Guillaume Provost is a game designer, creative director, studio founder and CEO, with a passion for building immersive, story-driven experiences. After working as a programmer for games companies such as Pseudo Interactive and Arkane, in 2009 he founded his own independent studio, Compulsion Games. 

Under his leadership, the studio gained worldwide attention with its distinctive psychological game We Happy Few, celebrated for its evocative storytelling, unique art direction, and bold narrative choices. 

Now, my guest’s studio has just released South of Midnight, an action-adventure game set in a fantastical version of the American Deep South, exploring themes of family, healing, and self-discovery.

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In this special correspondence edition, Simon reads out your correspondence and answers your questions. What's next for game coverage at The Observer newspaper following its sale to Tortoise? How can we invite fan-favourite guests back on the show? How should you respond when a dodgy man in a pub asks: "What's the damage?" All this and much more. 

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Celia Hodent is a French author and former director of user experience at Epic Games. Born in France, she earned her doctorate in psychology in Paris, hoping to become a professional academic. Her childhood love of video games, however, drew her to the games industry, and in 2008 she joined Ubisoft to work on the editorial team. 

In 2010 she transferred to Ubisoft Montreal to work as user experience coordinator on Rainbow 6 series using her training in cognitive science to help guide the design teams. In 2012 she moved to the US, working as UX lead at LucasArts, then as Director of UX at Epic Games, overseeing user experience on Fortnite. Since 2017 my guest has worked as a UX strategy consultant, publishing several books including “The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX can Impact Video Game Design.”

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Joel Morris is a multi-award winning comedy writer, and a contributor to the widely beloved Paddington films. One of the best regarded comedic talents in Britain, during the past two decades he has written for everyone from David Mitchell to Miranda Hart to Ronnie Corbett. A long-time collaborator with Charlie Brooker, he was a key part of the BAFTA-winning Wipe shows, and co-creator of the comedy character Philomena Cunk, whose dim-witted documentaries are beloved around the world.

A busy author, he wrote The Framley Examiner, a spoof on local British newspapers, as well as the multi-million selling series of Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups. In 2024 he published, ‘Be Funny or Die: How Comedy Works and Why It Matters,’ analysing everything from stand-up to slapstick. He has also worked as a writer for video games, collaborating on projects for Microsoft and Ubisoft. Whatever he turns his hand to, comedy remains at the core. As Richard Curtis, the writer of ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ once put it, my guest “gets to the heart of comedy.” 

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Saraya is one of the biggest names in professional wrestling. Born into a successful wrestling family in Norwich, England, she left home at fifteen to forge her own path in the ring. Under the name Paige, she became the youngest WWE Divas Champion in history and was the subject of the hit 2019 film Fighting with My Family, written and directed by Stephen Merchant, in which she was portrayed by Florence Pugh.

Now competing in All Elite Wrestling as Saraya, she has battled through injuries, personal struggles, and the intense pressures of the industry to become an icon of resilience and reinvention. Outside of wrestling, she is a fierce advocate for domestic abuse survivors and women’s health issues. Now, in a highly anticipated memoir, Hell in Boots, she’s ready to tell her story like never before. 

Links:

Fighting with My Family (Channel 4 documentary), 2012.

Fighting with My Family Film Trailer.

Saraya's Instagram

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Seamus Blackle is a physicist, game designer, and technology visionary best known as the originator of the Xbox. After studying physics at Tufts University, he began his career in high-energy physics before pivoting to the video game industry. He worked on titles including System Shock and Flight Unlimited. In the late nineties, while an employee at Microsoft, he led the development of a bold new console project.

The Xbox revolutionised the video game landscape, introducing hit series including Halo, Gears of War and Forza. Since he left Microsoft, my guest has worked across entertainment, venture capital, and even experimental archaeology, famously recreating ancient Egyptian bread using 4,500-year-old yeast.

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Keith Burns is an award-winning aviation artist and illustrator. As a student he dreamed of becoming a comic book artist but after his teachers at art college discouraged him from the career path, he dropped out and became a bus driver. Ten years later he received an email inviting him to submit a comic strip to a talent finding project. His submission led to a meeting with Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen. Gibbons encouraged my guest to pursue his gift, which eventually led to a long-standing collaboration with renowned comic book writer Garth Ennis.

In 2012 he joined the Guild of Aviation Artists, in 2015 won the Messier Dowty award for Best Acrylic Painting, and in 2016, the Aviation Painting of the Year. In 2023 in collaboration with James Holland he published The Second World War: An Illustrated History, for which my guest produced nearly 300 illustrations during the course of five years. 

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Marjolein Robertson is a Scottish comedian, improviser, and storyteller. Born in Lerwick, on the Shetland Isles, she first started performing with Shetland Youth Theatre at the age of 13. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, she was working as a town planner, saving for a mortgage, when she and her partner decided to move to Amsterdam on a whim. A series of catastrophes followed.

Marjolein lost her home and her job, then landed in a Dutch improvisational comedy class, and began studying improvised comedy and stand up. Since then, she has become one of Scotland’s most exciting young talents, reaching the finals of the BBC New Comedy Awards in 2022 and Channel 4's Sean Lock Comedy Awards in 2024. Her solo show ‘Marj’ was nominated for two awards at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 and released as a comedy special, and she is about to embark on a UK-wide tour with her new show 'O'. 

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Steffan Powell is a reporter, television and radio presenter. Born in the Amman Valley in South Wales he joined the BBC while in his twenties, soon working his way up to the position of senior broadcast journalist for Radio One’s Newsbeat. In 2021 he became BBC News’ first ever Gaming and Culture Correspondent, appearing across the broadcasters’ news programmes whenever a video game-related story hit the headlines.

Currently, he hosts the behind-the-scenes programme, Doctor Who: Unleashed, as well as the recently re-launched podcast Press X to Continue. For that show he has interviewed celebrities including Keanu Reeves, Usain Bolt and Bukayo Saka about their love of video games. 

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Greg Zeschuk is the co-founder of Bioware. While a medical student at the University of Alberta he told his future wife that, if he could, he’d make video games for a living. After he graduated, the dream came true when, in 1995, he and two friends founded Bioware in his basement. The following year the trio released Shattered Steel and, two years after that, Baldur’s Gate, which revolutionised the world of computer role-playing games.

In the years that followed Bioware released a string of blockbuster hits, including Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In 2007, just 12 years after its founding, the company was sold to Electronic Arts as part of a deal worth $860 million. In recent years, my guest started a brewing company, Blind Enthusiasm, and today runs two microbreweries and a restaurant in Edmunton, where he has spent most of his life.

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