Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, a video games podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. How’s your play through of Yakuza Kiwami going, Matthew? What’s the weekly, aren’t we? Oh, right, we’re just cutting to the good stuff, are we? Yep, the hot content that all the kids want to know about is how is Matthew getting through the 900 Yakuza games that have deployed onto Xbox Game Pass? I’m still playing Yakuza Kiwami 1, so the first game I’ve hit. Have you played Yakuza 1? The PS2 original? Well, in any form, yeah. Yes, I have, yeah. So, I’m in one of the many stretches where you’re joined by the little girl and she just sort of sucks because this is a game about cool gangsters but you have to hang out with this cute little kid. It’s like a trope, I really hate things. But we can probably go into this in more depth when we do a Yakuza episode. But my hot take is they should have got rid of that kid. I know she’s integral to the whole thing but man alive. She drags it down. I mean, I thought this was like Kiyo’s whole thing in the game. Isn’t he like a good Yakuza dad? And people are like, oh, that’s so wholesome. Yeah, but I’m not interested in that side of his character. I’m interested in him like thumping 60 year old gangsters with like amazing tattoos and incredible wrinkle tech on their faces. The thing is, when a kid’s there, everyone has a tiptoe around it. I don’t like it when it happens in films either, you know, like where, you know, like, what’s that one with Denzel Washington where he used to look after the little girl? Man on Fire. Man on Fire, you know, it’s like, we’re going to be really edgy and violent, but then we’ve got to be kind of sweet and sentimental and tweet because there’s a kid in the room. And it always guts a thriller action experience for me. But, you know, this is probably a better say for the Yakuza podcast. I can upset everyone with other similar views. That’s good. Well, yeah. So there you go. Matthew is not a fan of films where older gruff men guard small children. Chris Hemsworth Extraction. That’s straight on the fucking trash heap with Matthew Garth. One of my least favorite tropes. I have to ask, how is Tsushima going? Have you forced the Khan, whatever his name is, from the third island? Yes, he’s fucked off. To the grave, actually, he’s dead. Spoiler alert. Oh, right. Nice. I have finished the game, yes. It took me, I think, 68 hours in the end doing- 68? Yeah. I mean, that’s not like the running time of the game story. That was because I was focused on the first island, clearing out every single bit of the map and then realized when I got to the second map, oh no, if I do this, I won’t play any games until like July. So yes, I’ve called it after doing all of the main story quests and the finale of the side quest as well, because there’s a lot of kind of narrative-based side quests in the game involving supporting characters. So it’s over, Matthew. I can play something else now. Finally, you’re free. To be honest, though, when I got to Thursday night and I had time on my hands to play anything or do anything, I felt slightly empty inside. You realize that you need these tunnels of objectives and stuff to do to stave off the lockdown madness. The only cure is to start Assassin’s Creed Valhalla immediately. Yeah. There’s a lot of that. I played that for like 100 hours. Well, there you go. That’ll be next for me. So Matthew, this episode, kind of a sequel episode to Games Magazine covers from Hell, and also our game review scores we got wrong. We sort of like do these sort of loosely themed, I don’t know. They’re all focused around stuff we did when we were like, working full-time in media, mostly on magazines. Specifically bad stuff, it seems. Everything’s from Hell. It’s basically like, come listen to these two fuck-ups, talk about all the things they did wrong. Well, the thing is, it’s not all about that. It’s just I thought from Hell was quite a catchy title. Yeah, no, you’re right. It’s good. If I called it the… That’s good cover line strategy. Exactly. If I called it the developer interviews episode, people would think that’s so wank. Also, I don’t want people to mistake me for thinking I’m good at things. I’m very, very, very keen to head that off at the pass and just make it clear that the goof-ups are very much part of the USP here. I don’t think I can tell anyone how to do their shit. I just want to tell some fun stories. I’m sure it’s the same for you too, right? Yeah, yeah, basically. So yeah, in this episode, we’ve got quite a lot of discussion about what it’s like to interview game developers, the overall dynamics of it, what makes a good developer interview, and so on and so forth. And then in the second part, we’re gonna talk about five different examples of interviews we did, where there is an interesting element to discuss. The From Hell bit is definitely kind of overstated here. Like none of mine were bad. I’ve actually had very few interviews that I thought were like a disaster. And I wouldn’t talk about those on the podcast anyway, generally, because they might make me look bad. But so yeah, it’s gonna be a fun one though. We’ll hopefully kind of take you inside what it’s like to speak to game developers and what that part of like working in games media is like and how historically it’s been, it’s taken us into the orbit of some very interesting figures, I would say. So people will definitely enjoy hearing it. It’s very much the name drop episode, isn’t it, Matthew? Going over it, like one of the kind of bug bears of my entire kind of career was how many big named people I never got to interview. Like I’ve only ever face to face interviewed one person from Nintendo, which is kind of crazy, given that I worked on Nintendo Max for like whatever eight years. And like a reasonably decent name, but not one of the biggies. And I was always very sore about that. So, you know, I definitely have a list of people I’d still love to interview. Yeah, it’s sort of like Nintendo figures in particular are quite rare to like get hold of. Like I’ve interviewed one, but I was only on GameStamp for a year. So, and I got to interview quite a prominent one as we’ll discuss. But yeah, I think nonetheless, Matthew, we’ve each interviewed some people that our listeners would find interesting to hear about, I’m sure. So, yeah, so to jump into it there, Matthew, do you remember the first developer that you interviewed? Sort of, it’s just terrible. I can’t remember the specific name, but I remember that it was for Scarface on Wii, the Scarface port, and this was Radical Entertainment, who the bods who went on to do like prototype, and then I think they just got absorbed into Activision in the end, and that was kind of it. And this was like a nightmare. This was a bit of a wake up call, because up until this point, this was probably a couple of issues into my time on Endgamer. I hadn’t done any interviews. You know, I’d just been writing away, quite happily fitting into it and thinking, oh, this is all right, I can do all this. And interviews is like the first bit of specialist sort of know-how that you need to, you know, that you don’t necessarily have. You know, people aren’t sort of just naturally built to do interviews. Like there is a technique and it is a skill, I’d say beyond writing. And it was a weird moment of realization of like, oh, I don’t actually know how to do this. I mean, right down to like, this was a telephone interview and I didn’t have any kind of recording device. So I was trying to write what they were saying. Which was just a nightmare because I also can’t do shorthand. So it was just like me trying to like paraphrase, which is why if you read the Scarface interview, you’ll see the interview quotes are max like sentences long because that’s all I got, like such a just terrible, terrible interview. I was super nervous because I was like, I don’t want to come across as an idiot. And yeah, that combined with the technical side of actually doing the interview, kind of it was a good experience in a way. So I came away thinking like never again will I let something happen like that to me. So was that a kind of like a thing to a wake up call in the sense of you bought a Dictaphone after that and then like a phone tap, these things that like… Yeah, exactly. All those things. And also like prep for like how you actually do an interview, you know, in terms of like the questions I had, I thought we were really interesting, we’d be, you know, I know I had X amount of time. And this was like the first time I’d ever encountered a developer, you know, in an interview, interviewing them. And this was like the time that I learned that developers can like shut down really interesting questions quite quickly, or not give you very much. And then you’re left like, oh shit, I need a backup. And they haven’t like said enough for me to launch off of either. Yeah, I mean, it happens, I think, like, I was trying to recall my first interview. And I think it was quite a nice man from Codemasters. You know how Codemasters every now and then, like every three or four years would make like a five out of ten shooter alongside all their racing games. It was a man who worked on one of those conflict-denied ops. I’m pretty sure that was like the first person I recorded talking to. So yeah, I sort of did the same thing where I, you know, was sort of fumbling my way through it. And yeah, it’s very much like review writing where all like covers where you’re sort of learning by doing in a lot of ways. Most jobs are like this, I think. But yeah, interviews, not something I’ve ever been trained for. And kind of a weird business anyway, because we’ll get into this in a bit, I’m sure. But like, you know, generally speaking, like developer and publisher interviews are set up with the goal of promoting a game. So it’s, it’s not like they’re there to like personally fulfill you by being there. Yeah, they’re there to promote a thing. So you are you can ask certain questions and they’ll shut them down. And that’s considered like a fair part of the transaction, really. But it’s, it’s an interesting old thing. So, Matthew, do you think you got good at game developer interviews over time? Or do you think you’re good at them now? It still really, it still really varies, to be honest. I think I am good at prepping for them. Like I think, you know, I always go in prepared. I think I’m good at asking good questions. I think I have good questions. And most of the times I’ll get some, I’ll get some good answers. I still don’t know if my actual like in interview technique is like amazing. Like when I listen back to myself on audio tapes, I sound like a total buffoon. I sound like a total buffoon who’s got, who has actually got some good questions, but I kind of sabotage them as I’m doing the interview. By like, there’s a thing, lots of, I think lots of people get into this habit of they get quite nervous or they have some nerves and so they over elaborate on questions. When actually most of these questions stand alone, absolutely fine. And you end up going like, doing like a huge preamble to set up the question or basically justifying the question after you’ve asked for it. It’s when you listen back to your tape and you’re like, man, why did I talk for like two minutes between these two answers? This is insane. Like, you just feel yourself rambling away. I still have a bit of that occasionally. I would never ever release, ever release any audio I’ve done of an interview. But I know I would, I would be mortified if that ever came out. Like I’d rather like naked pictures of me leaked online than people got to hear my interview transcripts. Which of the two is more likely, Matthew, to leak online, do you think? Interview transcripts. That’s a relief. Without going into it. But I, but I can always, you know, I can tidy them up and present them in a way that I look a lot better on the page. So I think I can actually get the goods, which is the important thing. Yeah, you make an interesting point there about interviews, your questions not being too long. You kind of, my least favourite kinds of interviews are ones where the question box is like longer or as long as the answer box, because the person’s gone on a kind of a long monologue about themselves or a subject before getting to the question. I think, like you say, people just want a really punchy answer, sorry, punchy question, because otherwise you risk answering the question for them and kind of deflating the answer. So yeah, I definitely agree with you. I went through a period of being quite bad for that where it was almost like, it’s almost like I’m taking a guess at what the answer is going to be, because I want someone to be like, yes, you’re very smart. You clearly know all about game design, very clever, which they never are. Like they’re just like, yeah, you’ve kind of said it, you know, or it feels like you’re leading them to a particular answer, which some people can react negatively to. Yeah, it’s like I’ve, you know, I’ve been studying like programming for like 10 years and you’re like a buffoon who has opinions on like Digi-Con, you know what I mean? You never want to be that guy. You never want to feel that way when you’re asking questions. The other subset of this, and I don’t do this myself, is the person is the interviewer who considers himself hilarious and include all the stuff in the answers where the developers like laughs in brackets or even worse when the developers like, that’s so fucking funny. What a fucking funny question. You’re hilarious, man. And you’re like, don’t put that in. Like how self-serving. Gross. Yeah, if I sort of echo what you say there about how if my interviews were ever broadcast, some kind of regulator like Ofcom would intervene and say, excuse me, sir, this, your question technique is so poor, we’re going to have to take you off the air and ensure you’re never broadcast again. And I also noticed I’ve got loads of irritating ticks. I think at the end of questions, I say, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It’s like, they must think I’m a right Jeb to be saying that. But I’ve noticed over and over again that the same sort of ticks kind of come up with me and I’ve never quite been able to shake them. Unless I’m doing a sort of on stage interview at the PC Gamer Weekender event we did, I had a for some reason I decided I would host a stage for two days and I interviewed developers nonstop throughout that weekend. I think I did an all right job. But yeah, I sort of I think like when it’s just me on the phone and you can’t see the person it can be a little bit intimidating, can’t it? And you do end up just sort of like the same random shit and being like filled with self loathing afterwards. Yeah, one of my nightmare moments when I was working for Rock Paper Shotgun was we were going to do a stream of like indie developer interviews from EGX Berlin. And so it went over and the original pitch what we normally do when we stream indie games from the EGX Expo stuff is it’s like we find a little quiet room and we just basically set up our camera and we have the developers in there. That’s part of the pitch. You say like, you know, we’d love to talk to you about your game, don’t worry, it’s going to be in a little room. Like it’s literally just going to be me and Alice who is running the stream. But when we went there and we had our little room and it was all fine. But at EGX Berlin that year, Kojima was going to be there talking about Death Stranding. And so they built this huge stage for Kojima, which obviously you kind of need to like pull out all the stops. But like that’s all they really had was like Kojima the next day. So they had this huge stage and they were like, well, you can do your day of, you know, indie game developer interviews on the Kojima stage. And you’re like, oh man, it’s like the first thing you saw when you came in was like me sitting there with, you know, me incredibly nervous and indie developer incredibly nervous. You know, I had to do, I think I did like 14 developer sessions in a row that day on that stage. And like, luckily, no one came and sort of sat to watch it because it must have seemed just a bit obscure and strange, I think. But then you you’re dealing with like sitting in front of this, this very, you know, like five disinterested looking German dudes because no one turned, you know, no one was sitting there to watch it. So that takes on a strange vibe of its own. Public interviewing, that is tough. Yeah, it was, it was actually the cool thing is when you are interviewing people who like you’re, you know, the people at the event are excited about, like, it was cool when I was interviewing the guy who the one of the co designers of FTL and into the breach about into the breach around the time it came out. And that was, it was cool because like the seats would fill up and people were genuinely engaged