Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga

New Markdowns are on at your Nordstrom Rack store. Save even more, up to 70%, on dresses, tops, boots, and handbags to give and get. Because I always find something amazing. Just so many good brands. I get an extra 5% off with my Nordstrom credit card. Total queen treatment. Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock our best deals. Big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack.

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mayrothra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. When does self-regulation go too far? A recent episode looks at high-stakes antitrust battles and more. Stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode. Roman Mars from 99% Invisible. Ben Brock Johnson from Endless Thread.

Here we are, final boss of Hidden Levels. Are you ready, Roman? Do you have all your legendary items? Do you have full life? Did you save the game in case we lose against the final boss? That's an important consideration. Yes, I am so excited for this because... I think this might be the first final boss I've ever encountered. Like I've never reached the part of the video game that you actually hit the final boss. So this is thrilling for me to be here at the very end.

All right. Well, get ready to have a huge sense of accomplishment for beating a final boss that maybe means nothing to anyone except for you. That's a very video game feeling. Let's talk about something we've been touching on through this series, but maybe never said explicitly.

Video games are art. How does that sit with you, Roman? It sits very well with me. I think video games are absolutely art. beautiful visions that bring worlds alive for people. They teach people how to think. They change your perspective. Video games are absolutely art. Totally agree. And just like other kinds of art, video games are full of reference and homage. So for instance, I think maybe you've heard of the game Metal Gear or Metal Gear Solid, that series of games.

I've never played it, but Metal Gear, I'm aware of Metal Gear. So Metal Gear was created nearly 40 years ago by game designer Hideo Kojima. Kojima is now one of the most loved and respected auteurs of video games. in part because he has always put his own personality into the games that he makes. He's got strong ideas, he's committed to them, even when they're basically referencing other pieces of art.

The main character, Roman, in Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid is named Solid Snake. Solid Snake, he wears an eye patch. He's got a stubble beard on his Chad-like jaw. When you look at this game character, Roman, does he look familiar to you? So I'm looking at a picture of Solid Snake, and he is a dead ringer for Snake Plissken from the movie Escape from New York. Nicely done. I think we'd have very few arguments on movie night, Roman. It's a great movie.

It's a great movie. Solid Snake was inspired by Snake Plissken. As you say, the character played by Kurt Russell in that 1981 sci-fi classic. You gonna kill me now, Snake? I'm too tired. Maybe later. So Kojima is obviously like a movie fan. For sure. And Kojima actually has this new set of games that is also turning into their own franchise. Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2.

Okay, well, those are new to me. I've never heard of Death Stranding. So this game goes further than just references and homage. The game has been described as sort of a walking simulator. Because the main character is not a warrior. He's not a sniper. He's not a smash and bash him kind of guy. He is a courier Roman. So in the game, you are delivering packages. That's the game. I love this. I love this.

This does seem like my kind of game. I'm having a hard time imagining why a game about a courier is called Death Stranding. That doesn't quite make sense to me. Yeah. I mean, it does all take place in a post-apocalyptic environment. Got it. You're currying babies. Oh my goodness. In this game. So stakes are high. Stakes are high for sure. Well that makes sense. The stakes are high when you're delivering babies in a post-apocalyptic environment.

Yeah, and, you know, we're laughing about this, but the game is also like a piece of commentary. You can see Kojima thinking through big questions, like the dangers of living in a society where we barely physically... interact and he's doing it through this delivery guy, this courier in Death Stranding. So Kojima is an example of how an artist's personality, their point of view, can get coded right into the game itself. And today, Roman...

We're going to talk about another one of these examples, a game really coming from the inside of one man's brain, his anxieties, his hopes, his fears about the industry he works in and the company he works for. This is where we're going to start our final boss episode of Hidden Levels with a Sega employee who had a front row seat to all of the chaos of working in the gaming business in the 1990s.

And we're going to learn how he turned his experience into the most strangely iconic meta video game maybe of all time. 99PI producer Jason DeLeon brings it home for us.

