Show Notes
C. Thi. Nguyen is an American philosopher whose work explores what games reveal about agency, and the ways in which metrics can shape our desires. After graduating from Harvard, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program at U.C.L.A., completing his doctorate while simultaneously working as a food writer for the L.A. Times—an early sign of a career that would resist tidy categories.
Now a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, he has become one of the leading thinkers at the intersection of games, art, and social structures. His first book, ‘Games: Agency as Art’, won the American Philosophical Association’s 2021 Book Prize, arguing that games are a unique art form that shape who we are within their rules. His newbook, ‘The Score’, examines how scoring systems—from basketball to social media likes—train us in what to value, and asks how we might stop playing somebody else’s game. An increasingly influential public thinker, he brings intellectual rigor, and playful irreverence to some of the most urgent questions of our time. 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.
More from My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin
Yesterday came the news that EA plans to close BioWare, the Edmonton studio behind Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I thought it was a good moment to revisit my conversation with Dr Greg Zeschuk, one of BioWare’s co-founders. We talk about the games that shaped him, and the long, remarkable journey of a studio that defined computer and console role-playing games for millions of people. Here’s my conversation with Greg Zeschuk.
Daryl Baxter is a British writer and podcaster from Lincoln whose work has ranged across games, technology, and the history of the medium. He has written for outlets including WIRED, TechRadar, Den of Geek, and the Radio Times, and now publishes Springboard, a free newsletter about gaming, technology, and mental health that deliberately avoids chasing SEO or relying on AI. Growing up with series including Sonic, Metal Gear and, especially, Tomb Raider, he eventually turned that fascination into his first book, The Making of Tomb Raider, published in 2021 and based on extensive interviews with the original Core Design team.
Will de Renzy-Martin is a British actor and voice performer whose career has increasingly become intertwined with video games. As a child, he was fascinated by storytelling and by watching his older brothers play Ocarina of Time, but initially followed a rather different path, reading Computing at Imperial College London. Before long, however, he changed direction, training as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he discovered voiceover shortly before graduating in 2017.
My guest today is an Irish writer, producer, and multimedia creator whose work spans journalism, video games, language, and digital culture. Born in Vietnam, she was adopted at three days old by a primary school teacher from County Kerry, and brought to Ireland at six weeks of age. Irish became one of her spoken languages, and it would go on to shape both her education and her career: she later studied Irish and Journalism at Dublin City University, building a body of work that moves across reporting, video games, and digital culture.
Paolo Pedercini is an Italian game designer, artist, educator, and activist whose work has spent more than two decades challenging assumptions about what video games are for, and what they are allowed to say. In 2003, he founded Molleindustria as a project dedicated to the "reappropriation of video games and the radicalisation of popular culture."