and stuff like that. But yeah, I agree with you, there’s that kind of like nervous thing of like, oh, I hope people actually turn up to this or I’m going to feel like I’m sort of drowning in my own sort of like cold sweat. Yeah. So Matthew, what do you think makes a good game developer interview? Uh, it varies for different purposes, I think, based on what you’re actually using, what you plan to use the interview for, you know, what the intentions are for it. I mean, the really obvious thing is to get something that no one else has. Not necessarily like some like some amazing, like mind blowing, like headline setting kind of exclusive, but just something different and interesting. You just don’t want to be repeating an answer. And that does happen. Like it’s really, it really bums me out when, when we’ve, you know, gone to an event and then we do our feature and then you read other people’s features. And it’s basically word for word in other people’s interviews. Um, that that’s always never, never jolly. Um, but like generally just, I just want something that’s kind of colourful and kind of human sounding on the page is really the baseline. Um, cause some people speak in like PR lines, you know, they basically speak like a press release and that stuff’s just completely like dead on the page. Um, so, you know, I’d say the tone, something that sounds like a human, that’s good. If they say something that isn’t anywhere else, that’s an added bonus. I mean, on top of that, I think you’re into the specifics of, you know, the very rare occasions where you do like genuinely get something new to say or you do break a massive story. I mean, I personally don’t necessarily like pursue that. Um, we’ll talk about this a bit later. Um, I think like the one time, and it wasn’t even an in person interview, this was a, this was an email interview. The one time, like I genuinely felt like I 100% knocked it out of the park in terms of the answers I got where I did two email interviews with Shu Takumi, the creator of Ace Attorney when I was on official Nintendo magazine. And at the point, that point, he didn’t really have anything to promote. This was a little bit before, uh, I think I did one of them. It was just, I think it was the hundredth issue of O&M. And the big pitch was like, we can do it. Each writer would do their like dream feature, trying to use the hundred issue to basically get it done. And I just said to Capcom, listen, all I really want to do is like a big Ace Attorney retrospective. You haven’t got anything to promote. So I know it’s probably a waste of time. And they were like, yeah, well, you know, send the questions across. Let’s see what happens. So basically wrote like a massive, like my, like genuinely things I wanted to know about Ace Attorney and sort of forgot about it and maybe sent it like three months before. And then it came back and he’d written loads. I mean, this was for an interview, email interview. This was absolutely like I’d never seen anything like it. I mean, you know, he’d maybe written like 4000, 5000 words. I mean, just pages and pages and pages, breaking down everything I wanted to know. I couldn’t believe it. And I like this idea that Shutakumi’s a singer in an office not doing much. And he got those through and he just like spent a whole day on it or something. But it was just like, if you go on the various Phoenix Wright Wikipedias, like there’s tons of page references to that interview, because it had like new stuff. And that’s like the only time that’s ever really happened for me where I was just like, wow, I genuinely like added to the kind of what we know about these games, which felt like quite precious. That is awesome. So is that interview on like Internet Archive or something? Yeah, I think I did a second one for when Ace Attorney, Professor Leighton Ace Attorney came out. We did basically did round two, and I basically started where the other interview left off and even referred back to I think like, oh, last time you said blah, blah, blah. And he did the same thing. He gave me another absolute massive chunk. I think that interview did go up on the website. So that’s there somewhere on the Internet Archive. I’ll try to dig it out. I think I actually ended up reusing a lot of it on a paper shotgun, of all things. I think that I reprinted chunks of it or chunks I didn’t use as a supporter post, so I’ll see if I can dig a link out to that. But yeah, he really just went for it. It was great. And it was really nerdy questions as well. Yeah, that was nice. The last thing you want to do is just recycle the same anecdote, you know. I feel that there are some people have like five stories that they tell over and over again. Like every Charles Martin interview ever is exactly the same because he tells the story of how he became Mario and how he found the voice. And that story has been told. And it’s kind of like a redundant interviewing now, I feel, because of that. But yeah, this was, you know, I’ve just not seen anything like it. And it helps. He’s a writer, you know, Takumi is a writer, like first and foremost, and they were very much like a writer’s answers. But yeah, I lucked out big time. God bless. Capcom, absolutely amazing job twice. They did. They, yeah, like career highlights for me for sure. Yeah, but I think it’s interesting that because obviously, like when publishers set up interviews, generally speaking, they’re promoting something. So when you do actually catch developers outside the cycle, because you have to ask and then they have to go and ask and you get the sense is about like three, a three person chain at minimum between you and the developer. Yeah, it means that like you’re not certain you’re actually going to get the access. So when you do get someone outside of that cycle, and you get they give you the time to give you genuinely insightful answers. That’s, that’s incredibly exciting. It does happen. It’s not that common. But sometimes you just ask and you get. Yeah, I feel like in a way it’s happening more and more now, because people now have the distance from like classic games of our lifetimes, that they are many of them no longer at those studios, or those studios don’t exist. And we’re getting into the realms of like oral histories, great deep dive making ofs. There are a lot, you know, every year there are at least a couple of articles that feel like they really blow a game wide open, you know, like, again, this is going to sound self serving, but I didn’t do this, but there was a great Deus Ex retrospective on RPS last year. Was that 20 years of Deus Ex? 15 years? I can’t remember. I think that was, I want to say that was Jeremy Peel. I might be wrong, but you know, and there’s been some great, like, was it Polygon did the massive like Final Fantasy 7? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It’s quite funny, actually, Matthew, because I wrote a making a Final Fantasy 7 feature for Retro Gamer in like 2010 or 2011. And then that had like two email Q&A’s. And then I saw that and it was like, it was like in civilization when like a phalanx goes up against like a tank. And you’re like, Oh, okay, right. This is like, you know, scorched earth now. Like, my time is over. This was for a long time. This was like the best resource on how Final Fantasy 7 was made. And now this incredible thing exists. But that’s what I thought. I think we’re going to get more of that. Like, just because people are now, like, just maybe like legally, they’re in a space where they can talk about stuff a bit more. And, you know, it feels like we’re going to start filling in the gaps. But like the best, I feel like the best interviews I’ve read in the last few years have been about things from 15 years ago. Well, I think on the Square Enix subject there as well, like, I don’t know if you read Edge’s Final Fantasy cover feature. They did the most recent anniversary, the 30th maybe. And they had, like, an oral history for the entire series, including a Sakaguchi interview. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think Simon Parkin put it together. It was really, really good. But I think even Square Enix has stories they don’t want to tell. So I wrote a Final Fantasy XII feature for Retro Gamer when the Zodiac Age remaster came out. And I tried to ask about what happened with Matsuno, the original director, he left Final Fantasy XII sort of, like, part way into development. You got the sense that you’ll never actually like hear the proper story of how this happened. So I think I agree with you, like, people are more honest about stuff now. And like, you know, there are sort of like good reasons to do it, I think, in terms of like fan goodwill. But even so, I think a lot of stories will still just never be told. Particularly in Japanese game development, where I feel like, just generally speaking, access is a little bit harder to get, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s why the Iwata Asks were so precious, because, you know, here was what could have just been a hugely corporate exercise in just promoting their games. Really, the stories they told were not, you know, they weren’t just there to sort of like hit selling points on the games they were talking about. They felt really genuine. Like, they really felt like someone digging into like, what’s our process? What’s our thought process? You know, incredibly transparent. You know, I’ve seen plenty of like, developer in-house interview stuff which do feel totally bogus. Which is like, tell us about how you did the, you know, tell us about the amazing shooting in your upcoming Tomb Raider or whatever. And you’re like, yeah, right. But here, they were so niche and nerdy, they felt, you know, the product of genuine curiosity. It kind of bugs me that like some of the best game interviews of all time were done entirely in house at Nintendo. But it makes up for, you know, me not being able to interview anyone from Nintendo. So I used to think, well, okay, I’ve not been able to interview Miyamoto. But at the same time, like, there aren’t, I don’t mean to like cast shade on anyone in particular. Like, there aren’t many essential Miyamoto interviews outside of Iwata Asks. You know, like, it’s very kind of, you know, even he has like a kind of PR mode, I feel, that you get. I thought it was interesting, actually. Last, I think it was last year, Simon Parkin did a Miyamoto interview for The New Yorker, which was one of the more unusual ones, because it was super casual. Like, it was, he didn’t even really have anything to promote. It was, it was more of just like a profile piece. And it was talking about his habits and like, whether his kids played games, and like his life outside of Nintendo, which I think is like a mystery quite a lot of people are interested in, because they know his games and they know the making of stories. And that kind of approach of someone who’s so famous that you’re just curious, like how they function as a human being, I thought resulted in like a pretty strong piece. So that was, I thought that was a really good Miyamoto interview. Yeah, it’s interesting Miyamoto, because he’s someone who I definitely, like you say, think he has a sort of like a public disposition, a sort of like, you know, almost like mascot like disposition. But then if you ever read about the story of Retro Studios, and how a bunch of their projects got cancelled, and how Metro Prime became a first person shooter, that does not sound like the same Miyamoto, like the behind behind the scenes sounds like a more kind of like, a bit more ruthless and managerial, based on like the stories I’ve read about that studio. And you know, you expect that because, you know, Nintendo is like, you know, Nintendo has an image and that’s kind of very much part of that. But yeah, I agree with you that parking interview was really good. But there’s loads of like, really searching questions that would be cool to ask Miyamoto that I feel like will never get asked, just because those interviews are so rare, you know. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I’ve always resented not having the chance to interview him. But at the same time, like, that would be… I’d be so stressed. I’d be so stressed to interview him. Like, just to think, you know, you have this one shot at kind of getting something new or making some kind of headway. Like, that would be… that would be a nightmare. I get nervous just thinking about the potential for that. So what about you? What do you look for in an interview? What do you think makes a good developer interview? I think it varies very much on, like you say, who you’re writing for. So with a magazine, you almost want to poke at different features in the game and get elaboration on what they are from the developer. And online interviews are like that too. But also, you know, online, you also are thinking about, like, what potential news can we get from this interview and stuff like that. Right. So it’s interesting, you mentioned some examples there of stuff that no one had ever heard before. Something I did break on PC Gamer was I asked someone from Sega Europe about the idea of more Sega console games coming to PC. Yeah. And so this, basically, I asked, like, will you bring Persona and Yakuza to PC? And the answer was like, it was something like, there is a list of games that we know people want to bring onto PC, and we are committed to, you know, trying to make that list happen on PC. And those games are on the list. It was like, I’m paraphrasing there, but that was basically what they said. And that was like one of the biggest stories that came out of E3 for us, because, you know, this is before anyone knew that Yakuza was going to be on PC. So in that case, yeah, like, the interview generally was quite interesting. You know, it was getting Sega’s Sega’s perspective as kind of like, you know, legacy Japanese publisher that is now mostly focused on publishing PC games from Western studios. That was good. But the actual like, you know, the kind of sting of like, oh, wow, we have actually, I’m here in front of someone from Sega, I can just ask about Yakuza and Persona, two things that I know PC gamers really want to see on Steam. And, yeah, and got an answer that we could use as a new story. So, you know, that that was part of that process. At the same time, though, going back to something I mentioned earlier, like, obviously, when you meet these sort of legendary figures from game development, you personally want to have a good experience. But at the same time, that’s not the reason you’re there. You’re there to get the most interesting answers possible for your readership. So to pull out one example, Yu Suzuki, the creator of Shenmue, I interviewed at E3 2019. And it was quite a short interview, but I feel like it was mostly overshadowed by the fact that Shenmue had just been announced as an Epic Games Store exclusive. And this was right around the time that this was all PC gamers like wanted to read about was just, you know, sort of like people just really interested in. A lot of people were very angry about Epic and the exclusivity, even though it’s kind of like it’s kind of like hate scrolling, isn’t it? On Twitter, it’s people love to get, you know, they love to have have more ammunition against this service. Yeah, I kind of get it in a way like you just want to buy the game on Steam, play games on people on Steam, fine, whatever. And we saw that with Hitman, even though they did make good, there was a bit flawed in the execution of how they put Hitman 3 onto the Epic Games Store. So I get people’s like reservation about it. It’s just one of those things where I got a bit sick of hearing about it. And in this case, because I asked Suzuki about it, like he didn’t answer like one of the deep silver people in the room did answer. But I pressed the subject several times. And like, there’s a slight part of my brain that’s like, I’ll probably never meet you Suzuki again. This is someone who’s like a game, a games development legend, the designer of Outrun, of Space Harrier, and Shenmue like a legendary figure. He’s in his 60s. I will probably never meet him again. And the one time I did, I was asking about a boring storefront, you know what I mean? Like it’s like, yeah, I had this thought many years ago around E3 where like, it almost at one point, and this was pretty about like 10 years ago, 10 or 8 years ago, where it felt like the strategy at E3 was like, we’re trying to get headline, you know, the thing that matters is like a big headline. And these are the talking points of the day. And it was kind of the era where like, every year, it seemed the big story that would always explode was it was quite like COD versus Battlefield or Activision versus EA. And all anyone really ever wanted was to get someone from one to slag the other one off, or say something a bit like sniffy about the other one, at least, because that would be like a mega headline, mega clicks. That’s like how you won the internet in that day was to get Activision or EA to kind of kick off. And it really felt like, you know, as a print person, because I’ve never worked on a website, like I’ve never understood that, like, to go in with that attitude, to go in with like, I’ve got to get a headline, if you get a headline, great, lucky you. But, you know, I couldn’t waste a question trying to set someone up, you know, it just that that sits uneasy with me, I think. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I don’t think that that’s sort of like the hunger for those kind of headlines is really dissipated. People are interested when that stuff happens. Just look at Yosef Farr as the creative director of A Way Out and Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons, was that it? I think that was the other one. So, you know, a guy who I think is in a bit of a cycle of like shock value quotes. And if I was him, I would find that incredibly high pressure to keep saying like, more and more outrageous things. I’d want to just be left alone. I’d be like, look, I used to say some shit. Now just leave me alone. He recently said that if you didn’t, if you found his new game boring, he’d give you a thousand dollars. And it’s like, how many times can you say that sort of thing before people are just sort of burned out on it? Or you yourself are just tired of saying it? It was more like, like, we know that there are these angry, like, sort of hot potato issues or whatever. So let’s hot potato. Is that a phrase? Yeah. Hot potato. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s try and get everyone to, like, weigh in on it, whether they’re, like, you know, relevant or not. You know, it’s like, this guy is making Mario Party. Do we really want to ask him, like, how he feels about the EA Activision, you know, rift? Like, not really. Do we really want to ask him about Mario Party? Not really. Having worked on a website, I do get it. Like, there is a read of value aspect to you know, giving people the opinion of the Yu Suzuki thing. I don’t regret asking it because like I say, professionally, it was the thing to ask about. Yeah, sure. Especially on PC where is Shenmue interesting to PC players? I would say like it’s borderline really. I would expect most people are going to play that game on consoles. I don’t think many people cared about Shenmue 3 anyway, ultimately. But I was just there thinking, well, you know, I had about 15, 20 minutes with Yu Suzuki and I mostly asked about storefronts and a few other questions. And I was there in the back of my mind thinking, I remember being like 16 and having like, I left school and had like a 10 week summer where I basically like played Shenmue 2 for all of it. And like that was quite a, you know, I don’t think Shenmue is a perfect series and, and it’s kind of, it’s very quirky and odd. But I was there thinking, well, you know, if I could, if I had known then I would one day be able to speak to the creator and, and this is what I asked, like, does that quite add up? And I don’t know. I don’t have like an overall thought there. I just wanted to kind of talk about my process when I was there. Yeah, no, no, that makes perfect sense. I got I just I mean, yeah, I’ve never really been in a position where I’ve had to, you know, my job has been hinging on getting those big trafficking headlines like that’s never really been my vibe, which I guess I’m sort of lucky for because I think I’d be bad at it. Well, it depends on the site. It wasn’t like imperative here. It’s just like it was the right thing to ask about. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, it’s quite interesting. But another thing Matthew is that developers and publishers will sometimes set up roundtable interviews. So it will be you and like one or maybe more journalists asking questions, taking it in turns. Well, in theory, taking it in turns. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out that way. What do you think the differences are between like roundtables and solo interviews? Have you ever enjoyed a roundtable? Do you ever get anything out of them? Yeah, I actually quite I quite enjoy roundtable because I find having other people in the room, I get a little less nervous for starters, like there’s pressure is off you also and this is going to sound really smug. If other people are shitting the bed with their questions, you feel like a total pro and you’re like, you know what, I am better at this. That’s a terrible thing to say. But the other thing is, is when you get into a roundtable and people have like one question and they freeze and then they don’t have anything else to ask and you can like sort of dominate the session a bit, not intentionally, just because like they’re like anyone else and people are sitting there like dumbfounded and you’re like, all right, I’m just going to treat this like a normal interview. There is that little, you do get a little bit sore afterwards when you see everyone else’s write ups and you’re like, well, those weren’t your questions. But that’s the deal in a roundtable. Like anything that happens in the room belongs to everyone. But you’re like, I feel like I did a lot of heavy lifting and everyone’s benefited. But at the same time, the smug part of my brain enjoys knowing that everyone benefited from my good work. Yeah, it’s interesting because working online, I suppose, it’s more of a race to get, you know, right thing up if you’re in a roundtable and there’s like, I don’t know, two other major sites there than you want to try and get yours up first. But yeah, I think I agree with you. Like I’ve had good and bad roundtables. So I had a good roundtable in 2015. The first time they were remaking Final Fantasy 7. I don’t remember they kind of rebooted it halfway through development. It was CyberConnect, the developer, making it. And then Square Enix took over and made it in-house. Obviously the game is out now. But interviewed Tetsuya Nomura for that, the director, and obviously like massive figure in Final Fantasy. So it would have been very surprising to get a one-on-one with that kind of developer. But that was quite a good roundtable because everyone just wanted to ask about Final Fantasy 7 remake and this was the first time they were properly talking about it. So everyone was asking like there were no headline answers from it, but there was loads of good information about, oh, you’re using Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children as a reference point and how are you going to redesign Midgar and all this stuff. That was good. However, I have also had really weird roundtables. So when I worked on Sci-Fi Now, the film TV magazine in 2011 for Prometheus, 2012 it was, I interviewed Michael Fassbender with about eight other journalists. And I could tell they were all from completely different types of publication, because no one else was asking about the film Prometheus. There was one almost elderly, I want to say French critic or writer who asked him, what’s your favorite cocktail and what do you like to do on weekends? And then I was like having to like force my way into the conversation, you know, going, what’s it like to play an Android for Ridley Scott or whatever? And so that’s a bit weird. It’s good in a way, because there’s no chance they would ever use the same answers as you. But also, like, it felt like I had very few answers from Fassbender to actually use in my cover feature, you know? Yeah, it kind of happens that way. Yeah, yeah, I do genuinely enjoy them. I’ve been in a few where, like, someone, like, goes in hard, and it’s always quite interesting to see how, like, the room deals with it. Like, you basically get someone who’s like, well, I only get to ask one question, so I’m going to be like, you know, I’m going to ask something like controversial, or I’m going to, like, you know, they’re either going for the headline, or they have a genuine thing, and it’s, that’s quite a unique energy. I’ve been in a few interviews with, you won’t mind me telling you this, Rich Stanton, where, like, obviously back when he was writing for Edge, you know, they basically asked whatever they needed to ask, really. And I remember being at Nintendo of Europe when they were interviewing, it was, like, the WiiWare announcement, and they were showing off all, like, the first round of, like, WiiWare games. I remember Rich being quite fierce on the quality of the games, and also the ridiculous size of the memory on the, you know, the hard drive on the Wii could store, like, ten of these games or whatever. And he kind of put that to the head of, like, Nintendo of Europe, or the head of marketing, Nintendo of Europe, which is where he dismissively said, oh, the only people who care about that are, like, geeks and otakus. And then that, when that quote then, you know, did the rounds. And that was quite a big story, because it was like Nintendo of Europe really dismissing this genuine concern or whatever. And I remember thinking, like, everyone dining out on this quote, which was 100%, like, didn’t come from them. In fact, I remember being in the room, and you see people, people get quite nervous when someone is like that in a round table. People are, like, embarrassed. And it’s like, well, you’re all happy to dine out on the fucking headline that he got. So let’s have some respect for the man who asked the question, rather than being like, oh, geez, this guy. And it’s like, yeah, you want the spice, though. So, you know, which is it to be? I’ve not actually really been in that scenario where someone’s asked a question like that. It’s just a personal thing, because, like, I can remember once being, like, seeing, like, another journalist, like, literally roll their eyes, and then, like, a couple of days later, use the quote. And it’s like, well, what’s it to be? You know, like, I can say, probably a personal bugbear of mine. Yeah. So, something else I want to talk about, Matthew, is that I feel like the way interviews are generated from publishers, you never really get an idea of what the culture of a AAA development studio is like. This is something I feel like is always at arm’s length and beyond your reach as a, you know, working in games media. And so, you know, we’ll talk a little bit about reporting and investigative reporting in a little bit. But I was wondering how you felt about that. Like, publishers have their reasons for wanting to manage interviews. But like you say, sometimes people are super media trained. I interviewed one developer of an open world game at an E3 where I asked a question and before I finished the answer, he started talking and I was there thinking, right, okay, so he’s so heavily media trained that he’s like, he’s almost like psychically locking on to these are the key talking points, we go in, we do this and then we kind of move on. And so publishers have their reasons for managing that. Like there’s been, you know, a few like big sort of snafus over the years. The famous one about women being too hard to animate. Yeah, that was obviously like a bit of a disaster. But in my experience, you’re unlikely to ever learn that much about how game development actually works. Do you think that’s fair? Yeah, I think yeah, that is fair. But then it’s again, it’s based on the situation, you know, like at E3, you know, they’re there to sort of announce the game and, you know, showing off a game for the first time and in their head, they’re like in the interviews, like my job here is to show the game off for the first time. Like often, like you’re being with a developer and they’ll be like, oh, did you see like the announcement or did you see the trailer? And it’s like, yeah, of course, like, of course I saw it, like, I’m here, but we can skip all that. It’s almost that you’re trying to skip further ahead than they’re happy to go, is often the relationship I find, you know, they’re there with a, you know, they’re not there, like on top of the announcement, they’re there as like an alternative to the announcement. It’s like, I can tell you everything the announcement told you, like, I can, that’s literally my job is to do exactly the same thing as that trailer, where you’re like, well, I’m already ahead of that. Like, I want to, I want to jump to something we don’t know about. And that’s where you probably collide is because you’re like, yeah, I’ve got my head around all this already. So let’s, let’s, let’s jump to the next bit. And they’re just not in a space to talk about that or go over to that place. Games do emerging things, so, like, I find generally in those situations, and it’s pretty obvious quickly in an interview if someone’s kind of in that mode, that, like, I’m not necessarily trying to, like, pump them for, like, new information or be on what they can talk about. You’re just trying to get them to say, like, anything sort of human or interesting sounding. Even if it’s not, like, 100% like, cutting edge or relevant or new about the game, you know, I’m trying to take them sideways on the topic rather than forwards, if that makes sense. So, it’s like, okay, or like the Mass Effect thing, like, you know, I talked a few issues ago about when we did the Mass Effect cover. That was, like, a perfect example, like, I got this interview. They weren’t really willing to talk about Mass Effect Andromeda at all, so you were like, okay, let’s try and get a feel for, like, where this game’s coming from as, like, sci-fi fans or is it going to tap into this? So, we talked a lot about, like, the right stuff and astronauts and space programs instead. You know, it’s like, let’s get, because they’re, and then they open up, and maybe if they open up, they accidentally slip in something more telling than they hoped they were going to. You know, you’re not trying to trick them up, but you’re putting them in a space where maybe those things can happen. I feel like that’s more valuable. I think one of the more critical interviews or previews I did at E3 was for Marvel’s Avengers, where I think I did ask some quite searching questions about, well, how does a multiplayer in this work? How can you, how does it make sense to you to have, to add new characters every few months for no extra charge, and stuff like that? And the Avengers game sounded too good to be true, and obviously didn’t make a very good first impression, and the game’s been a bit of a flop, so my instincts were kind of right there. I didn’t get anything super juicy, but I got enough to be like, oh, I’ve kind of, the doubts I had, I feel like I’ve, I don’t know, I’ve justified them slightly more by hearing some fairly vague answers on how this stuff might work. So yeah, I agree, it’s that sideways space you want to kind of probe. I remember your write up from, I’m pretty sure this was your write up of Watch Dogs Legions, where you asked Clint Hawkins some pretty good stuff about the NPC, kind of any hero, any character kind of system, which I think kind of opened that game up way more than the actual demo had. Yeah, I think so obviously like the game ended up getting mixed reviews and I was very effusive with praise about it, but I did ask him quite searching questions about like, if you put a guy in hospital, like an NPC, but then you pay his like hospital bills for him, which you can do in the game, will his impression of you change and will his family’s impression of a dead sex change as a result? And like, I asked about that kind of stuff, because again, that’s something where you’re not going to get a super juicy headline quote, but these are the kind of like questions I had of like, oh, well, how far does this simulation go? So yeah, that was good. Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff I find like valuable, because you’re like every website on the planet is going to have a preview of this. But if you have the preview that actually explains it or opens it up, I mean, the really frustrating thing is when you have got that and still online, like you see on forums, people are like, oh, this doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t work like this. And you’re like, well, actually, if you’d read our thing, you’d know it does. Or like, I have explained this. Or when they then later announced something, which you’d had like six months before, and everyone’s like, whoa, that’s amazing. And you’re like, man, like, if you’ve actually read like a good interviewer, you would have known this before now. Like, it kind of bugs me that you can kind of get ahead and that art is not always appreciated. Yeah, for sure. So Matthew, when developers go indie, I generally find that you get slightly better answers from them, because they kind of want to tout the fact that they used to work on like, I don’t know. When I remember when Kickstarter was becoming a thing, a lot of like games by people who worked on Bioshock were like around. And people are a bit more open to talking about the stuff they worked on a little bit like how you said earlier about the oral history kind of phenomenon that sort of sprung up in the last few years. Have you found out to be the case to that indie developers, without having the kind of like PR and marketing machines behind them, are just a bit more open about how things work? Yeah, definitely. Not a huge amount of like first hand experience necessarily, like in terms of like the actual kind of indie stuff that I’ve really dug into really hasn’t hasn’t been that much. But like in conversation events, for sure you get that you get that vibe, people are very open. Like I love walking, you know, EGX, Expo, or, um, rest and talking to people and how open they are and, and a lot of them, like you say, yeah, they’ve worked on things. Sometimes they’re even people you’ve you’ve interviewed before when they were in, in like the big sort of studio system and you see how different they are as people. That’s that’s quite funny. Um, I had a really good, uh, studio visit to Three Fields Entertainment, which is the the kind of core of the burnout team from Criterion, um, set up. They did Dangerous Golf and, um, oh, the thing that was like Burnout, Dangerous Driving, things like that. Um, and you know, Alex Ward, I think, has always been quite good value for money in an interview, like even back when they were doing Burnout in the kind of Criterion heyday, you know, he was quite a outspoken kind of chap and quite good fun in interviews. Um, but this was just, yeah, like talking to there and it’s really interesting combination of like, the incredible like polish and confidence of someone who’s come from like AAA gaming, but with the absolutely like no no leash of like PR or whatever, you know, the heads heads up his new little indie studio can say whatever he likes. It’s quite a potent combination. Like the quotes are like all amazing and everything he says is really good value for money, really good fun. Um, so that kind of stuff worked out quite well, but I haven’t, I haven’t interviewed a lot of like, very small sort of in indie people just just because of the things I’ve wrote on, I guess. What about you? Yeah, I’ve, I’ve interviewed a few like, um, I’ve enjoyed speaking to, um, Jordan Thomas, who used to work on, um, who was the creative director of Bioshock 2. And made the Blackout Club an indie game. Um, as well as another indie game that’s Magic Circle. Yes, Magic Circle. Yeah, a really cool, um, sort of like a game about, uh, programming, reprogramming enemies to fight for you. That was a really cool, cool little game on Steam that people should check out. Um, that was cool. He’s a really good talker. I actually interviewed him when he was working on Bioshock 2 and he was a good talker then as well. But like, um, getting to ask about, you know, about these kind of older games and how they inform these newer games. That’s quite a cool thing when developers go, um, indie. I was curious, Matthew, if you had any thoughts on these developers who have reputations for being big talkers, but it’s kind of all talk. Yeah, I guess it’s a tricky one because like the period when you’re talking to them, which is like the hype thing, you know, there’s a lot of good faith and everyone kind of goes along with it. And what they say sounds so exciting and good on the page and it makes for great copy. And you know, fundamentally, it’s their decision whether to kind of put those expectations in place. And you kind of, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword a little bit with them. You know, the backlash to a few of these cases, I wonder if that sort of now sort of scared people off, if people will be a bit more careful with that. And yeah, it’s weird, I’ve interviewed a few people where the game that I’ve really bought into the game, or I’ve bought into the idea of the game, because I’m very confident in them as a person because of their confidence. You know, they talk a good game and you’re like, yeah, this person, like, they’ve got a really good idea. Because sometimes you talk to someone and they’re so unenthusiastic about the game that they’re working on, you’re like, oh, man, this game is going to suck. Like I can just tell if this is like, if this is the manifestation of this person, this game in human form, this is going to blow. But then at the same time, I have fallen for it before where I’ve talked to people and been like, this is going to be the best game ever made. This person really gets it. Like, I remember interviewing, and I don’t, I should preface this by saying, I don’t think this game is the worst game ever made. I’m actually a bit more fond of it than other people. But interviewing the producer of Lords of Shadow, Dave Cox, about Lords of Shadow, the 3DS game. It was alright that game. It wasn’t too bad. Yeah, the 3DS game’s good. I actually, I really, really rate Mirror of Fate. But in the interview, he was also doing interviews for Lords of Shadow 2 at the time, which is the one people were quite down on. But I quite liked. But he kept talking about that in our 3DS interview. It was like, in my head, I was like, oh, he’s so excited about Lords of Shadow 2. He can’t stop talking about it. This is great. This game’s going to be brilliant. Because I loved Lords of Shadow 1. And Lords of Shadow 2 was what it was. And I was a little bit like, oh, that’s kind of weird. But he was a great, like, a great salesman for that game. Like, I thought, oh, this is just going to be absolutely brilliant. And in the room, it’s fun. Reading it on the page, it’s fun. It only becomes not fun, like, in hindsight once the game’s out. And at that point, I wonder, does anyone go back and be like, fuck that interview? You know, unless it’s really big and egregious. Like, I don’t… can you get cross that someone just sold you, like, a big exciting thing, and it wasn’t quite as good? I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t… I kind of get that they’re trying to sell the thing they’re making, and, like, you know, there are all kinds of reasons why a game might not end up the way, the exact way that people want it. These are… that’s a nicely… a nicely documented phenomenon now in the industry. Like, people know that, like, you know, if you’ve kind of overscoped your game, and then you have to cut stuff out, then, you know, it looks bad in hindsight. And I don’t know, I suppose, like, when you do it over and over again, people are going to be sort of critical of it. Generally, everything’s fine and on the level, but they’ll be like, there’s going to be a moment, like, an hour and a half into this game, where I’m going to put you in front of, like, the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make in a video game, and you are going to sit there, and if I’ve done my job, you are not going to be able to, like, move, you will not know what to do because of this thing. And I’ve had the promise of, like, there’s this one thing I’m not telling you about that’s going to blow your mind. I’ve heard that so many times, and then when I play the game, I’m really hyper aware of, like, what is the thing? I’m going to wait for this thing. I’m really looking for this thing. And it never comes, and I always think, oh, man, I fell for it again. You know, it’s like, fool me once, shame on me. No, shame on you. Fool me twice, except I’ve been fooled, like, fifteen times, and every time I’m like, wow, that sounds great. But it’s just such a hollow thing, because you don’t have to commit to it. You’re like, there’s something amazing, but I can’t tell you what it is. And you’re like, wow, that sounds good. Yeah. So, Matthew, I was curious if you thought there was any sort of antagonism in any kind of loose way between, like, games media writers and developers. So late last year, there was a headline on Pace magazine about Cyberpunk 2077 that I think a lot of people sort of criticized and agreed was, you know, a bit of a misfire. And then developers responded, and then quite a lot of people were putting the boot in. And I think it exposed a little bit of, like, frustration that maybe developers have against certain types of, like, games headlines or approaches to writing about games. What do you sort of make of all that? Yeah, I think that does exist to an extent. I think it flares up at certain points. Like, I think there are certain periods where there are a few more hot potatoes, which we’ve already agreed is an accepted term, that it gets wearying. Like, you know, that period I was talking about where, like, at E3 there was this idea of, like, we’re basically trying to pump people for controversy. It felt like that was, like, a more antagonistic period on both sides. And it actually culminated in, like, you actually do hear stories, occasionally, of, like, press events where someone would say, like, I’m not talking to X outlet because they had such a bad rep for, like, doing that. And that, you know, that’s about as bad as it can get, I’d say. It’s like, when you’ve got to the point of, like, someone literally won’t talk to you, or you’ve been outright blacklisted, that’s obviously a sign that things have kind of soured too much. Yeah, it’s tricky. As a reader, like, sometimes you feel like this story’s being pumped too much, or like I personally am sick of this story, and I can really understand and appreciate people from the other side feeling that way too. I would say I don’t think it’s ever personal, but, you know, I don’t think anyone gleefully is trying to pump these things. It’s just a simple game of hits, isn’t it? But, yeah, but like I said, having not really worked on a site, I don’t think I… That’s more of a website issue, I’d say. That was never really true of print. We were just too kind of unimportant to ever really upset anyone, I think. Yeah, I’ve never been like… I’ve never sensed a developer is like refuse to talk to me or anything like that. That’s not happened. But I do wonder if there’s a slight element of like, not necessarily elitism, but a bit of tension in the fact that like being a games developer requires a very obvious set of skills. Like you or I couldn’t turn up to, I don’t know, just picking an example out of nowhere, Rare, for example, and be like lead programmers. But if someone from Rare wanted a Ryan O’Pedd about a video game, they could probably do it. So that’s not to say that like there’s no skill in games writing, there absolutely is. But I think there’s a slight element of like, I don’t know, if you kind of… If you’re at the core of a game’s development, you know how it works, and then you see people making calls that you think sounds stupid for like, you know, for traffic or whatever it might be, then I can see where the frustration comes from. But the thing I would add to that is that I think that AAA games development is very closed off. It’s very, very like, people don’t really want to teach you how they make things. Like you’re told it’s hard and stuff like that. But you know, the reason the reason reporting has sort of been rising in importance over the past few years is because they’re telling these stories about AAA games development, that the previously existing system didn’t get out there. So people want to learn about, you know, about games development, people want to know how this stuff works. But the first instinct from the other side is not to necessarily tell that story. Like that’s not always the case. You know, there was quite a long documentary about the making of God of War that was very honest about how the game was made. That was really cool. But generally speaking, I think there could be a little bit more done in terms of like educating people about how these games are made. So yeah, that’s the thought I have. It’s weird because having like off the record conversations like more socially events with people which you know, you do have and, you know, been at things where you get into a group and there are a group of developers and they’re chatting and sharing stories and it’s just like an agreement that you’re not just going to go and tell this stuff to anyone else and you hear of like, like generally like, you know, I think it’s generally accepted that it’s kind of a minor miracle where like any game happens. Like it’s just like chaos for so much of it and, you know, so much can go wrong and it’s such a complicated thing and there’s a really good decision behind like every feature whether you think it’s good or bad. There’s a very clear story of how that thing came to be and, you know, I think fundamentally people just don’t want to open themselves up to like, you know, the reality of this is it’s really, really messy and like not, not like a glorious story, you know, the what are us stuff actually is, you know, everything’s quite cute. Everything’s a cute anecdote. There’s never any frustration in those stories. It’s like this thing happened. Everything was like a fun, happy accident. And that’s how they kind of want to present themselves. So I can understand, like, based on the little bits and bobs that you hear, why people wouldn’t necessarily want those versions of stories out there. Yeah, because they don’t always look great. But as a result, yeah, it’s not their obligation to like reveal how this sausage gets made. But it’s that thing where I feel like if there’s there is any kind of like frustration when these sort of headlines do the rounds. I think a lot of that can be like, might be alleviated by just educating people more widely about the realities of how games get made. Yeah. Yeah. I think also recently, like you’ve got a, the thing which is, I imagine is more frustrating is kind of social media dunking, where people just take something that’s dumb or looks dumb and just makes a big thing of it. And then there is like an answer. So like recently there was that clip during the rounds of the weird jump cutscene in Outriders and everyone’s like, huh huh huh, look at this cutscene, what a duff thing. And they’re like, oh, it’s a loading transition to bring your party together. And like there is an answer for it, but people are so quick to try and be sort of smart arses online. That’s probably frustrating. Like particularly in the age of social media, which I don’t think is, that doesn’t really count as like actual, you know, that’s not professional journalism. That’s people’s like private, you know, how they want to conduct themselves online. But that would piss me off. I see lots of stuff where I think, well, that person’s just an asshole, doesn’t know how this thing works. Like, but hey, sure, it gets you a laugh on Twitter, so whatever. But that’s not journalism. So I don’t know if it counts. No, it’s an interesting talking point, though, again, like it’s, again, speaks to the lack of understanding, though, like you say, like, you know, people got to learn off the back of that, that, you know, that that is, like you say, hiding a kind of loading screen transition. So it’s, it’s important that it’s there. And the lesson does get taught. But ultimately, the kind of like the, the power of the law overshadows the actual information behind it. So yeah, that’s that’s not healthy. There was so much of that around cyberpunk for every tweet I saw of someone saying like, look at this thing, there would be inevitably a reply from someone at a different studio who’s like, oh, yeah, that technique is called this, all games do it, you know, or like, yes, everyone’s been doing we’ve been doing this for 15 years. You know, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So I guess it’s just a further reason we shouldn’t really heed anything on Twitter, I guess. Yeah, no, it’s interesting to talk about, though, because yeah, I think it kind of works on both sides, where it’s like, you, you would rather have more understanding from a gaming audience, but at the same time, yeah, there’s a lot of like very close to the chest elements to game development. And I don’t think that was always the case in the dynamic between press and, and developers. So when the, the game, so when Netflix released Bandersnatch, the Black Mirror special, I ended up reading an old like, I don’t remember which magazine was like a Crash or Zap era magazine about Bandersnatch was the name of a doomed project from a UK game developer. I think the name of the Black Mirror special was like a reference to that. And it’s a very in-depth feature with like loads of like really good off the record, like conversation from developers about it. And I was there thinking, by the time I got into games magazines, this, the apparatus of PR, because games was such a big business, existed in like such a way that I never really developed those kinds of relationships or had that kind of dynamic with developers. But you working on them, you coming into Endgamer, for example, it sounds like they had quite close ties in the NGC and N64 days with Rare, for example, that you wouldn’t see access elsewhere. And that does feel like something that’s changed