When I first met Tez Okano, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had reached out to talk about a video game he created nearly 25 years ago. an obscure and fun Japanese title that had become a sort of fixation of mine. It's a game that you can't really begin to understand until you get to know the person who made it. So I'm...

A country bumpkin. I live in Tokyo currently and have lived in Tokyo for a while, but I am not a Tokyo person. Through an interpreter, O'Connell told me about his early life in rural southern Japan and how growing up in the 1970s... Just as video games were taking off, set the stage for everything that was to come.

like i really have to insist on it i am from the country there's like nothing literally nothing in terms of entertainment what we had was like the great outdoors so anything with a hint of you know the city lingering on it was just something that we all longed for. As a kid, Okano dreamed of leaving the countryside. But often, video games were his closest escape.

He remembers playing versions of the classic tennis and brick breaker titles of the 70s, which were fun, but those games didn't really move him. He says his love really started when one iconic title landed in his hometown. Space Invaders. Do you know Space Invaders? When Okano first played Space Invaders, he was struck by something he had never experienced in a game before. It had characters and stakes.

It felt alive. Space Invader is a creature. It's invading. It's a story. Yes, story. World. Emotional. Some people might only see an 11x5 grid of pixelated aliens when they play Space Invaders, but Okano saw a whole new world, and that passion led him away from the countryside and into a university. where he studied game design. As a student, Okano created games on MSX, a type of home computer that helped shape the 80s Japanese gaming scene.

And I love MSX. I love, love, love MSX. It's burned into my brain making games like that. One of Okano's MSX games was a silly 8-bit shoot-'em-up called Salad Man. The game was a spoof of a famous Japanese game called Salamander. MSX Magazine wrote about Salad Man and said it was funny and kind of crazy. And ultimately, that playful, oddball spirit...

helped Okano land the job straight out of college at Sega. And you know, like, you can see, you can tell that I'm kind of a weird guy. Okano joined Sega in 1992. At the time, the company was riding high on the success of the Sega Genesis. It was the first console to challenge Nintendo's grip over the home gaming industry.

This kicked off what we know today as the Console Wars, a decades-long competition between companies for gaming supremacy. Early on, Sega and Nintendo competed over who had the better 2D graphics. But by the mid-90s, video games were heading in a new direction. Right after I started working there, everything was 3D. It was the era of 3D.

You want to do pixel art or anything pixel, anything flat? No, it's over. That time is over. You can't sell pixels. You can't sell that kind of stuff. 3D is what sells. When Okano created Saladman, he had to meticulously draw and color each individual graphic. On MSX, this meant following a strict set of rules on the number of pixels he could use, and how to color them.

But 3D required a very different skill set. So when he arrived at Sega, Okano recalls that a bunch of pixel artists suddenly needed to adapt, or they might find themselves out of work. And that really rubbed me the wrong way. It made me sad. You know, I got into games because I like pixel art. But by the time I got my start in this industry, the world of pixels was already on its way out.

Okano feared that with the whole industry pushing towards 3D, pixel artists like him would become a thing of the past. He described it to me as watching the collapse of an empire. And his fears were warranted. Sega couldn't be concerned with all that meticulously drawn, color-each-pixel artsy-fartsy stuff. They needed to innovate or risk falling behind their rivals. But in Sega's push to bring new technology and 3D gaming into homes,

The company just kept screwing up. For example, are you a fan of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch? No? Well, too bad. Here's a game Sega put out on the Sega CD where you make Mark Wahlberg's music video. You want to make my video? Give me more shots of Marky with his shirt off. Honey! The Sega CD was an add-on to the Genesis that tried to cash in on the popularity of CDs at the time. But the device just didn't have many games. And big surprise, the Marky Mark one wasn't flying off the shelf.

Sega followed this debacle up with yet another doomed piece of hardware called the 32X. It was a device that you literally stuck into the top of your Genesis to supercharge its processing power. Just stick it in your Genesis. Alright, baby. The 32X was too little too late. People were ready to move on from the Genesis. They were ready for a true 3D console.

