Hello, welcome to The Back Page A Video Games Podcast. Hello, Matthew, we have another special guest. Yeah, hello. I apologize for my accent. I’m Ben Hanson from MinnMax, M-I-N-N-M-A-X. We’re a whole Patreon slash outlet out there, an independent joint, but kind of split off from Game Informer back in 2019. Yeah, an American, how exotic for us. Yeah, let me know if you have any questions about French fries, I’m here to help. So yeah, you guys love the British, right? We’re very well loved for, you know, historically very well loved. That’s my understanding of, yeah. Well, you know what? It was fascinating listening to this podcast because I’m a fan, just so you know. I think we have a lot of similarities here. Hopefully we can dive into, but it was fascinating listening to an episode a couple back where it didn’t even occur to me. You’re talking about how much you love Day of the Tentacle and that discussion of like, you know, it was kind of confusing to have a Day of the Tentacle game all about American history and trying to wrap our minds around it. I had not even considered what that game must be like for people around the world. Like, it’s just impenetrable, right? Yeah, it’s hard work. It’s like when we’re watching The Simpsons and they make jokes about Fox and it’s like, I don’t really know what that is, you know? And then having to research what 90s Fox is and what Martin is and all these shows I’ve never heard of. Like, I’ve been so enriched by baffling references. But yes, thanks so much for joining us, Ben. We’ve definitely had like a sort of upswell of people saying they love what you do at MinnMax. And so it’s great we can get across over here and talk to you a bit about your career and your interests. So how are things with you? Are you enjoying life with a Steam Deck? I heard you talking about that on a recent episode. Oh, God, yeah, I love that. I love that silly thing. I’m not a big handheld gamer. And so it took a while to kind of get in that groove, I think, but I really love it. And maybe this is too personal, but specifically it is, my wife doesn’t play a lot of games, but it has opened the door for her in a way where she’s playing Metro Mortar Way is on there, is that what it’s called. But just having like a quick and easy game to just pick up and play for her. And we can both play on the couch together. And just, you know, it’s great for old platformers. Like I’ve been playing that Clinoa collection recently, you know, just blasting through Clinoa 1, sitting on my couch on a handheld PC. It’s just a new era of weird gaming, but I’m all here for it. Oh, that’s awesome. So Ben, I saw that this week, you were at a Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope event, right? Was that like a big, was that like a kind of breakthrough event for you guys in terms of, you know, industry recognition? It felt like that from the way you were talking about on social media. It was, yeah, it’s weird, you know, it’s starting up like a whole indie media operation. We always have this real underdog attitude. So anytime somebody from the outside world treats us like we’re a real outlet, it’s like, yes, we did it. We fooled them. We make them feel like we’re real. Yeah, so, you know, we went to the Summer Game Fest event earlier in the summer. That was great. We sent Sarah Podzorski from her team out to that and kissed Geoff Keighley’s ring. You know, the natural things you have to do there. But then, yeah, it was a nice moment where Ubisoft reached out to see if we wanted to go to this Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope preview event in San Francisco. So they flew us out to play three hours of the game. And so, yeah, it was nice just to be at a preview event in general. It feels like the game industry is slowly recovering. Like this fall in particular, it seems like publishers are starting to do some mass invites, which is nice to see. Oh, that’s awesome. Is that the first thing like this? I think I saw you at the GDC this year, right? But I suppose it’s a little bit different. But like post-pandemic, I guess this is one of the first major things you’ve been up to. Yeah, I think so. And it brought back a flood of memories and anxieties from the days at Game Informer, right? Of just like sitting in that hotel room the night before, maybe a couple beers in, and then scribbling in a notepad, be like, okay, how can I make the most out of these features? How do I not blow it? So yeah, a lot of fun memories flooding back with that. But the good news is, you know, Grand Assault, Asterisk, all that fun stuff that Ubisoft paid for our flight out there and whatnot. But Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope, shockingly good. Shockingly good. Nice, are you a fan at the first? I had a fine time with it. Like I really enjoyed XCOM Enemy Unknown, obviously, but I’m not a big tactics guy in general. And I made it like a couple of worlds into Kingdom Battle. I was like, oh, this game is better than I thought, you know? And I think this feels like another notch up from that, even in terms of quality. I mean, they’ve been working on it for four years over there. And I’m curious to see how the tactics diehards take to it because it seems like, you know, they’re adding more depth to the tactics. You can equip different sparks, which change elements and all this nonsense. But also they’re trying to make it, I think, more approachable in that it’s no longer based on a grid. You can now run anywhere on the battlefield and then also running around the world. It has, you know, it’s a Ubisoft game. So it’s a large map and it’s got side objectives and it’s got fast travel. And it feels more like you’re just controlling Mario running around this overworld. And so it’s really, it enters kind of like an uncanny valley in terms of platforming, right? Cause you’re controlling Mario like outside of the castle, but you can’t jump, let alone triple jump. So it’s just this weird dynamic. But I think the star of the show with that game too is the soundtrack. Like it’s ridiculous. Cause the last one, if you remember Grant Kirkhope composed the soundtrack to it. And then this time they added Gareth Coker who composed the Ori games and also a co-composer for Halo Infinite. And then the big one is they brought in Yoko Shimomura from Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XV, Live Alive, Super Mario RPG, the Mario and Luigi games. I mean, Street Fighter 2. I mean, she goes back so far. And those three working together, they’ve just made this amazing soundtrack for this kind of little tactics game, which is amazing to see Ubisoft putting a big budget for the soundtrack like this. Yeah, it’s quite almost like, can’t even sort of hear it in my head what like a Grant Kirkhope soundtrack sounds like next to lots of Yoko Shimomura like a piano, like rapidly rapid fire piano kind of playing basically. That’s quite the thing, right? Hearing them side by side. Yeah, we did. We recently released maybe the dorkiest video we’ve made in a while. Well, maybe that’s not true. But the point is it was I immediately just when I was capturing the gameplay brought all the sliders except for music down to zero. So I could just capture the soundtrack. And then we streamed on MinnMax’s Twitch channel, like a trivia show, have had polls like, all right, this track here, guess which composer it is. This track here, guess which composer it is. And it was harder to guess than you think. And I had the cheat sheet of the right answers and stuff. So it sounds like they’re so wildly different, but it turns out they’re talented. They have a lot of range. It’s not immediately like, okay, that’s Yoko, that’s Gareth. It’s kind of more blurry than you’d think. That’s awesome. So aside from that, you’ve been playing Return to Monkey Island, right? It’s like, I guess LucasArts adventure games, they seem like a big deal for you. Just based on our discussion today already, and also what you’ve been doing on the channel recently with Indiana Jones. So yeah, is that like a big deal for you in terms of your background with gaming? Man, I really love, this is a weird way to get into it, but I really love Tim Schafer’s personality. Growing up, just like all of his interviews, like, oh, I am so into that creator. And so then had to work backwards and fell in love with the Grim Pandango, and then played Day of the Tentacle and jumped around to some early LucasArts games like that. But yeah, we just did our huge game club. We have a game club series at MinnMax called The Deepest Dive, which we proudly proclaim is the best, most thorough discussion about games on the internet, which sounds like nonsense, but you know, we talked about Final Fantasy VII Remake for like 14 hours. So I think it has a chance, right? Not in a row, but we probably could have. We were so enthusiastic about that game. So we just did The Deepest Dive, this game club with the community on Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis. That little adventure game, which y’all just talked about recently, right? From 1992. And so that was an interesting transition to go right from that to now Return to Monkey Island. And it’s just a breath of fresh air. Like I really enjoyed Indiana Jones, which by the way, can I spoil the ending of Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis here? Just fast forward 30 seconds if you don’t want to hear the end of a game from 30 years ago. It’s so good. It ends with Indiana Jones, believe it or not, he finds Atlantis and he’s in the room with a couple of Nazis. And they’re trying to figure out how this crazy Atlantean technology works. And so Indiana Jones, they’re like, okay, we need to test out the machinery. So let’s put Indiana Jones on this slab and let’s put this or a calcum, these magical Atlantean beads that’s pumped into the machine. And you get to choose like how many beads they pump into the machine. And there’s a lot of options you can choose if you choose like one or a hundred or out of all these different options. Indiana Jones just turns into a god. He becomes like this green alien electricity beast. And your friend Sophia is like, Indiana, no! And then you just become a ghost flying around the room screaming at the screen. And that’s, I guess, quote unquote, the bad ending, but it’s the most amazing ending to an Indiana Jones adventure imaginable. That’s what happens if I eat beads too. I saw you took the fists path. Yeah, yeah. It was a bold move. Yeah, so it has like three different paths, right? So it’s like fists, wits or team. And there was a group of four of us playing and it was fun because we naturally divvied it up and we didn’t really even understand the structure. So then going into the first discussion, it’s like, oh, thank God we all took different paths here. Yeah, so it was a lot of fighting in an era. Did you like the point and click fighting? I was not a fan. Just like the sound of each punch was just some damage to my brain. I think it was so piercing. So yeah, I mean, the hardcore fans of that game that jumped in the comments told me that it was definitely the worst path to go on. But you know, it was all right to go around and beat up Nazis for eight hours. It was fine. Beat up some Nazis, eat some beads. Sounds like a great weekend. It’s a great game, yeah. But so anyways, it was a wild transition then to go to Return to Monkey Island. And it’s just so smooth. They give you plenty of hints. You can hit tab on the keyboard