Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

Update: Unlimited Hyperbole is no longer available. There are two episodes preserved by the Thief community on Youtube which are linked in the episode index, however other episodes have since been lost to time.

Joe Robinson is a freelance games journalist who’s written for plenty of PC focused publications, including RPS and Strategy Informer, so it’s not surprising that he considers himself a PC gamer at heart. What’s unusual though is that, despite his deep knowledge of the PC platform and obscure strategy titles, his favourite game is still a mass-market console game – Halo: Combat Evolved.

This week’s episode of Unlimited Hyperbole examines why Joe has chosen such a popular, mainstream title as his favourite and questions which is more important – the content of the game or the context of playing it?

Unlimited Hyperbole is a weekly podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a topic that’s used as a prompt when interviewing special guests. This season we’re talking about “My Favourite Game” – but for more information about the podcast itself, read after the jump.

So.

There are a few things which bear pointing out about this episode. Firstly, yes, the sound quality for Joe isn’t as clear as it’s been with other guests. I scrubbed it up as best I could, but the only way to really clarify it would be to record again. It was important to me to get first responses, so it remained; honest distortion is better than manufactured clarity.

The other thing to point out and which Joe would probably want made clear is that he was the only guest this season who had trouble choosing a game. The others all chose their games immediately, except for Brendan who wavered a little over Thief/X-Com. Joe though, while eventually settling on Halo as the game he most wanted to talk about, was uncomfortable with the idea of choosing a favourite.

It’s surprising to me more people didn’t have that reaction. As it was, the only other person who voiced a problem with topic was Jonathan Blow, who refused to appear in this season because he didn’t feel he had the kind of videogame nostalgia which would make him a good guest.

Harriet and I are well into work on the second season of the show now, by the way. That means we can’t take suggestions for guests or topics, but we do welcome any other feedback you might have, as always. You can leave comments or share the show with friends using the widget above, as well as leave iTunes reviews or contact us on Twitter.

UPDATE: Some Android users have asked how they can listen to the show. The easiest way is to get the free Doubletwist music app and then find us in the podcast directory, but you can also feed the RSS feed above into Google Listen or download the show through Soundcloud and transfer it directly to your phone over cable.