But the company's next system, the Sega Saturn, totally missed the mark. So the Sega Saturn is really a machine that's very, very good at moving sprites. So that's the 2D. bits of art around a screen very, very quickly. It's less good at handling 3D. And this is a miscalculation on Sega's part, because by the mid-90s, everyone wants 3D games. This is Simon Parkin.

a game journalist and host of the podcast My Perfect Console. Simon says, haha, that with each new piece of hardware, Sega further confused and alienated their audience. After all, the company hyped the Saturn as an era-defining 3D console. But when they couldn't deliver the goods, a total newcomer to the industry stepped in and did. Sony's PlayStation.

It's the first really, really capable 3D machine. The PlayStation was Sony's first console, and it was a massive hit, selling tens of millions of consoles worldwide. Pair that with the release of the Nintendo 64, another console with 3D graphics, and suddenly Sega was in crisis. The high times of the Genesis were only a few years in the rearview,

But it was fair to ask if Sega was going the way of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Gone were the good vibrations, and so long went to sweet sensations. Sega needed to hit the reset button. And that's exactly what they did. with the Dreamcast. The ads emphasize, you know, firstly, an apology almost, like sorry for how far Sega has fallen.

And also then, you know, switching it to be all about the return of Sega. And I think that was the name of the campaign in Japan, the return of Sega. The Dreamcast was Sega's response to the PlayStation and the company's biggest punch in the console wars yet. It was the world's first console with a built-in modem for online play. It also had a graphics card that blew the competition out of the water. Not just 3D, but the best-looking 3D by a long shot.

With the Dreamcast, Sega was looking ahead to the new millennium and leaving its recent tumultuous past behind. So yeah, this is the gamble that Sega is making. We'll get out early, we'll have the most powerful machine on the market, and we'll also invest in our own... designers here in Tokyo with the view of not only pushing the technological boundaries of what the Dreamcast can do, but also the kinds of games that are being made. There was this atmosphere of experimentation and freedom.

You know, you had the chance to try something new and see if it paid off. The late 1990s are known at Sega as the Dreamcast years. And during the Dreamcast years... Sega's developers could, as one executive put it, do whatever they wanted. The mandate was to be original, to make games and create experiences that people had never seen before.

Sega was throwing everything behind the Dreamcast to salvage their position in the console wars. And a lot of Sega's developers took that to heart, including Tez Okano. That's why I'm not king, and I'm a challenger. Sega was the challenger, right? Sega was never the king. Sega was just coming up to the king and asking for a fight. So we had that kind of attitude, that underdog attitude at Sega.

Okano told me that the first few titles he worked on at Sega were not a commercial success. There was a Dragon Ball Z game that just didn't do great, a game where you ride in the back of a runaway rail car that was kind of a bust, and... a dirt racing game. Which also did not do that great, was not a winner. When the Dreamcast years arrived, Okano was eager to try something new.

But he was also aware of his not-so-stellar track record developing games. So any idea he had needed to work on a shoestring budget. And, you know, like after my string of failures and like I was just a total loser, basically, no one's going to come along and be like, oh, here's 700 million yen, make whatever game you want. Like, no, that wasn't going to happen. No one was giving me any money.

The console wars had left their mark both on Sega and on Okano. For years, developers like him worked long hours trying to make the company relevant again. They slept at their desk and showered at the office. Okano himself had to work extra hard to learn all the new techniques 3D games required. The stress was high and the deadlines were relentless. And all of this gave Okano the idea for his next game.

What if he could give people a peek behind the curtains? What if he made his next game a video game about making video games? No, more than that. A video game about making video games during the console wars. Actually, no, no. What if he went full Monty... and made a game about making video games during the console wars while working at SEGA. Nothing I was making was really coming across too well until finally we get to SEGAGAGA.

He sort of mangles the name of the game and makes it say ga ga ga, or whatever. Say ga ga, yeah. It's the three Gs, yeah. Yeah, so he gets away with calling it that. Sega Gaga is part role-playing game, part management simulator. A game in which Tez Okano hands the controller to us, the players, and says, look. Sega is a mess. Do you think you can do any better? Like it's really a sort of act of self-parodying documentary really about Sega's fortunes during the 1990s.