and show you all the interactable objects. It’s just, it turns out adventure games can be smooth and fun. Who would have thunk it? That’s awesome. I mean, that’s a hell of a transition as well. That’s how we know we’re dealing with like a real presenter and not just us kind of like hobbyists kind of talking about one thing for 40 minutes and then completely losing track. So very nice that you stayed it back there. So yeah, we’d like to have you Ben. So we’re gonna talk a bit about your sort of like background on Game Informer and then kind of like go through to MinnMax to present. So I think you’ve got a really interesting history as someone who works in new media but has worked kind of in parallel with traditional media in, well, you know, in partnership with traditional media your entire career. So yeah, quite an interesting mix there. So why don’t you tell us about your background when you were a kid, like what games really spoke to you? What were the kind of key games that really got you into the medium? Yeah, I was a weird one growing up because I was not really into NES or Super Nintendo. It came from a pretty poor family in Minnesota. And so we had an old Apple II, like our neighbor’s old Apple II. So it was a lot of, you know, there’s a game called the Oregon Trail. Was that popular at all outside of the United States? Aware of that, yeah. Okay. Like real, real old school game. Very much so. Yeah, we made a whole documentary about the history because it actually was developed in Minnesota, strangely enough. But really into that and then, you know, the text adventure for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I guess was kind of prime in the pump for loving adventure games down the road. And then really it was a jump from there to the PlayStation One, which seems wild. And then it was Final Fantasy VII that really blew my mind. I mean, the first real RPG that I played. And so that was opening up a whole new avenue for my brain. That’s cool. No, it’s kind of similar, really, where we had rudimentary PCs. And then it was PlayStation 2. And suddenly it went from old school RTS games to GTA 3. Not as old school as the Oregon Trail, actually. That’s really old school, but that’s cool. Yeah, it is interesting. How did you feel coming into games media with a bit of a, it’s like a working class background, is it fair to say? Like that’s kind of unusual. You get a lot of well-educated people, particularly in the UK, who go into games media. Did you feel a little bit like an outlier in that respect? Yeah, I think so. You know, because you’d go to the game industry and starting at Game Informer and go to fancy dinners with developers and be like, I’ll take my steak, well done. I don’t know. I don’t know how to hold a fork. Basic stuff like that, you know? So I guess that’s a little bit of a shocker. But you know, we’re still, I still live in Minneapolis here and Game Informer was based in Minneapolis. So we always kind of felt, you know, we’re not one of the cool folks on the coasts of the States, you know? So we always felt a little bit out of the loop anyway. So it was definitely a shocking transition, but maybe not as mind blowing as you’d think. But it was, yeah, it was wild. So I started at Game Informer in 2010, like late 2010. And I went from being a video producer at a community TV station, like, you know, doing videos about, check out this great parade down Main Street in Roseville, Minnesota. And then it was like, okay, now you’re at Game Informer. And it turns out, whisper, whisper, the next Elder Scrolls game is called Skyrim. And you’re gonna go on that cover story and shoot all the interviews with Todd Howard. And it’s like, oh, okay, sure. And so, you know, what it’s like, you just try and act as if it’s normal and pretend you know what you’re doing. And then it was like, you know, jump cut to me sitting in Bethesda arguing with Todd Howard about how this tour of Bethesda should be shot. Where I was like, I think I want to do it with the tripod. He’s like, go handheld, are you nuts? I was like, no, I think I want a nice table. I’m gonna go with the tripod. And there’s the back of my mind, like, why am I arguing with Todd Howard about like any sort of creative decision? This is the weirdest world that I’ve stumbled into here, you know? What was easier to film, Todd Howard or Parade Float? Oh, great question. Well, I mean, that was, there’s a weird, the answer is Parade Float. Because stumbling into it, I was really naive and did not understand the power of PR. Something I’m sure both of you know quite well at this point. So it was literally a matter of like walking around Bethesda and talking to developers and you know, a lot of smart, talented folks that have been there for so long. And then just be like, I’m going to pick up my camera and go shoot an interview with this person. And then Bethesda PR is like, over my dead body. You are not talking to that random artist in the background. Like literally, it got to a point of like, no, it’s great. This person worked on a thousand other games. Let’s just do a quick interview with them. And PR is like, I’m not unlocking that door for you to go in that room. Like absolutely not. And so that was a learning curve for figuring out like, okay, we have some gatekeepers that we need to work around here, hopefully in a friendly way. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So was gaming for a huge part of your sort of reading growing up? Were you kind of an EGM reader? What was your source of games media before you ended up working in the industry? No, don’t tell anybody. But no, I never subscribed to Game Informer before I started there. I remember a friend of mine subscribed, so I’d check out a couple issues here and there. But I was really an online kid. And so it was GameSpot was kind of my first love. I mean, back when I was probably in fourth grade and typed in videogames.com and it brought me to GameSpot. I was like, okay, this is great. And then from that, OneUp became a big passion of mine. When I guess I was in college and specifically, the OneUp show and OneUp yours, and that really kicked off a love of video game podcasts that luckily has worked out, yeah. Oh, I can actually really see a through line from OneUp to your stuff actually. It feels, that feels like a strong influence, you know? Oh, thank you. Yeah, for sure. Too much so. I mean, when I started at Game Informer, it was very much like, all right, let’s do the OneUp show and let’s do this and let’s do more casual approaches with developers and so there’s a bit of a culture clash there, because some people in Game Informer, you know, were fans of other online outlets, but a lot of them were fans of print and other magazines, you know, so it felt kind of like a generational shift at a time in Game Informer to have people like, what, you’re a fan of other websites? How is that possible? Yeah, I’d have considered that very rude as a print editor if someone came in and started talking about websites. Right, there’s this thing called podcasts, check them out everybody, they’re cool. They seem like the future. So how did you end up getting your Game Informer job? You told us the story a little bit on your final episode of Game Informer, the Game Informer show where you had Andy McNamara talking about hiring you. What was that process like? It was weird, it was more casual than you’d think. I was very nervous. I remember I drank a bunch of wine before going on this job interview at like one in the afternoon, just like, I just need something, take the edge off. I don’t know why wine, so I probably had stupid purple teeth as I’m going into this interview. The good news and something I should have taken into account was that, yeah, Andy McNamara, the old editor in chief of Game Informer, he likes to talk. So I really just got to sit back and sit on his couch and he just talked for a long time about the magazine and how they need help with video and all this. And I was the first full video hire at Game Informer. So it really just came down to him saying like, hey, can you do video? Can you produce video? And I was like, yeah. And then it was just him talking about stuff. And there was a moment where we walked into his office and he had like a big boss statue from Metal Gear Solid 3. And I said like, oh, I love the big boss statue. And I remember Reiner, Andrew Reiner, who was also the former editor in chief of Game Informer. He’s like, well, he knows who that is. So he seems okay. And that was it. There was no follow up questions about like, how much do you follow games? What do you know about games? Just, I identified big boss and I could hold a camera so I’m in. It was great. Amazing, what an incredibly abstract final test. If you don’t get that right, you don’t get to work. Is this Solid Snake or is this big boss? Don’t blow it. Yeah. Amazing. So when you got there to Game Informer, like you worked on 80 cover features, I think you said, and 50 of those were in a row. So what did creating a video plan around a cover feature look like on Game Informer? Yeah, that 50 in a row, that’s a factor I don’t even know. Maybe I said that in that podcast or something. I’m curious about that. He did, yeah, in that final episode, he said, yeah. Yeah, so every month we’d have a new game on the cover of Game Informer and being the video producer, it’s like, okay, well, you need to fly out to shoot interviews then for the online coverage for all of these games. So every month it was just a fun rotation where basically a week out of every month for about nine years then is how long I was there. I’d be traveling, visiting game studios, and yeah, it was always a very fun mystery about, you know, I’d be in the meetings about trying to figure out what cover story we were going to do. And in the back of my mind, when they lay out the options for the cover stories, I’d always be doing the math. I’m like, okay, Montreal or Tokyo. Okay, like just trying to figure out where I’d potentially be going. So it was incredibly exciting and I was really lucky. And then it would get locked in. Andy McNamara would lock in. All right, we’re going to do this for the cover story. Let’s go with this. And then we’d jump on a call with PR from the studio and try and figure out like, okay, what, first of all, what did you talk about with Andy? Because we weren’t in those conversations. What were we promised? And then how much wiggle room is there? So we’d come up with features and figure out, okay, we really want to, we know that this developer is in the studio and they worked on these classic games. Could we carve out time for a video interview with them? Or okay, is there a gameplay opportunity where we can highlight the combat of Mass Effect 3? Or like what type of demo will we be receiving? And I mean, this is stuff I’m sure you all are very aware of, but it’s just a matter of creating enough content for the month of coverage that we would bill it as at Game Informer. So you’d have to come up with a bunch of ideas and then just a lot of back and forth with PR of like, that’s doable. This one makes us uncomfortable. So maybe, and then we try and push for that one, or this one’s right out. You will not be talking to this person about this. So just trying to find that wiggle room. But I mean, you all know this. You know the song and dance, right? Yeah, it was very different working on UK print mags. Game Informer is just massive, so much bigger than anything