Big Ideas

Robert Ashley catches up with a former guest of the show, gets some layoff numbers from the current downturn in the games industry, and talks to several developers who worked on what might be the biggest flop in video game history about what it was like to spend years making something that no longer exists.

Robert Ashley finds out what it takes to speedrun games in a blindfold, visits a museum in Moscow dedicated to Soviet-era arcade machines, and talks to a group of friends about a childhood summer spent dreaming up a game of their own.

Robert Ashley talks to a developer at a big game studio about his strange trip from blue collar work to video game work, gets a lesson in work ethic from legendary game designer John Romero, finds out what can happen when you give your work away for free, and profiles Nick Smith (aka Ulillillia), whose body of work includes one of the Internet's most monumental--and strange--personal websites.

Robert Ashley returns from the mysterious deep with another musical offering that won't satisfy your desire for more episodes of A Life Well Wasted, but might hold you off for a while longer.

Robert Ashley checks in with you to see how you've been. Oh, did you hear that he has a new album coming out? Want to hear it?

Robert Ashley edits listener-submitted game ideas into one big, crazy game, talks to the guy who owns the rights to Tetris about his plans to save the world, gets a lecture on the future of games from a New York University professor, and meets a struggling game blogger who happens to possess freakishly enormous genitalia.

Robert Ashley helps people in videogames instead of helping people in real life, meets a comedy group who spend hundreds of hours every year playing the most boring videogame ever created, talks to a guy who quit playing games for a year, and profiles the best selling pinball designer of all time.

Robert Ashley visits a cosplay enthusiast, talks to the founder of an art show about videogames, discovers the strange world of fan fiction radio plays, and profiles a self-taught computer chip designer racecar driver/roller derby bruiser.

Listeners tell stories about why they play videogames.

Robert Ashley wonders why he spends his free time playing videogames, asks random people on the street about it, talks to a researcher whose work attempts to harness the brain power wasted on gaming, gets to know an eccentric, forward-thinking game designer who lives sustainably with his family of four on $14,000 a year, and gets a first-hand account of what it's like to work on terrible games (and what it's like to get terrible reviews) from an anonymous game developer.