Sega Gaga is a game that ticked all the boxes. Dreamcast had just launched, and Sega wanted developers across the company to create original games. And, well, this was that. And yeah, he was one developer with a run of bad games under his belt, but Sega Gaga wouldn't need a lot of resources. He would create the story, the characters, and all the ins and outs of the gameplay himself.

Because, after all, he had lived through this whole experience. For Okano, it was just a matter of crafting his pitch to get Sega's executives to say yes. I had my presentation set up, and it was really funny. It was really, like, just hilarious, well-received. The whole room was, like, busting a gut, and just like, oh, you really got us. And they thought it was a huge joke, so they didn't give me any money. Okano actually had to go back another day and give the whole presentation again.

And I was like, no, I was serious the other day. Like, I was being for real. This is not a joke. And it was such a stupid, like, ridiculous kind of story that they just couldn't believe that I was serious. There are a lot of reasons Sega would probably want to say no to Okano. But chief among them is that the game is acknowledging a pretty embarrassing fact about the company. It spent a lot of the 90s missing the moment.

And maybe it was just the ethos of the Dreamcast years. Or maybe it was Okano's charm. Or maybe it was just the fact that the cost of the game was more or less a rounding error. But to Okano's delight, Sega said yes. So were you surprised when Sega gave you the green light? Yeah, no. Yeah, no, I was desperate. I was like back against the wall at the end of my rope. But at the same time, I was really certain that I could make a good, like fun, interesting game.

And when they came back with a yes, I was just like, over the moon. Sega Gaga is the kind of idea Okana would hear floated after work at a happy hour. Something so zany and out there that people would laugh and joke about it and then, you know, just get up from the table and go back to doing whatever they were doing. But I did not walk away from it. I spent...

Two years in that drunken state working on this game. In the opening title card to Sega Gaga, you, the player, are given the marching orders. Sega is in bad shape. So it's time to put the company's top secret plan into action. All right, let's go ahead and dive into the game. Yeah, let's do it. This is Existence DC, a gamer that's working on an English translation of Sega Gaga. And he's going to help me explain it, because honestly, there's a lot going on in this game.

You can always bounce around, but I'll start like a brand new game here. In Sega Gaga, you play a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed developer. Someone who hasn't been run down by the console wars and the business of creating games. And your goal is to win back Sega's market share from the Dogma Corporation. Dogma's supposed to represent, like, Sony. The PlayStation is what they're trying to nod at here. Yeah, exactly.

In order to make games that will eventually bury PlayStation, dogma, you, the hero developer, have to recruit a team to make hit games. The problem? Almost all of your potential teammates have turned into mutants. who live in the dungeons below Sega headquarters. So we're gonna go into our first dungeon. Okay. It's obvious that the stress and pressure of creating games has gotten to them.

Some of these characters are over-caffeinated employees with bottles of energy drinks lying around them. Some have just been reduced to a gigantic blob of pixels. Other characters are Sega employees with their faces blurred and it's literally a photo of them where it's like, let's take a photo of you, blur out your face and put you in the game. The development dungeons are 3D environments.

But you and the feral developers moping about are made up of 2D sprites. This gives the game an odd sort of look from the jump. It's slapdash with pixel art and other 2D elements that Okano has carefully pasted into the game. For example, one character you run into in this dungeon slash lab has a big 3D over his head, and he's actively weeping. That's basically supposed to be like a guy who does 3D modeling, so an artist on the project.

And they're being crushed under the weight of 3D. Like just like how difficult it is to render things in 3D? Yeah, yeah. If this sounds absurd and insanely meta, that's because it is. And for Okano, that was the whole point. He wanted the game to reflect what life in the development lab was really like. Take another example. One key part of the game are these battles where you, the hero developer,

are trying to convince people to join your team. But there's a catch. You want to convince them to join on the cheapest salary possible. Because, of course, the cheaper your team's overall budget, the higher the profit margin. In these battles, you try to weaken your opponent by basically launching insults at them. And instead of a typical life meter, these characters have a will meter. And it decreases as you unleash hell on them.

by saying their previous games suck, or that they'll never get a girlfriend. Here's Tez Okano again. Actually, all of the attacks... in the game where there's the fighting. Those are all lines, actual things that people in the office were saying that I just picked up and put in the game. These are actual quotes from my coworkers. It's interesting, but it's not true. It's not true. Why is that?

