Gamecraft - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Always insightful whether talking about the past or current industry conditions. A must listen for anyone in the business of games.

Amazing podcast for anyone interested in the business of game development. Provided a whole new level of insight, first for the nostalgic games of my youth, and then for the modern game industry where I’ve spent my career over the past 15 years.

Truly fascinating to hear such insightful commentary on the current state of the industry and the forces shaping companies I have worked.

My half-baked suggestion for season 3 would be to do deeper-dive case studies featuring guest interviews.

This podcast is incredibly high quality content. I have been running my own game companies for 18 years and I learn something with every episode. If you are an exec in the games industry, it’s absolutely a must to listen to. It’s not unbiased, and I disagree with some of the analysis, but the discussion is top notch.

Just love the depth of the content, great for anyone interested in the games business and media/business in general. Looking forward to season 4!

In Season 1, Episode 06 of Gamecraft ("Console Castles”, around minute 29:36-30:30), Mitch Lasky talks about a false story of Satoru Iwata punching someone at an investor meeting as if it actually happened.

(More info about this is shared in a Medium article titled “Satoru Iwata NEVER Punched a Man at an Investor Meeting.”)

I emailed Mitch and Blake to politely point out this inaccuracy and to ask them to please consider uploading a new audio file for Season 1, Episode 06 that does not include the false Iwata story. I also asked them to please consider removing the "Iwata chooses violence" link from the episode's show notes.

Mitch sent me two email replies. In one of them, he wrote: "I am a busy man and I am not going to honor your request. I have my own issues with Iwata whom I dealt with personally and I don’t share your belief in his sainthood. I have disavowed this story publicly and that’s the end of it.”

One's opinion of Iwata is not relevant to the fact that a false story about him was propagated on the Gamecraft Podcast. Also, I never claimed that Iwata was a saint and I have not found any evidence of Mitch publicly disavowing the false Iwata story. It's possible that Mitch did publicly disavow the false Iwata story in the joint Acquired/Gamecraft podcast episode, but that portion of the conversation was cut from the public version of the podcast (this is just speculation).

Since Gamecraft presents itself as an authoritative source of information on the video game industry, it should be held to a high standard of accuracy. Gamecraft cannot be trusted as a reliable source of information because the co-hosts have demonstrated an unwillingness to take a few minutes to remove an egregious factual error from one of their episodes.

Out of respect for the late Satoru Iwata (and accuracy), I hope that one of the co-hosts of Gamecraft chooses to upload a new audio file of Season 1, Episode 06 that does not include the false Iwata story. I also hope that they remove the misleading "Iwata chooses violence" link from the episode's show notes.

These corrections would help prevent future Gamecraft listeners from being misled to believe a false and defamatory story about Satoru Iwata.

If these corrections are made, I will gladly update my review and change my rating to 5 stars.