over time. As the business of games has grown, that kind of like wall has kind of like, you know, become more of a thing. Do you think that’s the case? Yeah, definitely. Like I don’t know as many examples of people being too close. It’s a really weird one because I’ve like, I don’t have many very close personal relationships with any developers, I’d say. Same. And in my head, I’ve always kind of treated that as like a separation of church and state. But I don’t know if actually, that’s just my way of justifying not having any developer friends. Like, so I just haven’t been able to make any, you know, it’s easy to go like, well, I believe in separation of church and state. And actually, I’d be saying something different if I went to like GDC and made friends with everyone. So yeah, it’s a tricky one. The first time Tom Francis invited me to his house, I thought, I can’t write about Heat Signature anymore. I’ve been to his house. Yeah, it happens. I don’t have like many close developer friends. In fact, I find it very funny when this happened a few times that a prominent developer follows me on Twitter. I think they’re thinking, oh, it’s the UK Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer. This guy, I bet he’s got some great things to say. And then there’s me saying, oh, Thor, the Dark World is fucking shit. And then I’ve kind of been unfollowed within about three months, so I’m like, I’ve got nothing but the greatest of respect for people who unfollow me on Twitter. I always worry on Twitter that sometimes I’ll interact with someone and tweet at them, and it’ll be an uncharacteristically sophisticated tweet from me. And then they’ll follow me on the strength of me, that tweet at them. And then they realize that the rest of my tweets are just about Renny’s, and I always feel like, oh, don’t, secretly, I’m like, don’t follow me. That isn’t true of all my tweets. I’m not normally that good at tweeting. If an author follows me because I say something interesting about their book to them, and then every other tweet I’ve got is about me. I just sprayed Pepsi Max all over my face or whatever, and I’m like, great. Yeah, it’s funny, because the Batman writer Scott Snyder follows me on Twitter, and I’m waiting for the day where he’s finally had enough of my inane bullshit about, oh, he’s tweeting about a guy who’s gone destiny again and then just unfollows. I’m sort of counting it down. Any day now, Scott, you’ll be gone. Maybe it’s just got you muted. Yeah, exactly. Which is worse. I’d hate to know that I was in someone’s—I’d rather be unfollowed than held forever in like mute limbo. Amazing. This is the kind of insight that people really wanted. It’s how we feel about them. People are like, finally, something interesting. Matthew, so the last thing I wanted to ask about before we move on to name dropping and lots of anecdotes about us kind of tooling around in the noughties is reporting. I’ve seen people do it though who I’ve worked with, but investigative reporting, most kind of notably, Jason Schreier, who worked for Kotaku and now works for Bloomberg, obviously an extremely talented reporter, has developed some really strong contacts and has revealed loads about AAA games development that people wouldn’t have previously known. But reporting is kind of found everywhere in games media now. I used to work with Stephen Messner on PC Gamer and he was very good at kind of reporting the machinations of like, you know, this different syndicates or whatever they’re called in, like EVE, the trading companies, or, you know, like the what’s going on inside the Final Fantasy 14 online fan community and stuff like that. So I was curious what you kind of made of that, the rise of reporting in games media and how important it is. Yeah, it’s admirable. It’s also something I am not good at and personally don’t have any interest in. Like I’ll read it all quite happily, but I personally have no interest in writing that stuff myself. You know, I feel like where I came from in terms of magazines, Endgamer, is really the exact opposite of that. Like Endgamer’s philosophy is like games are just stupid fun things. Let’s just have a great, stupid fun time with games. And maybe that’s not sophisticated enough for people. You know, maybe that’s seen as cowardly for not engaging with things. But tonally, I’ve never really been able to marry the two things, one or the other. And I don’t think that should be too controversial. I read a lot of other arts writing and people there are just arts critics. They just review things. They maybe have opinions. They can do opinion columns or whatever. But it’s not like the film critics from The Guardian are uncovering the Harvey Weinstein stories or whatever, that’s left to other journalists. It feels in a way that weirdly this happens more in games than it does in any other area of cultural reporting. I don’t know if it’s our desperate desire to be taken seriously that we need to have serious reporting associated with the art form, but it’s not my strength. That isn’t to say I don’t care about those issues. I read about them and I’ve never really been able to work out an end to that which sits alongside how I feel about more lighthearted games writing. Just offence it at the end, I guess. I think this varies generally, but like you, I have loads of admiration for it. I’ve really enjoyed being able to learn about how Rockstar or people within Rockstar feel about the game, the development of Red Dead Redemption 2 and what that took to make or what went wrong with Anthem, that sort of stuff. I do think that stuff is genuinely illuminating and when it breaks, I automatically want to read it. I think it’s got loads of value. Like you say, though, I think that it’s okay to have different specialties within games media. If you’re a critic and that’s what you want to write about, that’s fine. And that kind of broadly describes you and me, I would say. And that’s very much the kind of the mindset that magazines put you in. And you do end up using reporting skills when you’re doing stuff like the making of X game or you’re commissioning the history of Iron Storm and things like that. Storytelling is the same. Exactly. Yeah. So there’s definitely crossover. It’s also interesting that I think that the gaming’s dynamic is a bit different with this because reporting in film media, from what I can tell, a lot of the stories you’ll see break on like industry outlets feel like they’ve been set up by the film studio in question or someone’s agent or someone’s publicist, like X has been cast in this. And it’s like, well, the only reason that would be news is because probably someone at like one of these big Hollywood talent agencies wants their client to be on the front page of Deadline or whatever. So that’s quite that sort of thing exists more in the form of like cover exclusives in in gaming, but where it’s very odd, but it’s more obvious where the access comes from. Yeah, you know, and the other side of this, I guess, is like, you know, you’ve got the kind of the big expose, but then you’ve also got the kind of leak stuff, like I’m going to tell you something before other people have it, which, like, I’m just not I’m not very interested in. I mean, I don’t really respect that. It’s like, so what? You know, someone who tells you something early, like, is that’s going to be meaningless? That’s only exciting for the time being. And then it’s dead in a few months. Like games are only interesting when you’ve got them in your hands and you can actually say something interesting about them. You know, if all your work exists just in that hype, early hype cycle, you know, fundamentally, it’s going to be redundant one day. You know, I’ve not got a lot of time for that, but that’s not really to do with interviews because it’s also anonymous and sort of hidden, I guess, that it’s not really the same thing. Maybe we’ll try and get a game developer on a podcast at some point and talk about this stuff a little bit. That might be interesting. I’d love to actually know how, you know, everyone’s like, they’re so media trained. I wonder actually how that happens. Like, do they sit in a room and they’re just like, you know, it’s like being prepared for giving a testimony in a court case. They’ve just got a PR sitting there going like, what’s the best gun? And they’re like, they have to bark out the answer. Yeah, I think it’s much more widespread than you or I probably realise it is. Because that’s again another thing that we don’t really get taught about. But I would imagine that that’s like institutionalised across quite a lot of major publishers. But yeah, nonetheless, Matthew, I feel like that’s a good kind of preamble to our next section. Is there anything else you wanted to cover? Just in the kind of like basics of… Oh, I’m sure some of the bits, Bob, will come up in our interview specifics. Absolutely. Okay, so we’re going to take a short break. Then we’ll come back with stories of our own interviews from hell. Not really from hell, but some interesting challenges we faced in performing interviews and some anecdotes that we hope you’ll find quite interesting. It’s not as catchy a title, is it? Matthew, welcome back to the past, where we’re going to talk about some game developer interviews. How does it feel to be back here? I love being in the past. I was so much skinnier. It’s amazing. So Matthew, we’ve got like five interview experiences each to discuss here, in much the same way we normally do, we’ll alternate telling little different stories about people we’ve interviewed. Did you want to kick off with yours, your first one? Yeah, so this was, this started as an interview from hell, and then quickly became an interview from heaven. In fact, one of the better interviews I’ve done. This was for Dragon Quest IX. I very luckily got to do a trip over to Tokyo to meet Yuji Horii and Keiichi Sugiyama, who’s the composer of Dragon Quest series. And this wasn’t even for Endgamer, I was on Endgamer. This was actually for official Nintendo magazine. They were on a deadline and couldn’t send any of their team. So they rang us up and were like, does one of you a lot want to go to Tokyo to see Dragon Quest? I was like, yes, of course. I always felt a bit bad for Chris Skullion on this ground, because I felt like I stole an absolutely prime staff writer trip. But at the same time, basically from when they announced the trip, you know, the creative Dragon Quest, pretty big deal in terms of like interviews. And this was easily the biggest person I’d interviewed at that point. And I think the nerves kicked in like instantly like, oh, I better not mess that up. You know, I’m going to have to really deliver on this. And I knew Dragon Quest like reasonably well, wasn’t like a mega fan or anything. And so I just really didn’t want to be exposed. And I find that of all the things that we do in our jobs, these interviews like hang over me more than anything else. I don’t know if you have that too. Like if like particularly when you’re on a press trip and you’re like, I know somewhere in these five days, I’ve got to do this interview. I think I’ve, you know, I need to get the interview out before I can like properly chill and enjoy myself. My personal feeling is that it’s worse when you’re doing an interview on the phone from home. Like the stress of waiting for the phone to ring or dialing in and waiting for someone to join the kind of group call. Like I find that much worse than in person. In person I’m much more relaxed. Maybe that’s just me though. Yeah, I always used to be amazed by the people they were talking to on the phone on Total Film. When I was working on official Nintendo in the future London offices, we sat on the same floor as Total Film. And obviously, you know, the people they’re interviewing are like mega film stars. And often because of the time difference, they’d be doing it in the evening. So, you know, you’d be staying off to work to like sign some pages out or whatever. And I’d hear like one of Total Film pick up their phone. And just from what they were saying, you’d be able to work out like, oh my God, they’re talking to like Samuel L. Jackson, you know, cause they’d ask the question like, you know, or, you know, what was it like, you know, fighting Henry Cavill in freaking Mission Impossible or something. And you’d be like, oh my God, it’s Tom Cruise. Like somewhere in this room, if I said something, if I shouted something now, Tom Cruise would hear it. But if I just shouted my name, might be a bit weird though. Yeah, so I had this hanging over me and the day we actually went to do the interview, there were loads of people on the trip because it was like a big Nintendo of Europe thing. There were probably like 20 different journalists on it. And I was quite late in the day and having to sit in this tiny bleak little room in the Square Enix Tokyo offices waiting for this interview. So I was very, very nervous. I was like, oh God, I’m going to be seen as like a complete fraud. I think that was the first, was it? No, it wasn’t the first Japanese developers I’d interviewed in person. But I was just hyper aware of not wanting to mess it up. But I remember the really bad bit was when I went into the room, there were so many PR handlers in the room, as in there was, so the set of the room, there was Yuji Horii, Koichi Sigeyama and the producer of Dragon Quest IX from Level 5, whose name I can’t remember, I’m afraid. They were sitting in a row of three. Then in the middle of the room, there was two chairs for me and the translator. And then down two walls of the room, there were PRs. So there were 15 other people in the room. And I remember thinking, oh shit, I’ve got to ask all my nervous bad questions. In front of all these people, and they were all looking at me and it felt like very performative. I was very, so like, I remember just going into a room and my stomach just tightening of this feeling of like, why are all these people here? Why are they watching me? Because there are so many stakeholders in Dragon Quest, from Nintendo, from Square, from whoever. That was just terrible. But what made it all better was the moment I sat down, I realised that between Yuji Horii and Sigeyama, there was an ash tray and it was just piled with cigarettes and ash. The room stank of cigarettes. They’d just been in there smoking all day. And there’s just so many cigarettes in this pile. I couldn’t be nervous. Like, oh, that’s interesting. You’re like, oh, it’s just these two old guys smoking loads of cigarettes. And they smoked all through the interview. It really put me at ease. It was so casual. And we had a really great chat, which isn’t always guaranteed with, like, famous game developers. Like, you never know if they’re gonna, you know, some of them really deliver in there everything you want them to be. And some are a little frosty or, or like, sometimes one of the ones I’ll get to later, you can get people who you feel like, maybe they’re like golden days are behind them a bit. And there’s a bit of like resentment there, or they don’t like being asked about their older games. You know, they’re a little bit like, you know, don’t remind me kind of thing. But because like Yuji Horii has basically just been doing Dragon Quest for 25 years, he’s like super chill, really into it. Sugiyama, who was 80 when I interviewed him, I think, was so charming and nice. And it’s a bit odd, he’s a bit of a controversial figure because he’s like quite a, he’s quite like a like ultra conservative. He sort of denies Japanese war crimes. Like he’s quite, on paper, not the best dude, but in person, like super nice. They really, really engaged with the questions. It helped that I had an absolutely amazing translator, which really makes all the difference in Japanese developer interviews. Cause sometimes you could just tell that like, sometimes you can tell that translator is just stepping on all the answers. Or like the enthusiasm with which the developer speaks. None of it comes through in the color of the language that the translator gives you. I actually know some journalists who like record their interview and get them re-translated later, just because of those situations. I’ve never done that. I’ve never had the budget for that. But this particular one was gold. Like everything they said was great. It was really good. The cigarettes thing really stuck with me. It was just so like, it was like talking to like two grandads. It was really nice. And it kind of annoyed me a bit that I had to put this amazing interview in official Nintendo, because I was working in Gamer at the time. I was like, man, I really knocked out of the park with that. And they were like thrilled. I remember Neil and Owen being like, this was so great. We really loved this feature. And I was just like, god damn it. I felt like I’d really like help the enemy. But yeah, that was like a weird one. But I still get nervous about like, I need to get the