This is a show about videogames, the people who play them and the people who make them. Each episode, a guest talks about the games that have shaped their life in one way or another. Games that have inspired them, games that have forged connections & games that have soothed wounds. Checkpoints!

My guest today is Ian Bogost, an award winning game designer and author of several books including Persuasive Games and Play Anything. He's also a contributing editor to the Atlantic magazine, the professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and an incredibly engaging and articulate podcast guest.

We talk about how geek culture has become canonised, the importance of external influences in the early history of video games, how aspects of the grimy arcade experience of the 80s are being replicated online today, how the mediums of the 20th century have suffocated the potential for games ability to communicate ideas, that time he made a video game for a presidential candidate. and why slippers are a universal interest.

"Play isn’t doing what we want, but doing what we can with the materials we find along the way."

PATREON - patreon.com/checkpoints

iTunes HERE - SUBSCRIBE / RATE / REVIEW

Theme song by Samuel Baker

Art work by Craig Stevenson