I ever worked on. The idea of being multiple choices of covers is kind of hilarious to me. You know, you’d be like, is there a game out there that we can maybe get access to? And then in a lot of cases, it’s, well, here’s what you’d have, take it or leave it. And then you’re having the conversations of like, can we really stretch four screenshots into a cover feature? I think Game Informer was always just the dream. And you know, I’ll be honest, like, you know, hugely jealous from afar. You know, you’re always kind of like, man, these guys, like, what a treat. They, you know, the access they get and what they do with it and how much you guys built out of it. It was almost felt like a different medium to me from afar. Yeah, I’m probably making it seem too rosy. I mean, I think it was a lot of stress and a lot of covers and a lot of rock star being like, yeah, I think we’re good for next month. I mean, like, maybe in the future. And so, okay, do we have Red Dead Redemption 2 or not? You never know. And so, yeah, things were dropping out all the time. I mean, this is definitely not my purview. Andy McNamara was really leading that charge and stuff. And so, you know, some months were definitely better than others. There were times where we were spoiled by a couple of different options. Yeah, but was it frustrating? And what was your impression of Game Informer? Please be honest, I don’t work there anymore. Because I was on Nintendo Mags for a long stretch of time. And like, we never, like, it didn’t feel like we were kind of ever kind of competing for the same game. It’s not that UK media could really compete with Game Informer, but you would definitely hear in the office chat of like, this particular cover opportunity fell through because it’s on Game Informer. Like, if anyone could chasump any magazine, it would be Game Informer. That isn’t like a bitter thing at all. Like it’s, you know, it’s just the reality of it. You know, that one mag is probably outselling all game British games mags combined. It was really impressive as well. Like it was, because from the outside looking in, it was like a rare example of an outlet sometimes having more power than the publisher to be like, we want to do this and we want to do that. And they just, you just didn’t see that anywhere else. But I kind of, I thought, you know, it must’ve been pretty awesome from the inside looking out when, you know, these major world exclusives would happen because there wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world. And sometimes it wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world for a long time. And for a print outlet to have that power for so long, incredibly impressive, you know. Yeah, it was wild. And the confusing thing is it would just change publisher to publisher, it would change game to game, it would change PR person to PR person. So it wasn’t a matter of, you know, here’s a ton of exclusive gameplay footage every time. You know, sometimes even within the same publisher, it would just change so wildly that it was always unpredictable exactly what we would get. And it’s just, yeah, it’s just a different era, it feels like, you know, Game Informer is still around. They could use some more help. It’d be nice if GameStop supported them in a big way and let them hire some more people or backfill some positions. But they’re still getting wild exclusives. I mean, God of War, Ragnarok was just on the cover with like exclusive gameplay. So I think part of that too is just, they’ve been around for so long and they have these sometimes, you know, 30 year relationships with developers and publishers. It’s really nice to see that still carry forward and exclusives can still happen, as frustrating as they are for a lot of people out there. I get it, you know. I mean, like, I mean, there must have been huge pressure for you guys, you know, when you are the only eyes on something to kind of do something justice or you want to make sure you nail it. I mean, what’s that like? Yeah, yeah, that was stressful. And going on so many different, normally it’d be a matter of figuring out, okay, which writer knows this series, this franchise, this developer well, let’s send them on this cover story trip. But for me being the video person, it’s like, all right, you’re going on basically all of them. So you need to be caught up and have something to talk about with all of these games. And so it’s like, okay, I need to get into the Call of Duty series. I’ve never really gotten into it before, but it turns out, you know, it turns out as we used to say, every game is interesting, right? I mean, if you research the development of any of these games, it’s always fascinating. And then getting into the cycle of this Call of Duty developer versus this Call of Duty developer, how they’re branching the engines. I mean, it’s just fascinating to dive into the weeds and all that stuff. So thankfully I was geeky enough to have some area of passion. But I remember there was dumb moments where I put my foot in my mouth where, you know, what was it? I wasn’t, I’m not a big Fallout guy. And I remember we were on the South Park Stick of Truth cover story trip with Obsidian. And we’re talking about Fallout and, you know, it’s the dumbest thing in the world. But I mentioned something about like, you know, it’d be interesting to follow it if there’s like one pocket where the world like wasn’t fully destroyed, like just one area. And they’re like, oh, like in Fallout New Vegas? I was like, oh yeah, yeah. I guess it’s kind of like that game you just released. Okay, cool. So yeah, I mean, I definitely was an idiot at times because you can only do so much research before you fly out for these things. They could have made that world less destroyed than it was. It was a very tiny patch of Vegas that wasn’t destroyed. Thank you very much. Yeah, but it was definitely stressful making sure you wanted to cover as much ground as possible and not let the community down because, yeah, it was fascinating working with so many different publishers and jumping around and developers, but then just communities, you know, getting a flavor and a taste of each community, how angry they are, how vocal they are, and not wanting to let them down to make sure you see and absorb everything you get during your demos and take as thorough notes as possible just to get all those details out there because, yeah, I mean, some fan bases in particular, I don’t want to point any fingers, but the Halo fan base, they are dicks. And so you really want to make sure that you’re taking as many notes as possible just to try and get it accurate for those folks so you make them happy. Yeah, I think actually what you did was incredibly tough because so many of these cover features are usually at the start of a game’s marketing cycle, so they wouldn’t have assets, or they wouldn’t want to talk about different things. And so it’s kind of miraculous you’re able to wrestle the kind of access out of them that you did in so many cases, you know? Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of cases of going to a studio and, you know, I was just talking about Mass Effect 3 and that cover story trip. It’s like there really wasn’t a demo to see at that point. Some of these games are just so early that you’re really just going for a PowerPoint presentation and maybe some sort of tech background thing, and that’s about it. Or some of it’s just like, you know, here’s kind of our concept footage of what we want this to be. So it’s a lot of grains of salt as you’re talking about this, you know, making it clear that like, we didn’t see the game running, but this is what the developers want to do. We’re happy to talk about their mission because they’re interesting. All right. Thinking that the Spider-Man, were you involved with the Spider-Man reveal stuff? Because I remember that being like a massive chunk of content that rolled out over quite a long period of time. Were you essential to that? No, actually I wasn’t. That was a huge one for us. And that was one where Leo Vader, who was our video editor at the time, he went on that trip with Andrew Reiner and Kyle Hilliard. But yeah, that was just huge. You know, it’s really tough to predict which covers are going to be big. I mean, I remember when we were debating between options, a couple of things fell through. And one of the options back in the day was for Hellblade, Signior Sacrifice. And I remember, you know, I was like, well, you know, we like the studio. We like Ninja Theory, but at the same time, like they have been so transparent with the crowdfunding operation with that, that they’ve been releasing these videos. And so I don’t know how many questions there are about that game, but sure, we’ll do it. And Ninja Theory is great to work with. We went into that studio, beautiful Cambridge, your neck of the woods, I don’t know. And so we went there. It’s the right island. Okay, all right, we’re getting started here. And then that was one where it also did really well, not Spider-Man numbers, mind you, but it’s just interesting to see like sometimes, and with the right amount of gameplay footage, like that community will really show up in a huge way. And so it’s always, it always felt like a little bit of a failure if you had a pretty big game and then just nobody was interested in your coverage. It’s like, okay, is this the game’s fault? Is this the angle for our features? What’s not connecting here? Right, yeah. What were your personal highlights, Ben? I feel like you touched on a few of them there, but like which cover features did you enjoy working on the most? Yeah, a big one. I’m a big fan of Metal Gear Solid. As you can tell, I know who big boss is. And so we got to do the cover story for Metal Gear Solid V, but it was also for Ground Zeroes. And so this was, God, this was probably early 2014 or something. And so it was my first trip to Japan and I was, and the two writers for that project for that cover story were Tim Turi, who’s now at PlayStation and Dan Reicher, who’s now at Giant Bomb. And they’re like my two best friends in the office. So like the three of us going to Japan to play through Ground Zeroes for the first time and meet Hideo Kojima, that was just a dream come true. So it was a lot of, a lot of drunken karaoke and all that stuff, but then actually getting to go to the studio, Kojima Productions and meet Mr. Kojima and then play through Ground Zeroes, that was just a treat. And it was so fun because I’m a dork for research. And so it was so fun just to not be fully overwhelmed by the scope of Metal Gear Solid and the lore going in, where it’s like, okay, I know it all, played all the games obviously, but this is just Big Boss’s story. So let’s just research everything we can up until this point and know this timeline backwards and forwards so when we play Ground Zeroes, we’ll know exactly what the takeaways are, tiny details for fans, all that stuff. And then that was an uncomfortable one after it came out because we played through Ground Zeroes, which I assume you two have played Ground Zeroes. Do you remember them? Yeah, yeah. How long would you say it takes to get through Ground Zeroes? Two hours, maybe a little longer to push. Okay, great. So we played through it and that was our takeaway. Like, ooh, this is a lot shorter than we were expecting because no one really knew the scope of this thing. And so yeah, we played through it in a couple of hours, did side missions, all