interview out of the way always. Like otherwise it’s just there. It’s there as like a, you know, this could be amazing or it could be shit. And until I’ve done it and I know for sure that the risk of it being shit will just kind of, you know, kind of clog me up a bit. Yeah, that’s a great story. I will say actually the one time ever that I missed an interview at E3 or Gamescom was with Yuji Horii. It was on a day at Gamescom 2018 where I had zero hours and zero minutes of sleep. Like I remember I got my hours wrong and I was like, I basically turned up at the end of my interview slot for my interview. And I felt really bad that I’d wasted an hour of Yuji Horii’s life. Like, you know, that’s the only time that’s ever happened. Like you said, wasted an hour of his life, not his time. Like he’s only got limited life left. Well it’s more just like, I don’t know, if you’re the creator of Dragon Quest and some guy you’ve never met from PC Gamer just like wasted an hour of your time, I wouldn’t be delighted. I’d be like, do you know who the fuck I am? That’s how I’d feel about it if I was in this position. I’ve generally found though, like some of the best Japanese interviews I’ve had, they’ve largely been Square Enix people. I find Square Enix people, whether it’s how they train them or they’ve got particularly good translators, but for Japanese developers, I’ve had some really good chats, very charismatic people. Yeah, all of my Square Enix ones have been good actually. The Final Fantasy XIV guy, Yoshida, he’s really good, it definitely is a thing. Should I kick off with one of mine Matthew? Yeah, go on. Okay, so, 2008, I interviewed Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid, and what’s the other one, Penguin Adventure? Of course. And obviously Death Stranding and stuff, so, yeah. Penguin Adventure 2 when, what was your first question? That was, it was a roundtable interview, it was at the Metal Gear Solid 4 review event I talked about in the game review scores, we got wrong episode. So Kojima was in this, like, giant two-story hotel room in this hotel, his translator Aki Saito was there, who I think was also like some kind of Konami exec, and it was right at the very end of this review event, and they were running late, so, went in there, one journalist of the three, who was meant to be in the roundtable, missed the slot because I think they had to, like, get an early flight back or something like that, so it’s just me and one of the person with Kojima, and I was there thinking, well, that’s Bonanza, you know. The other journalist, incidentally, had like a camera, I was hoping to record them. I think Kojima had a cold, and so they wouldn’t let them film, and so I think, like, put his camera facing the wall, and I might be misremembering this, but I think he slowly tilted his camera back towards Kojima, like, slowly during the interview. Maybe just to pick up the audio, but I like the idea of, well, I’ll film you in secret then, but I’m sure that wasn’t the case. So it was a weird one. So we just played Metal Gear Solid 4, so you’d think, oh, I can ask lots of searching questions about the game I just played, and, you know, boy, if you’ve played that game, there are a lot of questions. But that was off the table. They said, no, we don’t want to spoil the game. These are all pre-release interviews, because there was weirdly, like, a preview embargo before the review embargo, where you could talk about the first level. So, it was intended for that, and I was like, hmm, how do I kind of poke at the idea that the story in this game has some problems? And the best I could really do was I asked him, how much do you plan your stories in advance for the Metal Gear Solid series? And I believe his answer was, I don’t plan my stories in advance. I don’t have, like, a whole series arc in mind, because I treat each game I make like it could be my last. Like, I’m paraphrasing there, but I’m pretty certain that’s what he said. Sadly, I no longer have the issue of play around that had that in there. And he was a really good speaker. I asked him a bunch of stuff. Here’s the from hell aspect. My phone rings really fucking loud. I had a Nokia 3310, because I was, like, a bit of, like, I don’t know, I just didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a phone, so I had this shitty old Nokia phone. And it went off and it was, like, the loudest thing ever. And the reason I had it on is no one had to call me. I was 20 and a staff writer on Play Magazine, no one had a reason to call me. But it was Konami calling, like one of the UK reps saying, we have to go now, because we could miss the flight. And I was there. And the moment my phone starts ringing in this hotel room with Hideo Kojima, and, like, loads of, like, other kind of Konami personnel, is one of the most, like, white-hot, mortifying moments of, like, I, you know, I was, like, this huge Metal Gear Solid fan. It felt really significant that, you know, two years before, I was playing Metal Gear Solid 3, you know, during college, and then, like, here I am meeting the creator. On a personal level, that felt like a big deal. And then my phone goes off, and it’s like, holy shit, and I think I did keep my phone on because I knew they were running behind, and it might be a bit frantic. In the end, the Konami rep came upstairs, banged on the door, and then I had to just leave the interview halfway through. Oh, shit. So it was that thing of like, Kashima was really nice about it. Like he bowed as I left, and I think he understood that like, you know, that things were overrunning and people had to go, whatever. But it was still, that was like the only time I met Kashima. Obviously, that’s a very rare interview. You don’t see many of them with him, particularly now. Well, it also explains why the first boss in Metal Gear Solid V is Idiot Phoneboy. Yeah, lots of people have been wondering about that one, trying to interpret it. But now we know. Yeah, the only way to defeat him is to let him leave in an embarrassed fashion. Let him leave and get on a plane, back to Bournemouth. Yeah, so I thought that was worth mentioning. Do you know what though, like I was still on Cloud 9 off the back of it, because I was on such adrenaline. It was like, it felt like such a massive moment. He is the celebrity game developer, right? Like he’s the guy. He’s top five for sure. So yeah, that was the from hell aspect. Only other thing that I kind of really remember asking him was, I think I asked him about like, what were the types of games he was interested in, thinking I might get a juicy answer about Bioshock or something. And I think he just said Super Smash Bros Brawl, and it might just be because Snake was in it. I don’t know. But yeah, it’s funny, though, because that answer he gave about, I treat every game story like it was my last. So I was thinking, why would you ever think that Yuji Okajima would not have the chance to make another Metal Gear Solid game, and then obviously, like, seven years later, he’s no longer at the studio. So he just had a habit of talking about his work in that way, though. Like with Death Stranding, it was like, you know, we never knew if we’d be able to get this studio off the ground. It’s like, you’re one of the most famous game developers in the world. Of course you were. You had all this Sony money, it wasn’t like a miracle. Yeah. Even so, though, do you get the slight sense that, like, Sony was slightly disappointed with the performance of Death Stranding? Like it sounds like they were pitching around for the next game and you’d think that Sony would just bite the hand off to get another Kojima game, but I don’t know. Who knows who’s working with you next, you know? Yeah. We’ll find out in an oral history in 15 years’ time. Yep. So that was me meeting Hideo Kojima. About a 20-minute interview in the end. I remember being in the cab afterwards, incredibly excited that it had even happened. But yeah, I don’t remember much vividly from like 13 years ago, but I sure remember that phone going off and how that felt inside. Like the white-hot shame. It was something else. So what about your next one, Matthew? Yeah, so it’s a bit more niche, but one I was really looking forward to was interviewing David Grossman, who was one of the writers on the original Monkey Islands. And this was for Telltale’s Monkey Island game on WiiWare. This was actually at a WiiWare like summit in London where they had like loads of people there. They had Super Meat Boy was playable for the first time. And so lots of developers there talking through their various WiiWare games. And I remember thinking like, oh, wow, like Monkey Island meant like a huge amount to me when I was, you know, a kid, you know, absolutely adored that game when the first games I was like really obsessed with. And so this was just like a real excitement to meet someone. And he was so disinterested in it didn’t anything particular. He was just just didn’t it didn’t seem to care. Like he just wasn’t interested in the answers. He didn’t say anything interesting. He wasn’t funny, which I expected him to be like hilarious because of Monkey Island. And the fact that he was there sort of selling Monkey Island or a new Monkey Island, I thought well surely this would be in his element. But he was so like this this this thing I was talking about about like developers I think who maybe get sick of being asked about their glory days. And here was someone who’s basically just gone all right let’s go back to the glory days. Let’s just do it again. You know, and I just got the sense that total reluctance to be there. Maybe it was just knackered because they’d flown him in from you know San Francisco whatever to do a London WiiWare event. I think in my head because like Tim Schafer, you know, I’ve never met him but like on paper and when you see him on interviews or you basically whenever you you know his social footprint he is 100% like what you imagine Tim Schafer to be like you know the funny man who makes funny games. And this guy like really wasn’t and he just seemed kind of a bit like down and I’m sure he’s a really nice bloke but I was just really like the gulf between what I was expecting and what I got was just vast. The older I am the more I kind of empathize like if all people wanted to do was ask me about stuff I did in my 20s and in my 30s I want to like achieve more than I did in my 20s like I am I know being in a kind of similar position I think I would possibly feel the same way so I kind of get it. I mean, we are doing a podcast where we just talk about our magazine glory days. That’s true. We talk about other stuff. We talk about new games too and the shit I buy on eBay. We keep telling people it gets sadder later on. No, it’s not that bad. It’s fine. But yeah, I see what you mean. I have interviewed Tim Schaffer and he is exactly as you’d expect. He’s extremely nice, extremely funny. That’s what I wanted. I just, I don’t know, you know, have a person, you know, there’s very few things that I have that kind of lengthy relationship with, you know, from my childhood. So it was just a bit of a bummer. Yeah. I think that was the universe’s way of balancing out your shoot Takumi interview. Yeah. It was like, you know, oh, he thought he thought this was good. Well, now we’re going to fuck him up. Mess with him emotionally. Yeah. What about your next one? Yeah. So next one is Toshihiro Nogoshi from Sega. A very well known figure among Yakuza fans. So this was 2008. It was my only trip to Japan for a bunch of Sega games, including Valkyria Chronicles back when it first released on PS3 and Sonic Unleashed, the werehog game. So yeah, so we were there to see those two games primarily, but Sega was also doing a belated release of Yakuza 2 on PS2. So, I think Yakuza, the original Yakuza was hyped up to be like a big deal. They had this like voice cast with Mark Hamill and other notable actors and the game kind of… Lex Luthor and Smallville. Yep, yep. An icon on this podcast. Yeah, so it was way, we were years before Yakuza became the thing it is now, which is this very coveted like cult success in the West. Yakuza was kind of a, you know, a very niche proposition. And Nogoshi, the developer, went into the room, was reading a magazine, didn’t look up, didn’t say hello, and basically delivered monosyllabic answers throughout the entire conversation like one or two word answers, kept reading the magazine, no eye contact. Like I didn’t really, I don’t think we ever really got a sense of why. I think someone may be suggested that, well, he’s working on Yakuza 3 at the moment, and like talking about this old game, blah, blah, blah, and I’m not like hugely offended by it years later. I do think it’s been an obstacle to me like liking Yakuza, knowing that like the mind behind it has, you know, just wouldn’t talk to me when I went into a room with him. But this was 13 years ago. Who knows what kind of bad day he was having? Like if I had to meet, if I was in my like 40s and I was a game designer and I had to meet some like dweeb on a Starfighter, sorry, dweeb Starfighter on a games magazine, I might not give a shit and just want to read my copy of like, I don’t know, I was gonna say loaded, but why would I be really loaded? It doesn’t even exist. Let’s say Edge, my copy of Edge. Yeah, so he’s got like, you know, it feels like he has, he has a kind of sort of persona, you know, he’s quite a fashionable guy, he’s quite like, he kind of cuts quite an interesting kind of character, you know, he’s quite a… I’ve read interviews with him where he’s been brilliant and really, really open, and I have read interviews with him where it’s clear that he just isn’t digging it. Like he seems quite kind of mercurial. Yeah, he’s a figure where like, you know, obviously he is important in the fabric of games development, like he’s, you know, made F-Zero, GX and Super Monkey Ball, like an important creator for sure. But I think that I don’t think I really worshiped him as like a games sort of industry hero. I used to read his edge columns. I don’t know if you ever read those, Matthew, but I’ll remember those. But you know, that was a thing that he did in the early noughties, I believe. So yeah, I don’t know. It was just one of those things where I came out of it like, I don’t know what I just experienced, but I did put a box out in the preview, basically just explaining like what he was like in person. And like, it was kind of a Never Meet Your Heroes sort of vibe to it. I think I was, I was much more upset about it at the time than I am now. Now I don’t really care. We had something like that when we were doing this, that hundredth issue of O&M. I remember one of the things that was like pitched was something to do with Cameo and the wonderful 101. And in the end, we didn’t get like, Nintendo couldn’t agree to do like a full feature with them or anything. But they were like, oh, we’ll get, you know, if you send us some questions, we get them to answer some questions. So I think in the back end of the section, we had these little like box outs dotted around the directory, which were like bonus episode, issue 100 interviews with various people. And we sent them some just like some silly throwaway questions. But they came back like translated, but they were like, like monosyllabic, like single word answers. And you’re like, why, you know, it was literally like, you know, oh, yeah, you know, you’re excited about, you know, how wonderful 101 has been received. And it was like, yes. And the next one’s like, you know, oh, yeah, do you think we’re going to see more of this from you? No. And you’re like, what’s the point? Like, why even translate something that was so bad? I think we even put it in a mag and there’s a comment on it, which is like, look at this terrible interview or something like that. It’s just rubbish. It was like, it was like him doing his frosty act on Twitter, which is odd because he’s brilliant in loads of interviews, but this he was just saying, not interested. Yeah, I’ve met him. I met him for Bayonetta and he was a great talker. He was such a great talker, in fact, that at one point the translator just stopped translating what he was saying because I think it was just like not preferred that it was published what he was saying. But yeah, that’s weird because I did find him to be a great talker. So yeah, strange. But yeah, that was the go she there was not a single bit of salvageable interview from that. It was pointless. It was a waste of time. But awesome. But nonetheless, an interesting experience as years later, I’ve seen, you know, your cues are blossom into this like massive thing among appears. So Matthew, what’s your next one? This was like a bit of a weird one. This was quite recently. This was an onstage interview, I was asked to do it at EGX 2019, I think. But I was asked to do it like two hours before because the person who was meant to be doing the interview was like ill, hadn’t