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This week, we welcome Chandler Wood, video game marketer formerly of Avalanche Studios and PlayStation Lifestyle! Andy and Justin chat with him on how he helped build and manage the community for Hogwarts Legacy at Avalanche Studios, and what it takes to be an effective liaison between players and creators. Plus, we talk Marathon, Lucha Libre Wrestling, Project Hail Mary, moving to New York City, and more.

It’s GDC Festival 2026 week! Andy and Justin chat about what it’s like to socialize with Bay Area dads including golfing and playing poker with noobs. There’s a new live stage play production of Paranormal Activity which Andy dives deep into in the midst of a Resident Evil spooky season in March with Requiem releasing as well. We then dive into our experience at The MIX showcase, an in-person indie games mini-festival and chat about all the games we played along with our picks to wishlist!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P0ml-vWd...

We chat with Simon Boas, an immersive experience producer, and Cam Perkins, a photographer. Both of whom happen to be in our Fantasy Critic league and love games! It’s a more games-heavy chat this week as we go over Citizen Sleeper, Nioh 3, No Sleep For Kaname Date, Monster Hunter Wilds as well as explore what it’s like to play Fantasy Critic over the years.

Welcome to 2026! We chat about some experiences we've had since the holiday break - Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disneyland for Justin, while Andy gives the lowdown about the Sundance Film Festival in 2026 and we chat about the beauty of discovering new things we love. Gaming wise, we talk Expedition 33, Pokemon and Animal Crossing, touch upon Highguard and the newly announced Horizon Hunters Gathering. Finally, we do a deep dive on our Fantasy Critic Games league draft and teams for 2026.

Our first guest! Nic McConnell of Instruction Derby fame joins us to chat about what we've been up to lately, old school instruction manuals, what goes into Age Rating games as well as throw in some indie game recommendations and predict who will take home the Game Award for Indies!

https://bsky.app/profile/mcconnell.bsky.social

Fun episode this week as we talk: KAWS exhibit at the SF MOMA, King of the Hill, Easy Come, Easy Golf, The Plucky Squire. The Game Award nominees just came out and we go category by category picking our favorites!

This week we chat Daft Punk, Halloween, Dispatch, Pokemon Legends Z-A, and BALL X PIT. We also talk about a Circana study on the number of games different players buy per year and then delve into how we discover games recently and live react to our Steam Calendar Browsing lists.

We talk their recent gaming experiences with Deltarune and Hades 2, delve into the importance of game preservation, and Andy share insights on the wonders of attending a film festival.

First episode! We introduce ourselves and talk music festival experiences alongside what we've been playing (Hades 2 / Consume Me and more!). Justin also runs down some of the big highlights from State of Play September 2025