that stuff and so we’re talking to the producer, Ken, over there. And I asked about like, yeah, I mean, how fast can you get through Ground Zeroes? He’s like, oh, internally, we’ve had people run through this in like 20 minutes for like the crit path. So we mentioned that in the article at some point, like, you know, it’s probably smaller than you expect. I mean, if you’re just doing the critical path stuff, you can get through in 20 minutes, but there’s a lot of side activities and all that stuff. And then the article hit and the Internet exploded, and I remember, you know, Tim Turi, who wrote that article, he was just dumbstruck because like Hideo Kojima’s assistant got on Twitter and was like, false article, false article. It’s not real. I was like, what? Like, you’re going to see the game is going to come out. People will understand that this is short. Like to call it false just seems wild. And maybe that’s a precursor of things to come in media. So it was just a bizarre time to have a lot of stress on the tail end of such a really fun trip. And it was still, you know, Kojima was friendly and nice. And it was nice just to see, I don’t know if nice is the right word, but you know, that studio is definitely on pins and needles for like, okay, Kojima-san’s time is very important. So he’s coming into this room for exactly this period of time. And remember, there’s a little detail that I loved where they had like the interview set up at this table. And then before he came in the room, one of his assistants like sat in the chair, he’s going to be sitting in and like squished around a little bit and was like, we need to get a more comfortable chair for Kojima. So they went out to find like the most comfortable chair just to make this as perfect as possible. So yeah, it was a that was a wild ride. That was one of my favorites for sure. And I mean, the Japan stuff in general was always a highlight. I got to go there 10 times, which was a real treat. And one of the wildest was for Final Fantasy XV, which was like early 2016. We went there and we hadn’t really worked with Square or at least like the Japanese end of Square in a big way. And so I don’t know how this happened. Normally, we’d go and spend two days in a game studio for cover story trips, which was an incredible privilege. And I felt guilty for taking up that much of developer’s times, but hopefully we made the most of it. But then for that trip, it’s like, OK, we’ll send you to Tokyo. Well, I mean, game four, we pay for it, but we’ll go to Tokyo. And then you can spend a week in the studio talking to Final Fantasy creators. I was like, a week? Are you out of your mind? Yeah, sure, we’ll do it. And so that was just a treat to meet Katase, director of my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy VII and all that. And then going back and talking to… They just rotated through so many developers for these interviews, and it would just be amazing to do research on these people and be like, OK, Tokita. He worked on Final Fantasy I, and he’s the co-director of Chrono Trigger. And so just, you know, somebody would come in and it’d be a guy talking about World of Final Fantasy, if you remember that kind of chibi game. And he was the director of that game. And then talking about his history, he’s like, oh, yeah, I was the animator for Vincent and Yuffie in Final Fantasy VII, so it’s like finding all these little tidbits. It was just incredible. And that it was an embarrassing level of access, if I had to frame it correctly, because this is, I’m sure, something you two know a bit, but at times it’s kind of an extension of, you know, when you play a demo and then the developer is like, wow, pretty good. I’ve never seen somebody so good at this game. Way to go. And the PR person is just like kissing your ass, you know? That is what that trip was like, because literally we walked into the studio, just like the three of us, just to cover Final Fantasy XV, and they had the entire Final Fantasy XV development team, like applaud as we came, I was like, I am going to jump out of a frickin window. This is unbearable. Very sweet. Very sweet. You want to be nice, but at the same time, it’s like, oh, I am sorry, everybody. I feel sorry that you have to look at us, let alone applaud. What sword did that game get from gaming for in the end? That’s a great question. Let’s see, that was reviewed by somebody who didn’t go on that trip, which is a very good way to go about it. I think I got an 8.5, if I remember correctly. Okay. Yeah. The day the poor died. Let me see. Oh, I’m really curious about this now. Let’s see, Cruising to Success is the headline at Game Informer, and it got an 8.5. All right. Good memory. Yeah, but that was a wild one too, where I’m obsessed with this little tidbit where they showed us like, okay, here’s, well, we got to play a bunch of 15 and got to capture a lot of it, like a very work in progress version of it, which is a rare treat. But then also they’re like, okay, and this is what we want for the future of this team. And this is like Tabata, who’s the director of 15, you know, going back to Crisis Corps and stuff. And they showed us in 2016, like this early concept footage. And I thought it was Final Fantasy XVI. Like there was no title on it. It was just like a teaser of some concept footage. And it was of like this woman who had arrows and a quiver running along like a brick wall and kind of it looked like a British subway, you know. And so I know what I did, what that was, I assumed it was 16. And then it turns out that was the earliest version of Forspoken. Like they showed us that early, early version of that game, which that team would eventually go on to create. But then there was a shakeup and development and all this stuff. But so yeah, it was just a ridiculous level of access that I can never stop pinching myself about. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Because those developers, like he for a long time didn’t say anything, the Final Fantasy developers, they were so like, you know, didn’t really do interviews in the West until around ten years ago. And they started doing more of them. But it’s still a treat when they pop up because there just haven’t been that many of them. So getting that access for a Final Fantasy fan as well must have been incredible. Yeah, for sure. And I think it’s tough to try and connect exactly how it happened and their openness. But I think part of it was Yoshi P and Final Fantasy XV. And they had to do such an about face with XIV. And I think they got much more used to, hey, let’s be brutally honest, you know? And it’s also coming down to the personality, I think, of Yoshi P and then also Tabata with XV, where both of them are pretty, as far as we could tell, you know, transparent developers and interesting in being blunt. And so I think that pivot for XIV let them know that, okay, actually talking to the fan base and getting real instead of just saying, next Final Fantasy is going to be the best. Yeah, just you wait. I mean, it was really wild, like Tabata, when doing interviews for XV, he was talking about how much he loved the old games, like, you know, IV and VI were his favorites and how Final Fantasy really lost its way. And remember, he called in our interviews, Final Fantasy XV, like a make or break for the entire series, you know? And so just that level of honesty, I think kind of branched out from XIV’s pivot. The GTA V cover feature was a huge moment for Game Informer because no one else saw what was in that game for months afterwards. And I was curious, did you have much involvement on that one or did Rockstar a little bit more guarded about? I mean, they never do interviews, so I imagine that was tricky. But did you get involved with that one at all? Take a guess on if you think Rockstar was guarded. Yeah, no, I was very excited about that one, for sure. And then yeah, Rockstar was like, no video. And we said, yes, no problem, Rockstar, whatever you need. And so I didn’t get to go on that trip. And so I think that was Matt Burtz and Andy McNamara and Matt Helgeson got to go and see that game. And then the best we could do is they came back and we recorded a video where they kind of vaguely recalled what they saw and tried to remember as many specifics as possible and all that stuff. And that was definitely, that was a big one, you know? But there are those levels of games where they’d be like, no video. And we’d just have to be like, yep, sure, you got it. I remember we did Skyward Sword as a cover. And the earliest version of that, the way it was relayed to me is like, okay, I think you’re going to get to go to Kyoto and they’re talking like you can do a video tour of Nintendo’s headquarters in Kyoto. I was like, are you kidding me? Absolutely, that’s amazing. And then it turns out Nintendo’s like, yeah, I actually know video after all. Okay, well, I’ll sit back, that’s fine. So things always change, but yeah, there’s definitely those size of games where they don’t need to let video out about the game. And you know, now in the wake of GTA 6’s leak, you know, it’s a weird new era for Rockstar in a couple different ways. Yeah, for sure. So you grew the channel from virtually nothing into something, you know, pretty big. And you know, it was certainly like, you know, a huge deal when there would be coverage about this game that people didn’t know a lot about. Looking back, what were you proudest of on the channel? Something like rapid fire questions, that format you came up with, because I was always shocked that publishers allowed you to do that. Just because they would have to answer questions they wouldn’t answer in any other interview. Yep. But yeah, especially in terms of the shape of the channel, what are you kind of proudest of from that? Yeah, I mean, this is a weird, it’s the weird thing about Game Informer is the magazine is so successful. I mean, it was at seven and a half million subscribers, I think for a chunk there, I’m not sure what they’re at now. But I always felt like the online, we always kind of felt like the underdogs. And so yeah, building up that YouTube channel from the first video on, it was fun, and just to try and get it with some steam. And the challenge was always you would have these wild exclusives, which was a godsend. But then it was a matter of hopefully over time, we got better at this about like, okay, how do we make this feel like Game Informer content? You know, because the early days, you know, I’d go on a Battlefield 3 cover story trip and the PR team would say, hey, here’s an interview about the lighting in Battlefield 3. And they’d be like, okay, well, then I’ll shoot a video interview about the lighting in Battlefield 3. And they would go up on a YouTube channel and nobody would care naturally or very few people would care. And it just it felt like just a sloppy version of something that EA would produce themselves. And so I think over time, hopefully we got better and better about making features that would rope in that kind of bigger audience, but then at the same time, leave them with hopefully the takeaway of, oh, Game Informer is kind of cool. This seems like a unique thing, you know. And so those rapid fire interviews, I think, is a good example of it and probably like the best recurring feature we had video wise during my era there at least. And so yeah, that started, if you’re familiar, it was just we’d sit down with developers on these trips and then just we would