My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

My guest today is a is a Canadian American actor for video games, television and film. Born in Labrador in Canada, she soon moved to Alabama in the United States, where, as a teenager, she began working as a commercial voice over artist for radio. After graduating from Alabama School of Fine Arts, she took on voice roles to fund her dream of becoming a musician. Soon, however, the acting took over. After securing some roles in regional TV series, she moved to Los Angeles. There, a part in the cartoon ‘Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?’ brought her into the world of video games, where she quickly became one of the world’s most sought-after performers. In 2011 the New Yorker described her as “a kind of Meryl Streep of the form.” Her roles, which number more than a hundred, include that of Samus Aran in the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid, Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect games, and the character Ashe in Overwatch.

My guest today is an award-winning creator and writer of comic books. Born into a Staffordshire working-class family, he was a student of Applied Biology at Bath University when he started contributing to the prominent computer games magazine Amiga Power. Upon graduation, my guest joined the staff of PC Gamer, then left the magazine to go freelance in 2003. The following year he published a highly influential manifesto calling for a new mode of first-person, subjective writing about video games that he dubbed New Games Journalism. Two years later, he published his first comic book, Phonogram, which described music as a kind of transformational magic. After founding the PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun in 2007, my guest left journalism for good to work on comic books, including X-Men, Iron Man, and Star Wars, a series for which he also created the character, Doctor Aphra. He has continued to work on his own projects, including Wicked + the Divine, Once & Future and DIE, a horror series about tabletop role-playing games for which he received four of his six Hugo Award nominations.

My guest today is a British-Ghanaian writer and advocate for inclusion and diversity in the video game industry. Having graduated from the University of Westminster with a degree in creative writing with English literature, she founded Melanin Gamers, a support community for people of colour who play video games, or who want to join the game industry but feel unsure that there is a place for them within it. The initiative, which has more than four thousand members worldwide, has hosted tournaments, worked alongside Microsoft and The Prince’s Trust, and in 2020 won Barnet's Big Idea Entrepreneurial Prize. That same year my guest’s novel, ‘A Thousand Natural Shocks’ was long listed for the Lucy Cavendish Prize, Cambridge University’s literary award for unpublished women authors. She is currently writing a graphic novel about a young boy with sickle-cell anaemia, as well as representing the Ghanaian Esports Federation in International Relations. Welcome, Annabel Ashalley-Anthony.

My guest today is a Canadian video game designer and director. After graduating from the University of British Columbia with an MFA in creative writing, he joined Ubisoft Montreal where he co-wrote the script for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. In 2005 he directed a sequel to that game, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and three years later released the oppressive and acclaimed sandbox shooter, Far Cry 2. In 2010 he left Ubisoft and joined LucasArts, then Valve, then Amazon Game Studios, before finally returning to Canada to work as creative director on the Ubisoft game Watch Dogs: Legion. A keen thinker on video games, my guest coined the term ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ to describe when a game’s story and mechanics sit at odds with one another. Today, he serves as creative lead at Ubisoft Montreal, the studio he first joined as a graduate, where is he working on Assassin’s Creed Infinity. 

My guest today is an English video game designer and programmer. In 1984 he designed The Entrepreneur, a simulation game about running a start-up company. When it sold just two copies, however, my guest left the world of video games and began exporting cans of baked beans to the Middle East. When the computer manufacturer Commodore mistook this venture for a software company with a similar name, my guest signed a deal to design a database system for the Amiga. This benign deception eventually led to the founding of Bullfrog Productions, where my guest designed Populous, the first so-called god game, which went on to sell more than four million copies. Many more successes followed: 1994’s Theme Park, 1997’s Dungeon Keeper then, after he founded Lionhead Studios, the multi-million selling Fable series. My guest is no stranger to controversy either; his more recent, experimental work at 22Cans, the company he founded in 2012, has sometimes been accused of overpromising and underdelivering. He remains, nonetheless, a legendary – if elusive – figure in the UK games industry. 

My guest today is a game designer and Founding Chair of New York University’s Game Center. An influential writer, speaker, and thinker on video games he has taught generations of emerging young designers. The New York Times once described him as the “reigning genius of the mysteries of games.”My guest’s experience is not merely academic, however: in 2005 he co-founded area/code, the studio which subsequently released one of the best regarded puzzle games yet made: Drop7. Most recently, he joined forces with his son, who is also a game designer, and together released Babble Royale, a free-to-play battle royale influenced by the boardgame Scrabble. “Making games combines everything that’s hard about building a bridge with everything that’s hard about composing an opera,” he once said. “Games are operas made out of bridges.” Welcome, Frank Lantz.

My guest today is Digital Curator for Contemporary Collections at The British Library. After graduating from Aberystwyth University with a degree in Library Studies and Art History, my guest was awarded an MA in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester.Then, having worked as curator of maps at the National Library of Scotland, my guest joined the British library, and began to devise creative reuses of digital collections, including via video games. This work has led to collaborations with The National Videogame Museum, AdventureX, International Games Month in Libraries and on research projects with UCL’s Institute of Education, and Lancaster University’s Litcraft initiative, which builds literary worlds in Minecraft.Exhibition: Digital Storytelling - The British Library (bl.uk)Events Series: Digital Storytelling events - The British Library (bl.uk)

My guest today is a game director who has pioneered new forms of nonlinear storytelling that blend film and games. After twelve-year stint at the British development studio Climax, where he directed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, he began work on an independent project, Her Story. In the game, partly inspired by Sharon Stone’s audition tapes for the film Basic Instinct, you sift through a trove of police interview footage to uncover a mystery. Her Story’s style of disconnected, live action sleuthing has become characteristic of his work, which includes the games Telling Lies and, most recently, the Netflix-published Immortality, described by Prospect Magazine as a“culture-spanning, psycho-visual experiment.” “All my games have been about identity,” he says. “It’s scary that the people we’ve known for decades are unknowable to us.” Welcome, Sam Barlow.[All voiceover performances courtesy of Ed Hawkins: http://edwardhawkinsbass.com]

My guest today is editor-in-chief of Time Out London. After graduating from SOAS University with a degree in religion and the history of art, he moved to China for a few years, then struck out as a freelance writer contributing to, among other publications, The Times, the Observer, Heat magazine and the New Statesman. In 2012 he assumed the role of features editor at the men’s magazine FHM, of which he later became deputy editor. From there, he edited the pioneering newsletter Mr Hyde, and then became editor of the gravely missed ShortList magazine. In 2019, he took the top job at Time Out. Throughout his career, my guest has often run video game-themed special editions, building on his personal passion for the medium.