My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

By Simon Parkin

In My Perfect Console, Simon Parkin, award-winning author video game critic for The Observer invites well-known guests from the worlds of gaming, film and television, music, comed

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The podcast currently has 208 episodes available.

Best of My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Number 1: Jon Ingold, co-founder Inkle (80 Days, Expelled!, TR-49).
Jon Ingold is a British game designer and writer whose work has helped redefine how narrative, choice, and player agency function in interactive storytelling. He began making parser-based text adventures and releasing them free on the internet. After studying mathematics at Cambridge University, he moved into professional game development at Sony PlayStation, where he worked as a designer in the concept group on several unreleased titles. In 2011, he co-founded the independent studio Inkle, where he has been a driving force behind a body of critically acclaimed narrative games, including 80 Days, Heaven’s Vault, Overboard!, and A Highland Song. Alongside his studio work, he co-created the open-source scripting language Ink, now used widely across the games industry to build reactive, branching narratives. His latest project, TR-49, is a haunting narrative deduction game built around a mysterious wartime machine, and the urgent act of making meaning from archives before time runs out. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
February 03, 20261h 33min
Number 2: Shuhei Yoshida, former president, Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios.
Shuhei Yoshida is former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, and one of the most beloved figures in the video games industry. After graduating from Kyoto University with a degree in economics, he joined Sony in 1986 to coordinate the company’s PC business. Then, as one of the early members of the PlayStation project, he helped oversee the development of landmark titles across multiple generations, including Gran Truismo, Legend of Dragoon, and Ico, championing video game-based creativity and experimentation at a global scale. Earlier this year, after almost four decades, he left Sony. But he continues to work closely with independent game developers. Known for his warmth, curiosity, and deep love of the medium, he remains a true ambassador for the art of play. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
November 11, 20251h 24min
Number 3: Uwe Boll, film director (House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, Postal).
My guest today is the German filmmaker Uwe Boll. Born in Wermelskirchen he decided he wanted to direct films at the age of ten, after seeing Marlon Brando star in Mutiny on the Bounty. It wasn’t until he was in his mid-thirties, however, that he directed his first major motion picture, Blackwoods, a psychological thriller that a critic for the New York Times described as ‘smart and diabolical’. It was, however, his adaptations of video games for which he made his name. House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, Far Cry and Postal were just some of the games he adapted to film. Not all of them lost money, but most were derided by reviewers. My guest did not shy away from engaging his harshest critics, however. In 2006 he challenged five of them to a boxing match. Ten years later he announced his retirement from filmmaking. Nevertheless, since then he has announced several new projects, including First Shift, a police drama set in the New York, that released in the summer. Links: Boll Films Official Website Game Over, Uwe Boll -- Vanity Fair. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 23, 20241h 14min
Number 4: Chris Deering, former President of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
My guest today is an American businessman and the former and first president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Chris Deering. Raised in Boston, Massachusetts to immigrant parents, my guest had a strict upbringing. Despite the disadvantages he faced, he graduated with distinction with a degree in computer science at Boston College, then studied marketing at Harvard Business School. He first worked for the razor-manufacturer Gillette, rising to the rank of head of worldwide shaving, then joined Atari, then Columbia Pictures. In 1995 he became president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, responsible for launching the company’s first console, the PlayStation, remaining at the company until 2005. “They were,” he once told me, “the best ten years of my life.” Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 09, 20241h 15min
Number 5: Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat.
My guest today is Eliot Higgins, a British citizen journalist and founder of Bellingcat, a website that specialises in open-source intelligence. In 2012, while unemployed, he became involved in online discussions about the conflict in Syria, where few journalists were able to operate. Despite having little prior interest in the region, he began to study videos of the conflict, and started a blog on which he analysed geodata and weaponry. This work exposed atrocities and helped establish an evidence base for crimes allegedly committed by the Syrian government. In 2013 Stuart Hughes, a BBC News producer told the New Yorker: “he’s probably broken more stories than most journalists do in a career.” In the decade since, however, Bellingcat has broken dozens more, investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, and exposing the true identities of the Russian spies who the British government claims poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018. Throughout all of this, my guest has remained a keen player of video games –– despite quitting World of Warcraft for fear his marriage might not survive his addiction. And he says that being part of these online communities has been instrumental in honing his talents. Become a My Perfect Console supporter and receive a range of benefits at www.patreon.com/myperfectconsole Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 02, 20241h 13min