write out hundreds and hundreds of questions and then just rapid fire ask them. And it was interesting and it was hopefully a good blend of entertaining. And then also there’s a lot of info packed into those things. But yeah, so our first one we did, and it all started because we were doing No Man’s Sky for the cover story. And I remember, God, I think Edge had a No Man’s Sky cover before us, maybe. And I remember their headline for it was Maths Effect, which as an American was like, I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but sure. So we were just sitting around the office talking about features we could do for No Man’s Sky for that cover. And it was like, oh, we could do this, we could do this, there’s just so many questions about this. And I remember a co-worker, Jeff Marquiafava, who’s now at MinnMax, he’s like, just ask him if you can ride a dinosaur. That’s all people want to know. Can you ride that dinosaur from that trailer? And he’s like, that’s a good idea. And then we just started coming up with all those little questions like, yeah, we just want to ask, like, how does this work, how does this work? And so then thankfully, Sean Murray was friendly enough and game enough to sit down and do that rapid fire interview. And then that one did really well. It eventually came back to bite them in a big bad way because there are a lot of answers there that I’m sure he was being as honest as he could. But in retrospect, it’s like, you said there was multiplayer in that game and there isn’t. So there’s a lot of confusing stuff there. But that really got the ball rolling then for doing this rapid fire format. And at first, we were really selective with it about, well, this developer is going to say no. So we won’t even pitch them on it. I don’t know if this developer is funny enough to do it, which was often a consideration. And then some of them, I mean, Sony would always say absolutely not, except for God of War. That one happened. That was a great one. And then we got just more and more confident in it just kind of becoming a staple where every month we would do one rain or shine, funny or not, just to get them out there. And so they always did well. So I always felt like that was a real accomplishment from the team. But it was, by the way, stop me from rambling at any point. No, no, this is great. Okay, great. It’s great. Really good. I was just going to ask, did you ever have to like bin one off because you just didn’t get the material out of them or like they weren’t funny or? No, the good thing is, I mean, with that format, it’s pretty easy to trim them down if they really aren’t funny. So we would like, you know, we’d all sit around and come up with questions as a group and then go out and record it and then this is the beauty of not doing remote work, I guess, back when we’re all in an office together, because then we’d have like a screener, you know, where we’d actually have like a longer cut of it and we’d get like, you know, six of us around or something to watch it and it’d be pretty easy to tell when you’re watching it in a group, like, oh, that joke sucks. In retrospect, I really thought that was something, but apparently not. And so then that was the just easiest to trim out all that stuff. And especially like in the video editing side of things, it’s just fascinating to watch something you’ve edited with a group and it just feels night and day. So hopefully that led to much stronger content overall of trimming those things down. And now there’s still a ton of bad jokes that we left in there. But those are ones that we were passionate about airing. You know, we need to surface some real stinkers every once in a while. Yeah, you did one for Call of Duty Black Ops 4, I think. I was watching that back yesterday. I was like, that’s amazing. They went along with that. And you really did ask some searching questions. I don’t think anyone else would have had the time or energy to ask, you know. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And there was, yeah, we did Modern Warfare as well. I think at a rapid fire. And that was the one where they said that that game wasn’t political. I was like, okay. I can try and go back and forth a couple of times. I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. I was going to ask, like, all the reactions, all your reactions in the video, are they genuine? You didn’t record those afterwards? Because sometimes they seem really, like, are you sure about it? You know, genuinely, like, doubtful. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, yeah, we didn’t go back and record it. I mean, I remember the old Daily Show interviews. They would only bring one camera for those interviews and then have to, like, record the questions after, which seems like a nightmare. So yeah, there are genuine reactions in there. Yeah, for sure. You know, it’s always funny. You know, people, believe it or not, those were highly edited and highly trimmed down. So, like, you know, we did one for Destiny. I think it was for Taken King. And it was, like, rapid fire with Luke Smith, ton of questions about Destiny, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we asked, is the Traveler secretly evil? And Luke Smith, like, paused for, like, five seconds and he’s like, you’ll have to wait and see. You know, and so we left that in there with the pause, like, the only question that has the pause. So then everyone was just like, absolutely, the Traveler is secretly evil. He confirmed it. You see how long he took? And it’s like, well, that was us just being little stinkers. But to get to your question, yeah, I am also amazed that PR would let them happen. I was very thankful, but when you’re shooting so many questions at people, naturally there’s going to be so many avenues for, you know, if some outlet wants to run with some headline, they can do it. And so the fact that we got the ball rolling with Sean Murray was amazing. And then I’m trying to remember, I guess it was 2017, early 2017, we got to interview in a rapid fire way Miyamoto and Anuma talking about Breath of the Wild, but then also just about their careers in general. And that was like, I mean, that’s just unbelievable that Nintendo PR was able to pull that off. And the fact that we were able to message to them correctly, like, are they aware that this is going to be a weird jokey video? Please make sure they know. And then it was just like the highlight of my life was like sitting in the hotel room the night before, like, okay, write 100 questions. I’ve never been asked for Miyamoto. Go. This seems like a historical moment that we should not blow. So hopefully folks aren’t let down by that. And it was a lot of pressure because you’re just, you know, when you’re in the room with the developer that big, it’s very tense. Everyone’s on pins and needles. PR is ready to scream, ready to explode. They’re more stressed than they’ve ever been. And so trying to pivot that tense energy in the room into like, now let’s make a silly video. That was a tough one to pull off. But I’m so thankful we got to do that. Is there anyone who you didn’t get to meet and do that format with who you think would absolutely nail it if you had the chance to? I think this is why, I don’t remember if we pitched Kojima on it. Maybe it was before we even did the format with Sean Murray. I’m trying to remember that timeline. But I think Kojima would have been great info-wise. You could ask a million questions to Kojima. I think he might have been game for it if he was prepped in the right way. If he got him his special comfy chair. Oh, we’d put a pillow on his butt. It’d be great. That was definitely a dream of mine, to get to do that in some way. But also, after doing Miyamoto, that’s just amazing. Then at an E3, we got to interview Tezuka, who’s the director of Mario 3 and Mario World. Yoshi’s Island, Link to the Past. That also seems like a dream come true, but I’m sure from Nintendo’s point of view, they can send a link and say, hey, they did one with Miyamoto and it went well, so get in line, Tezuka. I think once you’ve done… Miyamoto is very much like the final boss of game developer interviews. I’ve never got a chance to meet him, but it’ll be a tough one to beat, I think. Yeah, it was very heartwarming where we did that interview. This was early 2017, and so one of the bits was Jeff Cork, formerly at Game Informer, he was always obsessed with just how much Nintendo must be into the three-cup game. We’re going to put something under one of the cups, and then we’re going to rotate around. That just pops up in so many Nintendo games over and over and over again. And so then that was a bit that we had in that. We’re like, all right, we have this Breath of the Wild coin, we’re going to put it under a cup, like a coffee cup, and we have three of them, and we’re going to shuffle them on the table for you, Miyamoto. You got to keep track of where it is. And then we secretly slipped under one of the cups, which he successfully tracked and lifted up the cup, but we slipped in a note so that when he lifted it up, it was just a note that said, please make a 2D Metroid game. Which is a good physical gang, and thankfully he was on board for that and got a good laugh out of it. But then it was amazing because a year later or whatever, they got to interview Miyamoto at E3. And you never know if he remembers you in any way, but he had a moment there where he was like, I think I asked him about virtual console on Switch or something, and he made some comment where he goes, yeah, why don’t you get your cups out? Maybe I’ll tell you. He remembers. He remembers me with the cup, people. That’s good enough for me. But not in an angry way. No, I don’t think so. It’s the one who fooled me with those cups. That’s right. That’s right. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Metroid Dread happened. That is the origin of that. That’s right. So you still have a really strong attachment to Game Informer and its alumni. Why do you think being part of a print media team forms those kind of long lasting bonds? I guess you are technically a slightly separate team, but you all seem incredibly close together. Yeah, we are. I think it was just a fun office and that bonds people together. Also, I mean, it helped that there was kind of a younger wave of Game Informer editors that entered, you know, people like Annette Gonzalez, who’s now at Xbox. It was kind of part of this larger younger group. And so that immediately will bond you together. When it’s like, OK, we’re working with a bunch of people who have been in print media since the early 90s. Like we’re trying to maybe do things a little bit differently. And so that was a nice bonding effort. But I don’t know, do you all feel that from print? It’s just an extra bonding. Yeah, I was kind of just curious to hear about it from the US side, you know, because we talk about it so much in this podcast about, you know, kind of especially in like the pandemic times, so everyone’s kind of scattered to the wind, like nice memories of being in the office together and the kind of bonds that would form. And I think there was just maybe something about making a physical thing that just, I don’t know, maybe heightened that slightly. But I don’t know, maybe that does just apply to any kind of creative team, you know, in proximity to each other. Yeah, the physical thing is interesting. And maybe associated with that is, you know, we definitely, we had the website and there’s definitely folks who mainly focus on the website. But yeah, maybe just not being in that daily treadmill race of getting online content up, when you could take your time a little bit more. And you know what, I mean, this is pretty in the weeds, but I guess that’s what this podcast is for, right? I mean, part of it too is, I’m sure from the writer’s perspective, and I’m no writer. But from the writer’s perspective, you’d have to work with these people so much in editing. You know, you’d have pass after pass after pass with these features. And so you’d really get to sit down with them and work through what they’re trying to say and, you know, have little notes here and there. And so if you’re working on a big feature for the magazine and just the editing of that can take so long, I mean, that forms a tight bond more so than maybe an online news article and it’s like somebody might take a quick glance at it, then F it, get it out the door, send the tweet out, we got to go, you know? I was going to ask a really basic question. What were the Game Informer offices like to be? And like physically, what are they like as a space? