HeyJaredThey Create Worlds
Love of the worlds created by video game designers and personalities drives Alex Smith & Jeffrey Daum (history, law, CS degrees) to provide a scholarly yet light-hearted discussion of how arcade, home console, and PC games merged into a Video Game Industry.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
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- Sep 15, 2026
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- Jul 15, 2026
Latest episodes
The 10 Best Selling Atari Games (opens the original)
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TCW Podcast Episode 266 - The 10 Best Selling Atari Games An internal Atari document visible in the background of the documentary Once Upon Atari provides a rare look at the company’s best-selling VCS games during the years leading up to, and just after, the video game crash. The Atari VCS was designed around just two player graphics, two missile graphics, and a ball, yet its most successful games pushed that limited hardware in new directions. These games were created by a diverse group of prog
Hasbro Interactive (opens the original)
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TCW Podcast Episode 265 - Hasbro Interactive Hasbro began as a family business selling textile remnants and pencil boxes before expanding into school supplies, children’s art products, and toys. Innovations such as Mr. Potato Head established the company as a toy maker, while G.I. Joe became a major success before the Vietnam War damaged its popularity and left Hasbro in a precarious position. The company avoided Atari’s early console market during this period, only to return to prominence in th
Knights of the Old Republic (opens the original)
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TCW Podcast Episode 264 - Knights of the Old Republic Knights of the Old Republic did not simply bring Star Wars to the role-playing game format. It was BioWare’s effort to build a cinematic RPG in a part of the galaxy far enough from the films to tell a new story, while drawing on decades of Expanded Universe worldbuilding, tabletop systems, and the storytelling model popularized by Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. This episode examines how BioWare combined a fully voiced cast, real-time-with-pau
Howell Ivy (opens the original)
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TCW Podcast Episode 263 - Howell Ivy Howell Ivy had a knack for taking familiar arcade ideas and pushing them somewhere new. He discovered video games through Computer Space while serving in the Air Force, and in his off time he built a ball-and-paddle game that led to a position at Ramtek. Clean Sweep gave the ball-and-paddle format a new twist and helped inspire Atari's Breakout. Ramtek Baseball pushed that idea further with stronger sound, presentation, and a CRT modified so it could sit perp
Vectrex (opens the original)
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TCW Podcast Episode 262 - Vectrex The Vectrex came with its own screen, plastic color overlays, and roots in the aerospace industry. GCE brought Smith Engineering in to design and develop digital watch games, then calculator games, before the two companies set their sights on a full home console. That console had to include its own display because home televisions could not support vector graphics. The idea took shape when engineer John Ross came across a one-inch CRT designed for aircraft instr
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