turned up or hadn’t made it. And so I, you know, it was kind of like, oh, please, will you just go on and do this interview? I had to interview the chap David Johnson, who designed the map Dust for Counter-Strike for a session called The Making of Counter-Strike’s Dust. And it was like a 30 to 40 minute section and I had two hours to prepare for an interview, a very in-depth interview about a map in a game. I haven’t played, I haven’t played Counter-Strike. I’m not embarrassed to say that, just skipped it, never doesn’t, you know, I’m not a big multiplayer shooter guy. And all of a sudden I was faced with I have to talk for half an hour about something I’ve literally no idea about. And so I was just trying to like research it as quickly as possible, trying to find some damn things to ask, thinking, not only do I have to interview someone about something I don’t know about, it’s going to be front of an audience of people who really love that map and know about it. Like this is going to be so obvious if this is bogus. And luckily he’d written this really in-depth, like making of of the map on like on his own personal website. So I basically read that and then quickly reverse engineered like what can I ask him to basically get him to read this article out? So you know, finding the right questions at the things, but I still look back at it and it was streamed out and everything and think like it must have been so bogus because like wait, I just didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about it. You know, it’s like, oh yeah, the legendary ramp in the middle and you know, just a total fraud. I think I pulled it out of the bag, but I’ve never felt like dirtier doing something. Well please don’t people go and find that interview on YouTube because it’s probably really obvious. Like I had no idea what I’m talking about. This happens all the time though in games media Matthew, like the number one skill that like gets you through in games media is the ability to bluff convincingly. Like you might have to do all kinds of stuff as a kind of staff wear or whatever. Oh yeah, but there’s bluffing. It’s the fact that it was so public and it was sold as like an expert deep dive. And it’s like you couldn’t have found someone less expert if you tried. Like any member of that crowd could have probably done a better job. I am in agreement. Like the art of this stuff is like prepping and getting yourself to a point where you don’t make a fool of yourself and that, you know, I feel like I have that skill and that’s why I got through the interview. But it’s the short notice. I actually had a very similar thing with I went to preview, play an early build of like Mortal Kombat like Armageddon or something. I don’t know. It was like a 2008 Mortal Kombat port for the Wii. And I got there and played it and they were like, oh, here’s your interview with Ed Boon. And I was like, oh, shit, I don’t play Mortal Kombat. I’m not a Mortal Kombat guy at all. In fact, but all I had in my head was Kitsie had written quite a funny good feature on Mortal Kombat the month before. So I was just trying to recall details from that. And my questions are so vague. They’re like, so fatalities. And the thing about Ed Boon, he’s such a pro that he very politely didn’t react to how bad the interview was. And he was just talking through all this stuff. Basically, I was just barking terms at Mortal Kombat in him. And then he’d tell me the story about how they came to be, all that thing. And it was probably covering really old ground, but we had a nice chat. It was fun. Yeah, that’s good. Well, again, that’s someone who is going to know what the deal is. You’re there to sell the thing. Yeah, he got it though. He was good. He was very, very kind. I’ll always look kindly on his games because he took pity on me and didn’t drag me over the coals, which he could have easily have done. Yeah, I’ve not played Counter-Strike either, actually. That’s another of my egregious missing PC games, but I don’t work on PC gaming now, so no one can call me out for it. But hey, I’ve played Valorant, which I understand is just the Riot version of CSGO, and that is very fun, actually. We should play that sometime, Matthew. After you learn what Dust is. Oh, it’s a great map. Oh, the ramp in the middle. Oh, the ramp. The fun we had on that ramp. Okay, my next one, then, Matthew, is Masahiro Sakurai, best known as the figure behind Super Smash Bros, so the director and also the creator of Kirby, I believe. So this was 2013. So there’s quite a long gap here between this interview and the last one I talked about, as well, just in case people think that I spent my entire years in games media interviewing notable figures. These are spread out over many years. So at this point, I was editor of Games TM. Games TM had quite a good relationship with Nintendo, got good access. I was only on the magazine for about 10 months, but we had an email Q&A with Aonuma and an in-person interview with Sakurai E3 just in that period. So exciting, Nintendo access, genuinely exciting. This one, it was right around the time that Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS was announced and being talked about and was playable. And so at a 45-minute interview slot with Sakurai, I got the times wrong. I was an hour late, it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. I got a phone call from Nintendo asking, oh, you’re an interview starting in 15 minutes. Are you going to be here and stuff? And I was there thinking, fuck. It wasn’t too bad because I had spent the evening before reading about it and about what people think of Smash Bros and stuff like that. But every single question was off the cuff. I read nothing on a piece of paper. Every single question was just like, I was running on adrenaline. I was just like, okay, how do you make a game for Wii U and 3DS and have parity between the content and why did you choose to bring these characters in from these different games? That sort of stuff. The interview was perfectly fine. But I was just very fortunate because I set aside an hour before the interview or I thought I had to actually sit down and do questions. Because of my missed timing, I actually had to just go and do it straight off the cuff. So yeah, thankfully I didn’t squander the opportunity. But that was very like, oh shit, I’m going to absolutely screw up the most exciting opportunity I have here. The other interesting thing about this one is that I fell afoul slightly of a Smash Bros fansite who I think took issue with a way I misinterpreted one of his answers about DLC characters. And I think they were right. But I remember thinking, the thing is, there’s a gulf here. I know that hardcore Smash Bros players want to read, and what I want to read is someone who’s quite like, I will play probably any Smash Bros game, I will play between like 20 and like 80 hours, but that is all I will ever play. So sometimes you encounter that where a series has a very fierce fan base, but you’re not necessarily in that bracket. You are in a slightly more casual version of that fan base. So you’re trying to figure out what to write about that’s like interesting in a kind of broad way. I think this is something that writers who cover Destiny probably struggle with as well. But yeah, what do you make of that one, Matthew? Yeah, I’ve been in those those sort of crazy last minute off the cuff ones. I don’t think I’ve ever missed an interview, which is good. And the one person from Nintendo I have interviewed was at E3 in 2013, 14, where I got a call from Edge saying that their Edge guy couldn’t make it to their Nintendo interview because NGamer hadn’t been invited because we never did to Nintendo interviews. So there was like, can you go and do our interview with Eguchi, who at the time was like producer of Nintendo Land. It was the year Wii U got shown off properly for the first time. He was the producer of Nintendo Land and back in the past, he’s, I’m pretty sure he’s Mr. Animal Crossing to begin with. And that was like a nightmare because it was like having to prepare super quickly. But it was also the, wow, this is the only time I’ve ever been allowed to interview someone from Nintendo. It’s the first time it’s happened and it was for Edge magazine. And that added an extra layer of, I felt like I had to ask Edge kind of questions. You know, like if I was doing it end-gamer style, it would be a very different interview, you know, a lot sillier, a bit more casual. But I felt like I was doing like an impression of what I thought Edge would want. And trying to get like, because they’d shown off the Wii U and it was also like an hour after the Nintendo E3 conference. It was the second year they showed Wii U actually. That’s the year they showed Nintendo Land in its proper form. And it was a very disappointing conference. So I was in a megally bad mood about it because I was just like, oh, God, I was feeling quite bad about Wii U’s launch prospects. And then I had to go and do this like serious Edge interview with that mindset. And I was trying not to be too bleak about it. But I felt like hypercritical. And I just felt like it was an interview where I just couldn’t really be true to myself for like many different reasons. But it was fine, like the answers were fine and you know, I think they used it fine enough, you know, but just not the dream situation. I mean, that was the same E3 where I was just spending a lot of time around the Nintendo booth, hoping that I might get like an interview with someone else at some point. I remember the Nintendo PR came up to me and went, I haven’t managed to get you an interview, but like, you know, I know that there’s someone you’ve never met that you’ve always wanted to meet, and you know, I’ve managed to, you know, if you come with me now, we can do this. And I was like, oh my god, I’m going to get to meet Miyamoto. I can’t wait. And he introduced me to fucking Charles Martinet, who’s like, hello Matthew, it’s a me! I mean, the exact opposite of what I wanted. That’s like the one person I didn’t want to meet at E3. I’d rather I’ve met another random journalist. Yeah. To create a bit of a picture for people at home of what Nintendo Z3 booth is like, it almost looks like a theme park. They have these massive dedicated areas to different games they’ve got there. So last time I was there, it was Luigi’s Mansion 3 had its own haunted house style closed off section and then at a certain point they’ve got a check-in desk and then loads of demo booths behind this sort of velvet rope and then above that up a staircase is basically where all the talent is in this kind of like, I don’t know, do they call it a tree house? I think they call it something like that, right? But yeah, that’s where I went to meet Sakurai and I brushed past Iwata. I saw him for like, you know, two seconds, but it was just a very like, wow, kind of like moment. It was not realizing he’d just be wandering around this kind of business area. Imagine ascending those stairs to meet Charles Martinet. No offense to Charles Martinet, I’m sure he’s lovely, but well, he is lovely, I’ve met him, but not really not what I wanted. It was quite interesting interviewing Sakurai at a time where it felt like it was very obvious that Wii U was not what Nintendo wanted it to be. So it’s quite an interesting time to talk to someone from Nintendo. He was very nice, he was a very informative interviewee. So the from hell element is nothing to do with him. You can tell from just watching those Smash Bros character reveal videos, he’s an extremely nice man. But yeah, just wanted to share the story, Matthew. So why don’t you hit me with your next one? So this one is, like, as an interview, it was absolutely fine, but it’s an example of, like, when you interview someone who’s just got completely the wrong idea of their game, or rather, it’s when you play a game, you think it’s terrible, and then you have to interview someone. I always find very awkward, because I feel like I’m having to put, like, a nice sort of face on it. I’m not a rude person, I’m not going to be like, I thought that was bad. But I do struggle with interviews where I’ve played something I don’t like, and I then have to talk to the person, or I’m really underwhelmed with the premise or the promise of the game. And this was not a big game at all. I won’t name the guy to spare in the embarrassment, but I went to, it was like a day of EA demos at Guildford. I went to Guildford, and it was like a day of playing Wii and DS games, lots of different things they had at the time. And they had this DS RPG called Zubo, where you played as these little, like, I think they were like anthropomorphic drums, little drums with faces, but it had like a rhythm element. It was like a turn-based RPG where you kind of tap the screen, so it was a little bit Owen Danny as well. I remember playing this thing, just thinking like, well this is absolutely like five out of ten, reviews round up, guffaroon-y, just don’t have to think about it. And I remember interviewing the guy, and he had such a self-inflated sense of worth for this game. I can’t remember what I asked him to get this answer for, but I was talking about his inspirations maybe or, you know, been building an RPG, kind of where do you start from? And he said, well the first thing I did is I played Final Fantasy VII, and then I asked myself, how can I fix this? And I remember thinking, what, and your answer is make an RPG about living drums? Like, he was just mad, it’s the hardest I’ve had not to work just to burst out laughing in an interview and say, I’m afraid you failed. This is terrible, a terrible game, and I couldn’t believe it, and I didn’t actually use that quote because I felt so embarrassed for him to say something so stupid. I was just like, man alive, like, get over yourself, this is bad, you’ve made a bad game. It’s like Garth Moranghi energy to that quote, I think. Oh, just, how can I fix this? You’re like, wow, I mean, interesting answer you found. Man, that sounds like hard work. Sozobo. Yeah, I can’t say I remember that game, but I sure remember EA being one of the publishers that was making a lot of shovelware for the DS and the Wii. But yeah, they made some all right stuff too. Show me one to my next one, Matthew. Go for it. Cool. So the next one is, and this is very different to my other examples. This is on PC Gamer in 2019. It’s with DC, the creative director of a 1.6 million Kickstarter success sort of game project called Subverse. It’s a porn game. A porn game that looks like Mass Effect, kind of, in a kind of very trashy way. It was an email interview. I think DC was like a pseudonym. I don’t believe I learned their real name. But nonetheless, they were like FOW interactive. They made this game. It’s like a genre hybrid, had like XCOM elements and then some other kind of like RPG interacting with waifus element, I believe it was. So this was interesting because actually like I think it’s actually one of the stronger features I did when working on the website. I did it because the amount of money meant that it was definitely like a worthwhile thing for us to like write about because it was this high level of interest, but also had to thread this line of like good taste for the website. But also, you kind of sense that there were going to be a lot of people going, oh, you don’t get this game, you don’t understand it, you’re just like a woke critic who is not interested in like even engaging with it. You just want to show how like, you know, how sort of politically correct you are. And I was quite wary of that. So I sort of approached it as first of all, the first thing I did, no one ever commented on this. In the first paragraph, this is a very widely read article. I said, how do I put this? It’s not my sort of thing. And in that sentence, I hyperlinked the clip from Peep Show where Mark says, I’m Louis Theroux. I’m Louis Theroux at the orgy. To basically tell people, this is how I see myself. I’m Louis Theroux at the orgy, asking wry questions about this very odd looking sex game that really wasn’t, to me, there was just nothing visibly sexy about it. It was very grim looking. So I tried to ask very searching questions about like, oh, so what’s your kind of XCOM style combat like, and all this sort of stuff, and like, you know, why do you think this did make so much so much money, and, you know, and asking about their previous projects, which were like these CG porn versions of like, different games characters and stuff like that. Nice. Yeah, it was a mega red article, but like, yeah, a very hard one to figure out tonally. So I thought it was worth talking about. It was just it involved like getting into contact with them, GOG, because they’d suggested that the developers suggested that GOG had not answered their emails about being listed on the service. And so GOG responded. They had previously been kicked off of Patreon for violating their, their guidelines, as I had to get like a quote from them about why studio FOW was no longer allowed on there. And it ended up becoming like it’s quite rich sort of feature on something that in that moment was seemed like it was big news. So I think we were the only ones who did it think most people I understand if a lot of people just look at a sex game that’s kind of got all these like women, like you said in the previous episode, breast with feet, and just kind of wrote it off. But this is that thing of like, well, this is the big thing that’s happening in PC gaming right now. So let’s ask some actual like, sincere questions about what game are you making? What are you actually selling to people? So yeah, that was just one I wanted to talk about, Matthew. And you surprisingly became a big convert through that interview process as well. Yeah, I’m now executive producer of the game. I’m looking forward to the race. You spent 10 grand getting the highest Kickstarter tier. Yeah, that’s it. Like I got to like name my own waifu in the game. It was a great honor and the best use of money I could have done. Anyway, yeah, that’s… I was Louis Theroux at the orgy and I lived to tell the tale. Fantastic. What’s the next one, Matthew? So this is one that you were sort of semi-involved with, or at least you were around for the aftermath of this, which is the infamous time where… I can’t even remember what year it was, 2016 maybe? Yep, that’s right, yeah, Gamescom 2016. 