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve, you know, I’ve seen like images here and there. It looks like, for one, they had an amazing like games library. Yeah, that’s the big thing. They called it the Vault. Yeah, where, I mean, that’s Andrew Reiner and Andy McNamara back in the days when they started. They’re like, well, we should just keep one of every game that we get sent for review. And thankfully they had that foresight. And so that vault of games just grew and grew and grew. So eventually got to the point where it was just a huge room. And you can you can find tours of the Game Informer Vault on YouTube, I believe. And so, yeah, that was definitely the highlight. And so the office itself, yeah, it was fun. It was like an in a warehouse district, a lot of brick, a lot of wood. It was surprisingly roomy. So it was a nice kind of bullpen feel where everybody was was working together. So, I mean, we had that vault of games, which was amazing, because also it’s like, OK, you can check out two games at a time. So right when you started, that’s like, really, they had a very formal system. We had a whole library checkout system. Yeah. So it’s like, OK, now all these rare games have always wanted to play. Let me jump in and check it out. So I remember getting there and it’s also a bunch of old peripherals and stuff. So I was like, oh, I want to get Colony Wars and PlayStation 1 with the flight stick. I want to do this the right way. So it’s just a real geeky fantasy that way. But then it’s interesting because we had at a certain point Frank Zafaldi and Kelsey Lewin, the co-directors of the Video Game History Foundation. They came in to kind of archive a bunch of Game Informer stuff. And they naturally had the take of like the vault. That’s all well and good. That’s a bunch of retail games. That’s fun to look at. But the secret of Game Informer is on the other floor where it’s just a huge room where we threw basically everything else, which was a bunch of preview versions of games and, you know, press releases from the early 90s and all of this nonsense. And so they came in and archived all of that stuff, which is amazing to preserve it. And so that was fun just to see what they would find as they’re digging through all the stuff that we had kind of just forgotten about by and large. But then they’re pulling out like, oh, here’s an early version of Symphony of the Night. You know, so it’s like, OK, we need to figure out, are there any differences in that version versus the final version? And so those types of treasures were really fun to have in that office. Amazing. That’s awesome. Did someone look after the library? Were they like, if you want to take out God Hand, you’ve got to return Colony Wars and the Flight Stick? I think, yeah, people would get pissed. Yeah, it was like a whole online thingy. So you could see if someone was really pushing the boundaries there, I think. Yeah. Did they have a Steel Battalion controller? Yeah. The full make? Yep, absolutely. I never dared get that. I mean, once Steel Battalion for Kinect came out, who needs the old version, right? Yeah, so my last question on Game Informer, Ben, is just that until the pandemic, games media was always very focused around San Francisco and the US, which always seemed incredibly unreasonable to me as someone living in the UK, and knowing how expensive that city was. By comparison, what is it like covering games from Minnesota? Do you feel like kind of outsiders to the industry slightly? Yeah. What is it like? Yep, you definitely feel like outsiders. But still, everybody’s friendly and whatnot. But there’s this phrase in Minnesota, which is probably nonsense, but Minnesota nice is a big phrase. And so have you heard that? I wish we knew it from something other than Fargo. Oh, of course, of course. That’s all we’ve got. Yeah, I should have mentioned that. Of course, Fargo, yeah. By the way, you know, it was always a mess when I’d go to Japan and people would ask where I was from in the States, and it’d be like, Minnesota. And they’d be like, I don’t know what that is. And I’d be like, Coen Brothers? That’s the worst. Like, Coen Brothers are not going to translate well to Japanese, I don’t think. I should have just said Prince and lifted it then. But what was the question again? Something about the Coen Brothers? Oh, just being outsiders of Minnesota. Yeah, so, I mean, you got to wonder if this was a factor as well. But, you know, the Minnesota nice thing, you know, a lot of folks, especially in the early days of Game Informer, were from Minnesota. And so PR would always be like, oh, you all just feel nicer to work with than a lot of cutthroat outlets in other places, which is nice. Yeah, so it definitely is interesting. And, you know, there is options to move Game Informer, I think, at a couple different points. But Andy McNamara was really great on saying like, no, we want people to live good lives as writers, which is tough to do financially. And being in Minnesota, which is a relatively cheap state, I guess it’s kind of in the middle at this point. But, you know, even on a journalist salary, you can have a decent house and raise a family here, which, you know, if you took that salary to San Francisco, yeah, you’d be in a box. It’d be brutal. Yeah, that’s actually like really empathetic way of managing an outlet. Yeah, that’s awesome. The weird thing in the UK is most of our games media is, obviously, there’s a lot of it in London, but we’ve got a weird pocket of it in a city called Bath, which is where we both live. And it’s like a regency city. So it’s like Jane Austen or sort of very historical. It is the last place you would look at and go, this is like the hub of tech and game knowledge. Right. It’s so the opposite of what a San Francisco is. It’s so sort of quaint. So, you know, I don’t know. Is Bath the Minnesota of the UK? Yeah, let us know in the comments, please. I think there’s something to that, you know, especially coming from like rural Minnesota, way out in the middle of nowhere, which is where I came from, like 100 miles west of the Twin Cities. You know, it was always charming when we go to a studio and they’d be in a smaller area, you know, like visiting TT Games out in Nutsford. It was like, okay, this is my kind of town. I can wrap my mind around Nutsford. Actually, I was going to ask, you know, given that you’re doing all these sort of quite exclusive Game Informer trips, do you guys get a chance to spend a lot of time with the rest of the US games media? Like, you know, in the UK, we obviously all meet up at the same events because it’s a small country, they have one event. Like, is that the same in the US? Yeah, I think so. Like, I wouldn’t get to go to too many preview events, but there definitely was a fair amount of, you know, US media mingling at those type of things because typically it would be like, okay, our cover story would come out, a couple other big outlets would get exclusives, IGN, yada, yada, yada, and then closer to release, kind of like the Morgan Rabbids thing, they’d have a preview event. And so we would normally send somebody out to that for kind of a final preview. So I think there’s more bonding there happening, but yeah, I guess I didn’t get to partake in too much of that. It’s not just the sort of great unknowable gaming thing. No, hopefully we didn’t have that reputation, yeah. Okay, awesome. Well, we’ll take a quick break there, and then we’re going to fire some questions to Ben about MinnMax. So, we’ll be back in a second. Bye. Welcome back to the podcast. So, we’re gonna ask Ben a little bit about working on MinnMax. So, Ben, I’m really curious, because it was such a brave thing to do. What made you want to leave Game Informer and try something new at the time? Well, I don’t think it was brave, and I’ll unpack that. But, so it was 2019, and there was a really brutal round of layoffs where I think it was around 40% of Game Informer’s editorial staff was just let go in the blink of an eye. And it was just, it was not anybody, it was not anybody in editorial’s decision for how that happened, right? Like it was above Andy McNamara’s head. And it was really rough, and a lot of our friends were let go. And also it was just strategically really weird choices for who was let go and who wasn’t, you know, Imran Khan, who unfortunately was just let go from fan bite as well with that recent implosion over there. But he was our news guy, and he was just cranking out stories. He was so great to work with, and he would make that website sing with content and then like of all the people to fire. That just seems so brutal. So yeah, that rubbed, believe it or not, Game Informer very much the wrong way because they’re owned by GameStop, which we should mention, I guess, in the first half that that’s the reason those subscriber numbers can be so big is because GameStop would push it in their store and bundle it with Power Up Rewards, which is a whole rewards program. So it was kind of juicing the numbers a bit in that way. But that was just done in such a brutal way. It was just like, I just don’t want to work for GameStop anymore. It’s too brutal. And there’s also a part of me that was ready for something else in my life. I was also interviewing to be a video producer at Wired at that same time. So I was like, my foot’s kind of already out the door. And then they’re so brutal with this, the way these layoffs were done. And it was just so demoralizing. And so it got to the point really going into that office, even in that first week after those layoffs, everyone was just so naturally bummed out and sad and GameStop just was not sympathetic in any way. And so it was just a matter of like, it feels like a safer path to go out on my own. And I’m going to try and launch a Patreon. And if it doesn’t do well, maybe I can do freelance video stuff to try and make up for it. But just waiting under this sort of damocles from GameStop, that seems scarier in a way. And you know what, I guess they have the last laugh because Game Informer is still around. I mean, it’s amazing. GameStop’s still supporting them in some way. So it felt like, yeah, just kind of the first of several punches to come. So it was time to go. I suppose, do you have an idea at that point of what you wanted to make and what you saw as the kind