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My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin
Iain Lee (broadcaster, comedian, counsellor).
Ep. 57
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My guest today is an English broadcaster, writer, television presenter and stand-up comedian. Born in Slough, he began working as a comic in the early nineties, soon landing a gig as co-host of Channel 4’s The 11 O’clock Show, the satirical comedy programme that launched the careers of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais.
A slew of high-profile TV and radio presenting gigs followed, including for Channel 4’s video game-related show Thumb Bandits. During that time my guest often used drugs to cope with the stress of his burgeoning career, before becoming sober in 2005. Since then he has openly talked about his ongoing struggles with substance abuse and mental health, including on the seventeenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, in which he came third.
As well as writing a regular column for Retro Gamer magazine, and hosting the Random Access Memories podcast, all about 8-bit computers, my guest recently became a trained counsellor, drawing upon his first-hand experiences to help others.
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Correspondence Special #5: The Best Video Game SFX?
35:44|In this special correspondence edition, Simon reads out your correspondence and answers your questions. Which ten games have been picked in the first 100 episodes more than any others? What are the best Christmas-themed video games? What are the best video game sound effects of all time? Who are the video game industry's true founding fathers (or mothers)? And a special teaser for Simon's next book project.
100. Jordan Mechner, creator of Prince of Persia.
01:27:03||Ep. 100Jordan Mechner is an American author, game designer, graphic novelist and screenwriter. While a student at Yale University he designed and programmed the martial arts game Karateka. To create the animations in the game he pioneered a rotoscoping process to capture Super 8 film footage of his friends and family members. My guest further developed this technique for his next game. Prince of Persia became a best-seller, then a series, then, in 2010, a film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Kingsley, for which my guest also wrote the screenplay. In 2017, he moved to Montpellier, France where he has authored several graphic novels, including, most recently, an autobiographical work titled, Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family.
99. Andy McNamara, former editor-in-chief, Game Informer.
01:22:03||Ep. 99Andy Macnamars is the former editor-in-chief of Game Informer. He joined the bi-monthly magazine for its launch in 1991 as an editorial assistant. Within eighteen months he had been promoted to editor’s seat, which he the occupied for 25 years, growing the magazine’s readership from around 60,000 subscribers to, at its height, eight million, making it one of the most widely read publications anywhere. In 2020 he left Game Informer following a round of layoffs and joined Electronic Arts, where he is currently the Head of Integrated Comms for Battlefield. Earlier this year GameStop closed Game Informer. My guest tweeted at the time: ‘As someone who was there at issue one and spent most of their life fighting and scratching and clawing for GI, it breaks my heart to see it end.”
98. Corinne Busche & John Epler, game directors, Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
01:18:06||Ep. 98Corrine and John are the director and creative director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Corinne Busche majored in digital animation at the University of Utah. In 2006 she joined the studio now known as EA Saltlake, working through the ranks to become a Design Director for The Sims series.John Epler studied English language and literature at the University of Alberta. After graduating, he was selling televisions when he applied to be a tester at Bioware. At the studio he began working as a writer and director of cinematics.Now, the pair have come together to lead development on the latest entry to the beloved Dragon Age RPG series, which launched at the end of October.
97. Sarah Elmaleh, voice actor (Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Gears of War 5).
01:21:36||Ep. 97My guest today is the American voice-actor and activist Sarah Elmaleh. As a student at Wesleyan University she performed in a variety of theatrical productions and radio plays, spending a portion of her studies at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford. After graduating she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and was working as a stage actor when she fell in with the city's game development scene, and decided to commit her life to the art form. She moved to Los Angeles and began voicing characters in blockbuster games such as Fortnite, Halo Infinite, Gears of War 5, as well as critically acclaimed indie titles such as Afterparty, Pyre, and Gone Home. During this time, she began working as a liaison between game developers and the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA. Today, she sits as chair of the union’s Interactive Media unit, working to secure workplace measures that are common elsewhere in Hollywood.
96. Matt Firor, founder of ZeniMax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online).
01:10:34||Ep. 96My guest today is the founder and director of ZeniMax Online Studio, Matt Firor. After studying history at George Washington University, he co-founded the developer Interesting Systems Inc., where he created a MUD-style text adventure titled Darkness Falls. In 1995 he co-founded Mythic Entertainment, where he produced pioneering online games such as Godzilla Online, Aliens Online, Starship Troopers: Battlespace, and, in 2001, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Dark Age of Camelot and its first two expansions. This experience then led my guest to found ZeniMax Online Studio in 2007 and start building the MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online. It launched in 2014, and, ten years later, my guest continues to lead development. According to the company’s latest figures, since its launch The Elder Scrolls Online has generated more than $2 billion in revenue.
95. Pitof Comar, film director (Catwoman, Alien: Resurrection).
01:11:51||Ep. 95My guest today is a French film director and pioneer in the world of digital imaging. Born in Paris, he studied architecture and medicine at university before joining the film industry. He co-founded Duran Duboi, a postproduction house that created visual effects for music videos by artists including Prince, Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, and Boy George.As a VFX pioneer, he formed a close collaboration with the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with whom he worked on the feature films “Delicatessen”, “City of Lost Children”, and “Alien: Resurrection”. In 2001 my guest made his directorial debut with “Vidocq”, which holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s first all-HD movie, released ahead of 'Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones’.Two years later, he directed “Catwoman” starring Halle Berry in the lead role. Since then, my guest has produced more than a dozen films and, in 2019, co-founded the VR company 6th Sense VR, which specialises in culture and well-being.
94. Hannah Nicklin, playwright, narrative designer (Mutazione, Saltsea Chronicles).
01:16:10||Ep. 94My guest today is Hannah Nicklin, a British writer and narrative designer for video games. After studying Drama at Loughborough University, and Playwriting at the University of Birmingham, she returned to Loughborough for a doctorate in interactive design as anti-capitalist practice.After several years working as a poet, theatre-maker, and academic, in 2019 she moved into games full time: writing, narrative designing and co-producing Mutazione, the most nominated game in the 2020 IGF awards. That same year she became studio lead of Die Gute Fabrik, an independent game studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark.There she led and creative directed Saltsea Chronicles, one of the most critically acclaimed games of 2023. After the studio was forced to close down, my guest joined the team at the Netflix-owned studio Night School, where she currently works as a narrative designer and writer on a yet-to-be-announced title. LINKSCasual Games for ProtestersHannah on Bluesky
93. Danny Wallace, writer & broadcaster (Yes Man, Assassin's Creed series).
01:06:48||Ep. 93My guest today is the award-winning humourist, writer, and presenter Danny Wallace. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he published his first professional video game review at the age of thirteen while conducting work experience for Sega Power, a magazine that subsequently offered him a job. At 22, after graduating from The University of Westminster, he became a BBC comedy producer at, working on hit series such as Dead Ringers and The Mighty Boosh. In 2003 he published Join Me, a book about how he accidentally started a cult. His next book, Yes Man charted a six-month-long experiment in which he said “yes” to everything. It later became a blockbuster film starring Jim Carrey in the lead role. A regular guest on radio and television panel shows, he has remained deeply involved in video games too, providing the narration for the hit indie game Thomas Was Alone, and writing and starring in several Assassin’s Creed game, work for which received an outstanding achievement award from the Writer’s Guild of America.