Your Homework Is...

When I sort of restarted this blog a few months ago, the plan was to not only give me the writing practice (you know, it's a blog), but also celebrate what I think are compelling or well-written stories from the internet. Many of them wound up being from similar sources because, well, I like specific writers and certain web sites do very good work (the features on Polygon, for example, are consistently good). Sometimes this slips away from me, and sometimes I just don't update for weeks at a time, but that just means that there should be plenty of stuff to look back on and point you toward. Typically, I would never include the location of today's homework.

Gametrailers.com is a website built initially for exactly what you'd expect; trailers for video games. Over the years, they've launched quite a variety of original content of what I can diplomatically call varying quality. Most of it really skews to taste; there's some fun industry stuff like Pach Attack and wacky talking head opinion-spewing like Final Bosman, and your interest in either example will depend on the kind of content you'd like to watch.

One of their "flagship" shows, though, is The Bonus Round hosted by games journo black belt/ lightning rod Goeff Keighley. Usually a panel discussion show (Wedbush Securities smartypants Michael Pachter is a regular guest), it's often filled with guests that range from industry analysts and insiders to camera-friendly seat fillers. It's usually a mishmash of softball questions, and while a lot of it is fun, it's rarely informative.

Not lately, though. In what I can only possibly think was the perfect storm of guests, Keighley tapped Pachter and also Naughty Dog co-founder and ex-THQ president Jason Rubin, as well as Seamus Blackley, a current mobile developer and one of the men instrumental for creating the original Xbox during his time at Microsoft. The first episode of the series (linked) takes place just as the PlayStation 4 was about to launch, and these three guys have an awful lot to say during it and subsequent chapters. The last of which will be on GT's site this weekend.

Again, it's all a matter of taste, but this particular panels is chock full of inside-baseball, and I love that shit. All three guests have very clear, yet often differing opinions about the nature of the big video game machine and the models that large companies need to adopt to be relevant in an increasingly gaming-diverse future. Keighley barely even speaks for most of the first episode. It's genius.

Happy Thanksgiving, my people.