of like foundation of MinnMax? Yeah, so, you know, a big lesson was we would do charity streams at Game Informer every year with Extra Life where we do a wild 24 hour, 25 hour most of the time stream. And we had a lot of like donation incentives and it was just like silly and fun and positive and, you know, tears at the end. Like it was just, it was beautiful. We raised a lot of money for a children’s hospital here. And so I had so much practice from producing that that I was like, you know, if we could just have a Patreon with an ounce of that feel of like that positivity, I think there’s something to that. And so, and there’s also, you know, after you go through big layoffs like that, there’s naturally a bit of soul searching that happens. Like, what am I doing here? How can I be a better person? And so that was an early idea then is like, okay, well, let’s have, we need some sort of tagline or at least we should for launching this Patreon. So I was like, okay, MinnMax is gonna be a place about games, friends and getting better. And that getting better thing could mean a lot of different aspects, but it was, you know, not a, we didn’t think about it too much, but then just like framing things from that perspective and saying that getting better and self-improvement was a part of MinnMax here through personal goals and a bunch of other stuff, that led to like a really positive community bubbling up. And it’s just one of those happy accidents, I guess, of just, oh, getting better. But then the people who want to support an outlet that’s about getting better are naturally going to be a little bit more positive in life and a little bit nicer to people in a Discord. And so we’ve definitely had our challenges, you know, at times growing a community and community management and all that fun stuff, but our mods are doing a great job in the Discord. And so it’s led to a really nice, at least from my perspective, it’s easy for me to say, but a really nice positive community that’s continued to grow. That’s awesome. Ours is just us scaring all our listeners by sort of occasionally descending upon them like weird gods. I’m far too terse and impatient with our listeners. Like I’m a terrible community manager, Ben. What do, I guess, I’m just a fan of the podcast. What do your listeners want, do you think? Do they want more magazine stuff? Are they ever gonna be like, all right, enough of the old stories everybody, time to move on. I think we’ve created too many different episode formats for us to know what anyone agrees is the right way to go. So we kind of just pull in different directions and hope for the best and try and kind of feed in new formats every now and then. But yeah, that we could really do with knowing more about our listeners, but we, alas, you know, yeah. There are a few like widows out there who like all of it, which is great. You definitely get some people who are like, I don’t like the bullshit episodes or I don’t know which, which we really shouldn’t have a category of episodes, which are total bullshit, but we do. No, I gotta say, just from the outside, somebody recommended your podcast from the outside, then going through the list of episodes, like, oh, I’m so into this, where it’s about magazine covers from hell, the best interviews, like all that stuff is just catniped for former people in the press, especially former magazine workers, you know? Yeah, I gotta thank Tanner in our Discord, who I think is indirectly responsible for you coming in on this episode. Yeah, I think so. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So really appreciate the support there from our listeners in your Discord. Yeah, crossover in very nice people in the community, clearly. So the support you have on Patreon is amazing. What do you think the secret is to building your audience like that and being a successful independent outlet? Because you say like the positivity is one thing, but I just think your success is amazing. Like, and you’ve built it. It’s just, you know, you haven’t pandered in the content you’re creating. You’re like, okay, these are like rad formats. So we’re gonna make these rad formats and people really engage with them. So yeah, I’m kind of curious what you think that the secret is there. Yeah, thanks. It’s very sweet of you. Yeah, I still feel like we’re a relatively small patron looking at like, you know, some fellow folks that kind of funny or easy allies like, oh, that’s the cream of the cream up there. Look at them go. And so I still feel like we’re struggling to get there. But I think a big part of it is the way that we’re structured. I mean, being in Minnesota, living is cheaper. So you can help support more people financially. And then, maybe this is, again, diving too much into the weeds, but we’re structured in a way where I’m the only full-time person. And that helps having a tech background and being a video producer and stuff. And then we contract out with really talented people. So we don’t, I was gonna say have to, get to pay them full-time salaries, which means we can do a lot more with less and hopefully keep everybody happy, right? If it’s like, okay, we can contract out with you for this amount of hours per week. You tell us how much you want to do, what you want to do and we’ll make that work. And then you don’t have to do any nonsense BS that you aren’t passionate about. And so hopefully if we can spread the network enough, we can make it just a really efficient media outlet. Yeah. When you started out, how did you, because obviously a lot of them are Game Informer alumni, how did you build up this network of contributors? Well, I guess just being in the industry for so long, you definitely have your Rolodex of like, oh, this person’s really good. Oh, this person’s really good. I’d love to do something with them someday. And so, yeah, we started with four former Game Informer editors who were, you know, three of them were let go during those layoffs. And yeah, I’m really thankful that we’ve grown a bit. I think, you know, last time we did a poll, I think our community is still like 75% people that knew us from Game Informer, but I’m always excited when somebody jumps in because like everybody that supports us on Patreon, I always send them a message on Patreon to be like, hey, how’d you find us? What kind of stuff do you want in the future? And it melts my heart every time somebody says like, I don’t know, I just found your deepest dive on Final Fantasy VII Remake on YouTube and I liked you, so here we go. It’s like, oh, thank God. Somebody who’s not just saying, do more Game Informer stuff. And so that’s definitely a relief. And so yeah, the network of folks, it’s just, yeah, I don’t know. I guess it’s just that Rolodex thing of like, oh, I’ve always wanted to do more stuff with Sarah Podzorski. And so we brought her on recently. She was on the 8-4 Play podcast. I mean, I met her at an event in Minneapolis when she was still in college, you know? So it’s always been like, oh, she’s really funny. It’d be funny to do something with her. Or Janet Garcia was somebody that I met later on. She does stuff with Kind of Funny Now as well. So it’s kind of fun that she gets to live in both worlds. I was like, okay, let’s bring her on. This would be great. Ana Diaz, I met in Minneapolis here at a party. And Kelsey Lewin, who came to Game Informer to archive that stuff. She was just immediately amazing. For like, I don’t know if anybody knows as much as Kelsey Lewin does about games. Like her knowledge of history is just absurd. We have a new show with her on MinnMax where it’s just her showing off her game collection, but then it’s gonna be her hosting future episodes showing off other people’s game collections because she just knows everything about that. I saw you teasing this new format. I was curious what it was actually. Yeah, so it’s just amazing to like, rip open her brain and say, good God, there’s a lot of knowledge in here. And then people like Jacob Geller, who we also do stuff with, who’s a great YouTube essayist. But he was a Game Informer intern. And so it was always just in the back of our minds, like, okay, Jacob’s good. We should get him at some point. So yeah, I guess in the industry long enough, you kind of take notes on people. And then with this model, we can bring them in, hopefully in a way that makes sense for them, time-wise and money-wise and everything. Yeah, they all have excellent mics, which is definitely not true of our contributors. We have to buy the microphones, I don’t know. I feel like we take a big hit to get people on that we really like, and we really want their expertise, but you have to balance it out across, is this gonna annoy people? Right, yeah, it’s a delicate balancing act. But yeah, you talk about not pandering. We still do reaction videos, which always feel so cheap. I feel gross doing it, but it’s like, they always do so well views-wise that hopefully our faces and the thumbnails for those YouTube videos aren’t too obnoxious. But you know, that’s probably as close as we get, I think, to pandering because I think, you know, the beauty of the Patreon model for the super lucky people who can actually pull it off is like, you don’t need IGN numbers to sustain this. You know, if you have a passionate group of 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 supporters, you can do wild things. And so just making very focused messaging-wise and content-wise like focused bets on, okay, we have the MinnMax Show Podcast, our main show, then we have the Game Clubs, The Deepest Dive, where we’re creating discussions about games that I don’t think many people in the industry are, you know? It’s like when the Chrono Cross Remaster came out earlier this year, we did a three or four part series, just about that, for about 10 hours of talking about Chrono Cross, where that would be stupid for a GameSpot or an IGN to do. But for us, like, hell, we got nothing better to do, let’s do it. And then you find that community because of that, that appreciates us going out on a limb and focusing way too much time on a game like Chrono Cross. And then they support that. And then it just kind of builds up from there. And it really, hopefully, a sustainable way. Do you have a particular sort of like format of, you know, like video that you’re proud of stuff? Like anything that, is there one in particular that you’re like, that is kind of like lightning in a bottle that I came up with that and it always results in something great, you know? Yeah. Hmm, I don’t know, always results in something great. There’s, we have a format that I didn’t come up with. It was Ana Diaz and Leo Vader that by and large came up with it, but it’s called New Show Plus. So the way this works is every week we let $10 supporters on Patreon vote to choose which new show we create or continue. So basically we’re coming up with four new potential shows every week, or I guess it’d be kind of three because then you have the one lingering from the previous week. And I think that’s been a real godsend for us. Instead of just doing gameplay streams of the biggest game which is all well and good, a lot of people do it. That’s fun to see, a lot of folks want that. But I think people are eager for a different style of content. And so when you let people vote every week and like what new show should we create? That naturally, it does a couple of things that win. Where the community is happy because by and large they’re getting the