It's a Pleasure to Speak With You

After five-and-a-half years of work at OXM and well over 100 podcasts, I've had the unique opportunity to interview a lot of people in the videogame industry. Some subjects have been merely serviceable, while others have been PR bots who simply spout the company line. But there are also folks out there who are legitimately interesting and a joy to talk to. Here's a short list of my favorite interviewees (notice they're not in any kind of order other than alphabetical...I don't want to get any emails from folks mentioned on this list upset at their "rank!" *cough*Cliffy*cough* :-)). Click the names to hear a podcast they appeared on (if applicable)

Cliff Blezinski
Once you understand that "CliffyB" isn't just a guy doing a character -- no, that's really who he is -- you can begin to understand his genius. Clearly, Cliffy's mind operates on another wavelength than everyone else's. It's not necessarily a better or worse wavelength -- just a different one. Brutally honest and with an opinion on anything (gaming related or not), he's a quote machine who's genuinely a nice guy to boot. Oh, and he's proven himself to be a pretty darn good game designer, too. Just listen to him talk about why sad endings in games probably won't be happening anytime soon and he'll show you that he knows his stuff.

Todd Howard
The man I like to call "The People's Nerd," Todd is a voice for us all. He's a gamer both day and night (just ask him about his NCAA Football obsession), and he just so happens to be a highly talented game designer who's overseen some of the best and most successful role-playing games of the past decade. He is so good at what he does, in fact, that nobody has been able to come close to approximating Bethesda's "massively single-player role-playing game" success yet. And when talking about his games, either on the record or off, he's honest, he'll contemplate and give a thought-out answer, and as an added bonus I've never seen him angry.

Tomonobu Itagaki
Before I interviewed the leader of Team Ninja for the first time, I wasn't just nervous. I was scared. I'd been warned that if you ask stupid or basic questions, he would just tell his interpreter to give the usual PR answer and would think less of you afterwards. Now that I've chattted with him a few times, I still find the executive producer of the Ninja Gaiden series a bit intimidating because I know I have to bring my 'A' game, but I also know that he respects me after having had a few good sessions with him. Like the other men on this list, he's also brutally honest, which always makes for a better interview.

Michael Pachter
The most recent addition to the list was arguably the most surprisingly good interview I've ever done. Having seen Pachter's name in many an online news story about the business side of the videogame industry, he naturally was the first person I thought to ask when I wanted to talk to an authority on the potential impact of Grand Theft Auto IV on the Xbox 360. Though I was afraid he might be a boring white-collar numbers guy, he proved to be the exact opposite. Pachter is affable, down-to-earth, and very knowledgeable when it comes to games. He doesn't do what he does simply because a boss tells him to; he has a passion for gaming, even if, as he joked to us, that he doesn't get to finish very many of them.

Kudo Tsunoda
If you've ever wondered what an MTV vee-jay would be like if they weren't annoying, Kudo Tsunoda is the quintessential example. During the development cycle of Fight Night Round 3, he came out to our offices and radiated a knowledge and a love for boxing, which clearly translated into the final product. In an interview, he's like a wind-up toy: get him going on a subject he has an opinion on, and he'll talk all day. Of course, this means it's up to me to reel him back in from time to time, but it's obvious that his heart is into what he does. And the greased-up-pig-carcass story is probably the funniest development tale anyone's ever told me.