2016 Gamescom, where on the opening day, as I was walking through the car park to get into the convention centre in Cologne, I tripped over quite badly and cut my knee open in the car park and I was, you know, I get quite panicked about getting into Gamescom at the best of times because it’s kind of a lucky dip about which door you go in, whether you actually make your first appointment because sometimes they let people in, sometimes they don’t. The systems never really made much sense to me. And I was on Official Xbox Magazine at the time and I had all my Xbox stuff lined up that first morning. So it was quite essential that I actually made it there in time. But I tripped over and it was just terrible. I was wearing like three quarter length shorts at a time. And all this blood coming down my leg and into the material of the trousers, just very bad, a very bad cut. And it was this moment of like, what do I do? Do I go in? Like, do I go into the convention center bleeding? Or do I try and do something about this? And they had a first aid station, which I just sort of went, managed to go in there and the person didn’t speak much English and I was just trying to kind of communicate that I just wanted something to patch it up so I could go in and do this interview. And they put all this like, what’s that brown stuff you put on wounds? If it wasn’t Amelga Solid 3, I don’t know what it is. It was this brown sort of anti, and disinfectant type stuff, antiseptic thing. So they’re pouring this stuff over. So my leg was like stained with like blood and brown streaks from all this stuff. And they put this huge thing on it. It wasn’t as bad as all that, I don’t think, but they put this big like bandage on it. And it was all kind of bleeding through the bandage a bit. It just looked absolutely mean. But I managed to make it in in time. And the first thing I had, I’m pretty sure was like Forza Horizon 3, was like the first session I went into. And Xbox, the way they’re kind of boozing, the press room work is like, each publisher has like a little area that they kind of, it’s kind of walled off, so you can’t see inside. And then inside it’s got all these small offices where they do demos of various games. And they usually fit like three journalists, a developer and a TV to show the demo or whatever. And it was all very pristine on the first day. And I think they had this big like fluffy carpet. They try and make it feel quite luxurious because they’re also, they’ve got like important commercial clients there. I remember going into this room with this, my leg just looked awful. Like it really looked like I’d been in a bad accident, I think, and all this blood everywhere. And I remember meeting Ralph from Playground Games was there for Forza Visor 3. And he was just like, very put like, Oh God, you know, your knee’s all right. I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, all this blood. It just looked really bad. And you know, he was looking quite nervously at it. And there was this, you know that thing in the office or the US office where people, like something bad’s happening and someone just looks at the camera and like grimaces. I saw a lot of that that day of people like looking at my knee and being like, oh, like, does he know? And it’s like, yes, I know. The three things that were going through their head was like, does he know? Like, is he gonna be okay? And the big one was like, is he gonna bleed in our press room? Because I think people were quite aware of like, you didn’t, you know, want people getting blood all over your couch on day one of Gamescom. It’s not a great look. And so I kept going in every session I went into, someone would look at my knee when I walked into the room and be like, oh, you know, and then try and not make a thing of it. Or they’d look at it and then look at their friend and sort of like sort of wince or something. And it’s going around to the point where like, by the end of the day, like somehow news of my knee had like spread amongst other journalists. And I was going into rooms with complete strangers and it’d be like, oh, it’s the knee guy. It’s like, oh, it’s, oh yeah, it looks terrible. Like they knew about it already. And yeah, so I just spent the day, like the interviews were all fine, but it was just this day of like being hyper aware of this really unpleasant thing other people had to deal with. Yeah, it was fun though. It was funny, we had some good laughs about it. Yeah, so you and I shared a hotel room that year. And I feel like we bonded over this shattered knee. This is like very much the start of our like, you know, sort of proper friendship, I think. The funniest thing I remember from this is that one night I went to like a Gamescom party and as I was leaving, you went, are you leaving because of the knee? And I just went, no. And it was like this kind of like, you were very like, I think very sensitive about the fact that I was, you were joking, but the idea that I was just going to a party to get away from the knee, which to be honest, was probably going through my mind a little bit. The other thing I remember is that like, I kept kind of glancing at it and then like, I think I mentioned something about how like, there was kind of like white looking fluid under it. And I think like, I think I kind of like maybe suggested, is this some kind of like knee fluid? What is this white stuff? And you had to explain, oh no, that was like the antiseptic that was healing it. But it was like, looking at this knee with this white stuff that I thought was some kind of like knee pus was like, it was like the most cursed object at Gamescom 2016, your knee. Yeah. Yeah, it was quite funny. But like, there’s still like PRs to stay that like, the only thing they know about me is my knee and they’ll still joke about it in emails. They’re like, how’s the knee? And you’re like, yeah, it’s good, thank you. It healed four years ago. But I like that, you know, after eight years of doing the job, I finally had something, I finally did something vaguely memorable that PRs and developers will remember me, albeit for the wrong reasons. And I don’t think I did bleed on anyone’s room. It did look terrible though. It really looked like the brown stuff in particular. It just looked like everything was coming out of the knee. And you were like, they’ve put stuff on it. Like I didn’t generate the brown. Like the blood is mine. The brown is this other bloke. To be honest, I mean, it’s nice that it kind of like the Gamescom had that facility to sort you out. If this had happened in America, they’d have been like, well, that’ll cost you a hundred grand, mate. And like, that would have been the end of your life. Yeah, that guy, big help. And I didn’t miss an interview. I’m a pro. Yeah, sorry, are you just taking like pot shots at me for missing my Yuji Horii interview? Is that what this is? No, no, no, not at all, no. I’m just getting defensive about it. No, that was, yeah, like very, it was very memorable. But people knew who you were. You won the Games Media Awards Legend Award by then, right? Like you were a legend. I don’t know, I don’t know. Okay, I like the idea that you had to destroy your knee in order to be remembered. Like that’s- Yeah, they’ll remember me. Yeah. Go out with a bang. Yeah, I remember that Gamescom very vividly. Good times, but yeah. So my last one, Matthew, is not one from hell, but I thought was worth talking about because it’s probably like the most high profile person I’ve interviewed working in games media. So Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, I interviewed in June 2019 for E3. So PC Game has quite strong ties with, I think because Xbox has obviously been pushing into PC for a few years now. They knew that PC Game was the biggest PC gaming outlet. So getting access to Phil Spencer was a fairly regular occurrence. But I think one of my bosses had to cancel during the interview because they were double booked for something, so I got to do this interview. And I think it was about 40 minutes with Phil Spencer. And it was really, really good. And I think what’s interesting about him is that obviously he’s the boss. And I think he’s kind of fostered this thing at Xbox of being like super transparent about stuff. There’s not really, it gives you the sense to like there aren’t really any questions that you can’t ask and he’ll give you like a pretty honest answer. So I think he’s quite a good interviewee. He didn’t really play his cards close to his chest at all. I asked him what he thought about the Epic Games Store. Again, like I say, that was like the big thing at the time. Less of a big thing now. Asked about Game Pass on PC. Asked about, will you bring all of your like existing Xbox games to PC? You know, like they were just going to announce they’re going to release their games on Steam from PC. So it was like quite a significant moment in their sort of journey on PC. So got to ask about that. I asked about the return of Flight Simulator, which is a big deal at the time. That was when he told me, I think that like, oh yeah, a bunch of us at Microsoft are pilots. And I was there thinking, hey, like that’s a proper like rich person’s domain kind of hobby. You know what I mean? It’s not like there are people I know at Bath who are also pilots. That was quite interesting. But yeah, just really interesting. Like E3 is an obviously the LA Convention Center. Next to E3 is something called LA Live, which is kind of like a sort of sort of plaza of like shops and stuff, which is connected to the Staples Center, which is like this big sports venue. And they were in like some sort of like side office in LA Live. And that’s where I went to do this interview. And yeah, it was probably like the most interesting. It was definitely the most interesting thing I did at that E3. But yeah, the most high profile person I interviewed, Phil Spencer, asking him about PC stuff. Oh, that’s good, a real pro. I had a nightmare interview situation with Phil Spencer for the wrong reasons. When I was doing Xbox on, we got a very rare interview slot where he was over in the UK and they were like, you can go and do a video and interview him. It was like a pre E3 like hype video or something. And it’s like your video team could go and interview him. And you know, we were doing the official Xbox YouTube channel. So we really didn’t want to mess up. And we went there, we went to this hotel. We stayed up the night before because we knew it was going to be an early start to do this interview. And it was like, right, we can’t mess this up. You know, we’ve got to seem as professional as possible. And then when we got there, I realized one of our lapel mics had broken and we didn’t have a backup for some reason. And I was like, shit, we’ve got like an hour until we’re doing this interview with Phil Spencer. And we’ve literally only gonna get half of the audio. I had a total freak out about it. And so I was just looking up local electricity, local like electric supplier shops to see if anyone had like a, you know, in stock lapel mic. And there was one about 20 minutes away. And I remember having to sprint through London at like nine in the morning to get to this lapel shop. And I am not built for sprinting. Like I’m a big, slow, unhealthy person. And I was, and I was, I was, I was legging it down. And I remember at the time I ran past, of all people, David Cross. Right, okay. And I remember thinking like, wow, David Cross. But also thinking, shit, I’m gonna get fired if I don’t get this lapel mic. Right. And having to sprint back there. And by the time I got, and I managed to make it just in time, just before Phil Spencer got to the room. But because I’ve been like running around London to get this lapel mic, I was sweating so bad. Like I genuinely looked like I was about to have a heart attack. And I felt I had to go and hide in another room in the hotel suite. Cause I didn’t want Phil Spencer to see me looking like, cause he, it would probably freak him out a bit. If you went into a room and there’s just a really out of breath, red sweating man. Just an absolute nightmare. Like a genuine career low, like running to get that mic. Yeah, that does sound incredibly stressful. I don’t know. And they were happy with the interview and it did well. So, you know, needs must. Yeah. Well, that is a tale of woe. I actually died in front of David Cross. Yeah. He would have probably worked that into a bit of material. Yeah, that would have been a great honor for you, I think. But yeah, I really feel Spencer. Like, I think he’s just, yeah, his honesty is just kind of, like, refreshing. And I think it helps that Xbox being on the back foot for the last, like, five years, basically. Five years or longer, really, means that they, you know, the honesty, the thing is, I would imagine tied into that somewhat. It’s like, well, if we are open about all the things we’re doing at Microsoft, our acquisitions, the kind of types of games we want to make, and, you know, the stuff that we’re building specifically for PC players, then that does invite you to be a bit more confident as an interviewer to ask more searching questions. I think out of this as well, we did get, like, a new story about Age of Empires for a game that has been, like, long in the works. And I still haven’t really seen much of it. But, yeah, it was good. It was, yeah, kind of a good capper. This is around the time that I left PCGamer, so it was, yeah, one of the cool last things I did. Very good. Yep, so there we go, Matthew. I think we’ve reached the end of our interview chat. Is there anything else that you kind of wanted to point towards before we do our usual outro gubbins? Not really, just that, you know, hats off to people who do very good interviews. It is very hard. It’s one area of the job where I feel like, you know, people who have had like formal journalism training often bring a little extra spark to it. Like I didn’t have any myself, but, you know, and I sometimes think sniffily, like who would do those courses? Because I can do this job and I didn’t do those courses. But then I remember there are some quite specific skills which you do get taught and people who’ve come from that background tend to be much better at them. Yeah, for sure. I would say for my part, I will link in the tweets that we do for this episode to a couple of the interviews I’ve mentioned here, which are actually online. The rest of them are all in print magazines that are lost to time, or at least lost to me moving house several times and not wanting to carry magazines across the country. But yeah, Matthew, to wrap up then, where can people find you on Twitter? They can find me at mrbazzle underscore pesto. You can find me at Samuel W. Roberts. If you want to follow the podcast on Twitter, it’s at backpagepod. You can also email us questions at backpagegames at gmail.com. If you’d like to leave us a review on the platform of your choice, that’d be much appreciated. Apple podcasts in particular, those reviews really help us in terms of growth and we have been sort of steadily growing as we’ve been making these. So thank you very much for your support. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll be back next week, Matthew, with a subject I have forgotten, but we have agreed and tweeted about. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah, it’s gonna be a good one. But yeah, we’ll be back next Friday, but thank you very much for listening and goodbye. Bye bye.