020 | -- | 22:37s | Slate's Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism leans heavily on the knowledge and insights of journalist Simon Parkin to show how mainstream coverage of games can be compelling, punchy, and accurate — no oversimplifications needed. In this case w | ||||||||||
September 5, 2017 | -- | 30:59s | If you ever wondered how we got into this situation where all mobile apps are expected to be free – or at most $0.99 – then wonder no more. This is the story of the App Store's rapid race to the bottom, and the flaws in the system that made it | ||||||||||
January 12, 2017 | -- | 20:59s | A great introduction to the beginnings of console video gaming and the rise and fall of Atari (mark1), beautifully produced and edited, that's let down by the total omission of the groundbreaking work done outside of Atari through the likes of | ||||||||||
November 23, 2018 | -- | 40:08s | |||||||||||
October 31, 2018 | -- | 35:27s | Microsoft actually spent years learning the ropes of the games industry before the Xbox launched in 2001, and they had some major successes and failures along the way. This story focuses on a significant portion of that pre-Xbox tale, covering | ||||||||||
January 29, 2020 | -- | 28:00s | I think it's amazing how versatile the "fog of war" metaphor is, with roots in the theory of actual warfare but applications across wide swathes of boardgame and videogame design. In less than half an hour, this story takes you on a tour throug | ||||||||||
April 13, 2017 | -- | 35:46s | If Monks Had Macs was not a game, though it had games within it, but it was THE exemplar of multimedia before CD-ROMs came along. This is one of the most interesting bits of software ever created, so do yourself a favour and listen to the story | ||||||||||
August 29, 2018 | -- | 41:49s | Danny O'Dwyer's second attempt to adapt his well-honed video production and documentary-making techniques to audio form. It's a bit of a shaky transition for him, as he still sounds uncomfortable when doing his voiceover narration interstitials | ||||||||||
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