Traveled to Brantford, Ontario in March, to the PC Museum. Syd Bolton, the museum’s founder and curator, drove into downtown Toronto to pick me up, along with TV’s Steve Tilley and Youtube’s Erika Szabo. Syd summoned us to his museum for an event called a Game Soiree. I’ve never been to any sort of event […]

The latest episode of Heavily Pixelated is a celebration of Mass Effect, specifically how the original trilogy of games helped one gamer understand herself better. Note: I’m ridiculously proud of this episode. Thanks again to the brave, incredibly articulate Ashley Cooper for sharing this story with me (and now you). You can read Ashley’s writing here: https://medium.com/athena-talks/the-artist-formerly-known-as-james-195ac1922a68. […]

I was invited on a media trip to Orlando, Florida several years back, to promote the launch of a tennis video game. Publishers were still making tennis video games back then for some strange reason. This was the summer of 2007. I know the actual date because people had iPhones on this trip, literally for the first […]

I head to Montreal for the Montreal International Game Summit, a.k.a. MIGS. I stay in a fancy hotel. I speak French poorly. I try to wax poetic about Montreal. (I try to wax poetic at least once or twice a month. Everyone should.) And I talk to the keynote speaker at MIGS, Adam Boyes. Adam […]

Hello, folks. I’ve unofficially/officially changed the name of the show. Brief Conversations with Interesting People has now turned into Heavily Pixelated. Q: Will this be the last name change, Scott? A: I honestly don’t know. A thing like this is always sort of evolving, I guess. Q: Why “heavily pixelated”? A: Pixels are often used in […]

Pop Quiz, Hotshot: What used video game is worth less than a penny? Answer: Find out in today’s episode of “Brief Conversations with Interesting People” when I very gently ambush the unsuspecting staff at the game store in Metrotown Mall in Burnaby. So who did I find behind the counter? And why are there only […]

I didn’t go home last Christmas. Stayed here by myself. First time I’d ever done that. That’s crazy, I know, but true. As a mea culpa, I promised to visit in January in Florida. I didn’t. Some work obligations came up. I rescheduled. I rescheduled again. The more I rescheduled, the more days I kept adding to […]

Hello, good people! Went out to New Westminster again, this time to visit a used game store called Press Start. Found two guys behind the counter: Russ and John. They were smart, thoughtful guys who 1. own a used game store and 2. are both in successful romantic relationships. How do they do it? What’s […]

Welcome to New Westminster, which is sort of like Vancouver’s version of late-90’s Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In “New West” (that’s what the locals call it, FYI) you’ll find one of the great used game stores in North America: Gamedeals. I visited Gamedeals during the week before E3, and I got to meet Jade and Celeste. I’ll be honest with […]

A couple weeks back I bought a bit of kit to record conversations with people. And, in the name of learning how to use said kit, I’m starting to make relatively brief podcasts. This is my first effort. The audio is all over the place, I know. And, yes, you can literally hear the metaphorical […]