“You just have to keep remembering you have to be so good that people can’t ignore you. Just keep getting better until you are that good. Everything else is luck I think. Luck and magic.”

Video games are pretty darn popular. Americans spend about as much on games as they do on going to the movies and buying music, combined. It makes sense then that game companies are constantly trying to figure out what the next hot game will be, and how to make it (enter Pokémon Go, episode 116). However, for every great success, there are more great failures, and even more games that even got to see the light of day. Today’s guest, Joe Martin, is a gaming journalist that like to research this lonely area of gaming, the history of games that were never released. As they say, those that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So what has Joe learned?

“There’s fewer people that care more, rather than more people that care less.”

“I’ve heard people who work in marketing say the best way to make sure a game will sell is to be able to describe it in terms of other games.”

Interview Contents

2:15 - What Joe does as a historical game journalist.
4:00 - Why developers won’t talk about canceled games.
8:00 - Why would a game get cancelled when it was already so far into development?
14:00 - Deciding whether or not to keep making sequel games when sales are lackluster.
17:00 - What makes a game successful?
27:40 - Will big console games go away in the future?
32:15 - Gamer stigma.
40:45 - Joe’s passion for canceled games.
51:40 - When reviewing a game, what does Joe look for?
55:00 - Joe’s top 5 games.
1:07:20 - Joe’s favorite part of his career.
1:09:00 - Advice.