type of content that they want even if it’s surprising to us that they would want to show about this. But then also it’s a factor of like, I think a lot of outlets and maybe patrons in particular can get stuck in a groove of like, well, we have these seven shows, we need to keep doing these seven shows until the end of time or the community is gonna get mad. Whereas this with New Show Plus, it’s like, well, you vote every week and we can have a show like, we had a show called House Hunter Rise, which is a very sloppy play of Monster Hunter Rise. It was really bad. But we would just look at real estate listings, which sounds so boring, but the community would send them in. And so we just have these amazing absurd houses and that was like one of our most fun shows. And so that ran for like five weeks before they voted for something else. And so naturally it kind of rotates all of our content where there’s always something new and we’re not stuck doing a show for too long because it’s like, hey, you all voted and that was the end of that show that you liked, sorry. So it’s a nice way of keeping these fresh. Do they ever vote for something where you’re like, I really hope they don’t vote for that or are they all things you’re actually really up for doing? Well, the nice thing is the ideas come from us. So we don’t have to put in there like, you know, here’s me showing my foot to the camera for an hour or something like that. So it’s like you- Someone will be into the house. Oh, I think they might vote for it, yeah. And so, you know, it’s been really interesting though, as that show’s evolved, it’s kind of just become a running joke because anytime we put a game play or like a let’s play as an option in those polls, they always lose now. I mean, we could do like, here’s a let’s play of God of War Ragnarok. Let’s play that for a couple hours. People be like, nope, we want you to run around outside instead, you know? And it’s like, okay, if that’s what you want. I mean, literally our show this week that won was a show that was just called Picnic, where we just go out and have a picnic together. And so it’s really heartwarming that people are, I know they really seem struck just by how different some of these shows can be because other big outlets aren’t doing it because it’s a stupid idea to do. But then if the community votes for us to play one-on-one basketball against each other very poorly and stream it, like, all right, we’ll do it everybody. You know, you’re the boss here. I must admit, I saw the thumbnails, your Picnic one. I was like, do you know what? I really like to go for a picnic with two friends right now. That sounds like really good, you know what I mean? Like, you don’t realize you want it until you see it. You’re like, oh, yeah, that sounds rad, actually. I’ll just go for a picnic for an afternoon. We could go for a picnic if you want, Sam. Please do. I don’t know, it just seems more wholesome. Us two doing it together would have a weird energy, but for some reason, your group of contributors, Ben, just really fits that format. Yeah, I think you could pull it off. I think you could. I mean, I think people are hungry for people getting in person, you know, getting out of the studio, getting out of the Zoom and Discord calls. You know, we had a Patreon goal recently where we flew Jana Garcia, who is the only main cohort in our crew from LA, or like outside of Minnesota, but we flew her to visit Minneapolis for the first time in Minnesota. And then we just made a travelogue of us showing her the sights and sounds of Minnesota. And like people loved it to the point that it was really heartwarming how much people loved it. And you know, we shot like four hours of footage for that. And then we ended up, I think the final cut was like 38 minutes or something. But we said like, hey, if you’re wild, if you’re a $10 supporter, you can watch the four hour cut. And like a surprising number of people were so charmed by just seeing people interact in the real world. They’re like, yeah, I’ll watch four hours if you walk around the Mall of America, which is just like, all right, that’s a really rare outlet that can pull it off. And I feel very thankful that the community has allowed this to exist. That’s cool. They’re obviously just really in tune with your strengths. Maybe. Your personalities and therefore are only picking things that will get the most out of that. I do also like the idea that they can trap you in a kind of like content horde mode where it’s like, we have to talk about houses for six months potentially. We had a show because Sarah Podzorski and her team was talking about like horse girls and horse girl games. And so this was, I think last year, where it’s like, okay, well, let’s just make a show called Sarah the Horse Girl, where you play a bunch of horse games on Steam, whatever. And that got to, I think, like five weeks. And so that was to the point of like, okay, how do we free Sarah from this? Because it’s great and it’s all well and good for maybe three to four weeks. And after that, it’s like, what do we got? What do you want us to do? Like go out and ride a real horse? We’re running out of horse ideas here, everybody. Amazing. So yeah, my last question then, Ben, is just about, I guess the idea of building your own platform like you have. Do you think that’s the future of games media? How much do you think we’ll see more of this as like people leave outlets and go and form their own, their own kind of like, you know, outfit and launch a platform or try something new content-wise? How much do you think the future of games media is tied up in that? I don’t know. It feels like it’s a safer path for a lot of folks. But I mean, I think we’re an example there maybe of, we are incredibly, incredibly lucky to have the support that we have and the fact that we’re still growing and all this stuff. But even then, I mean, I’m the only person full-time. And so financially, it gets a little bit tricky if you’re trying to have an entire independent media outlet. Like you need to have some bigger numbers than ours to make that work in a full-time capacity for a bunch of folks. So that’s a little bit hairy, but I don’t want to admit it, but it is a weird thing to think of just these bigger sites as just kind of like a farming league or whatever the hell you phrase that, you know, for folks to maybe if their personality clicks with the community, then they can get to a point of branching off and do their own thing. And I’m sure if you’re running an IGN or a GameSpot, you have to be scared of that. But when it just, when that option is there, it’s tough to tell people not to take the full independent route. Yeah, that’s it. Especially if they just leave San Francisco and move to Minnesota. That seems like a good meeting. Everybody come to Minnesota, live like kings. I remember, I wasn’t on the Cover Story trip. I was before my time, but we did Portal 2 for a Game Informer cover. And Eric Wolpaw, the writer, apparently, he’s from Minnesota. And so apparently at some dinner there with the Game Informer writers and a bunch of other folks from Valve, he was screaming and trying to convince Valve to move to Minnesota. He’s like, if we move to Duluth, Minnesota, everybody at Valve could live like gods. Why aren’t we doing this? So yeah, I don’t know. I mean, what do you all think? What do you do? How do you make sustainable games media? Please tell us the answer. Yeah, it’s tough, because in the UK, we’ve seen a few examples of it. There’s three guys from IGN who went and formed their own RKG, I think it’s called, and that was really successful. And they used their platform at IGN to build this community who just followed them straight away. Some people are more anonymously behind the scenes, so they don’t necessarily have the same level of spotlight. So there’s an inherent risk in it. What we do, we’re really happy with how we do on Patreon, but we both have full-time jobs, of course, elsewhere. It’s a real pipe dream, the idea of both working full-time in the podcast. It probably never happened, which is fine. But it does feel like there are certain profile of person who could make that leap and make it work. I just wonder if we’ll see more of that in the years to come. There are upsides to it. Like you say, the things that you do, doing 10 hours of content on ChronoCross, that kind of singular focus content is just, that more targeted content is the future more than generalist content, you know? Yep, absolutely. And even for us, I mean, we still cover a lot of ground on our YouTube channel. And so I feel like every once in a while, we’re dinged algorithm wise by being like, okay, here’s our show about Tabletop. Then here’s a show about ChronoCross. And here’s a show about Kelsey Lewin collecting stuff. And then here’s a show about a horse girl. Then here’s an interview with Reggie Fils-Aimé. It’s like, you know, at times I wonder, oh, would we have been better off YouTube wise? You know, Patreon wise, we feel very happy. But YouTube numbers wise, would it be better if the channel was just the deepest dive and just game clubs, you know? Yeah, it sucks that you even have to be put in that position. You know, you should be able to just make whatever you want and not be punished for it. Yeah, but then again, I mean, that’s why we’re so lucky is, you know, our YouTube numbers aren’t huge. I mean, we’re very lucky and I’m happy with it. But, you know, I think we’re at like 34,000. Subscribers on YouTube, which is, you know, relatively small compared to some of our competitors and stuff, but just making the most of that and being as efficient as we can and hopefully making the community happy enough where a certain slice, certain percentage of those numbers are willing to support us on Patreon. Like that’s good enough for us. That’s kept us sustainable. 34,000 people who really enter Picnics. Yes, oh, once you tap into that Picnic subreddit, oh baby, the money just pours in. That’s awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Ben. It’s been great having you on. Where can people find you on Patreon, social media, et cetera? Yeah, I think your best bet is to subscribe to the MinnMax Show podcast. The MinnMax Show, it’s not a Patreon exclusive podcast. That’s kind of our flagship show, so that has a lot of other notes about it. You can find other content from there. Otherwise, check out our YouTube channel. We have a lot of developer interviews on there. And check out that new Collector Corner. And we have a trivia show, which is really fun for the community every month. We can win a bunch of great prizes. So yeah, MinnMax on YouTube or The MinnMax Show on your favorite podcast app would be the best place to go. Awesome. You can find us on patreon.com/backpagepod. Matthew, where can people find you on social media? Mr. Basil underscore pesto. I actually wanted to very quickly add as well. One of our formats, we do these drafts where we like compete to try and build like mini consoles. Yeah. If any of the MinnMax gang ever want to come and take on the power of the back page podcast, try and draft against us. We’d love to do it. All right. That sounds fun. I think we can make that work. We can pay them a small amount of money for their time. So, dangle that in front of them. I’m sure they will be able to resist. Thanks so much, Ben. It’s been great talking to you. Yeah. Keep up the good work. I love the show. Awesome. Catch you later. Bye-bye. Thanks, Ben.