So basically, it's almost all true. Like the whole game is basically just real life. The panic, the running around, the busy, the whole busy atmosphere of everything and, you know, deadlines approaching. That's all real. Depending on the team you've assembled, you can make big hit games which take longer to produce.

but win you back a bigger piece of market share. Or you can quickly make a bunch of trashy titles that barely keep the company afloat. And all of this is happening on a timer. You have deadlines to hit. And this, by the way, I think is the funniest part of the game. Right next to your deadline is an additional deadline titled More Realistic Deadline.

But even these extended deadlines are hard to hit because occasionally you're thwarted by a totally random event. Maybe one of your developers loses their mind and walks off your team. Or maybe someone downloads a bad attachment.

And suddenly your team is dealing with a computer virus. It kind of goes back to the larger... kind of idea with Sega Gaga is that it's not just kind of about Sega culture, it's also about development and the challenges of getting a game to the finish line and the things that happen. Sega Gaga also has a whole story that unravels as you clear the different development stages. In these animated cutscenes, you watch Dogma, or PlayStation, attempt to sabotage Sega.

And as if that isn't enough, between each of these chapters is a, um, how do I describe this? A puppet show that O'Connell filmed with his co-workers? Oh, yeah. The puppet scenes are so funny. I love them. I love them so much. I know. I know. All of this sounds kind of batshit. But the game is also, like, pretty fun. I do think it's a good game. I definitely think, I think it holds up. I think the variety makes it great. Like it's almost better than I expected it to be. And it's more...

modern than I expected it to be. And I enjoy the story more than I think I expected. So yeah, I actually really love the game. To Okano's credit, when he first showed Sega Gaga to Sega's executives, he didn't try to hide anything or make it something it wasn't. He just showed them the game. This absurd, bizarre game. I guess in a word, the reaction was, what kind of idiocy are you doing here?

Basically, with Sega Gaga, I did everything that Sega hates. So the concept of the game was everything that Sega hates is not really well made. It's cheap. It's sort of sloppy, it's weird, so it didn't fit in any boxes of the company, which was the beauty of it.

Sega's executives could have just killed this game right then and there. It didn't cost much money to make, and it would have been pretty easy for them to just take the L. But that's not what happened. Okano's strange game actually made it to market. under the Sega banner. And that's partly because of a big development in the console wars. Okano completed Sega Gaga in 2001.

By that time, the Dreamcast had been out worldwide for almost two years. Here in America, the launch was the biggest ever for a console, bringing in nearly $100 million in 24 hours. Things were looking up. Well... At least for a second. But the big problem is people know the PlayStation 2 is coming. Here's game journalist Simon Parkin again. And Sony is very, very effective in trailing.

the playstation 2 and saying essentially oh look sega's got this new system that's coming out but it's really a stop gap you know if you you'll pick this up it'll be dead in the water in two years because then then the playstation 2 will be here And it runs on something called an emotion engine, which is a great piece of marketing. Wow. Yeah, that is. It's got an emotion engine. You know, this is...

A console that's going to be so powerful, it can make you cry. All of this nonsense. Is that a real thing they said? Yeah, they did say that. But it's, you know, it was extraordinarily effective. With the PlayStation 2 on the horizon, sales of Sega's Dreamcast basically flatlined. Sony's marketing team convinced enough people that the system just wasn't worth it. That the PlayStation had something even better in the works.

And suddenly, the story in Tez Okano's game crept closer to reality. Dogma, or PlayStation, was squeezing Sega out of the console market. And then, it actually happened. Sega formally announces that it's ceasing production of the Dreamcast and that the Dreamcast is going to be its last piece of hardware that is exiting the console business. It continues to make games.

publish games, which it still does to this day, but it's no longer going to build any video game hardware. When Sega called it quits on consoles, it was a shock to the gaming industry. This was like Wonder getting out of the bread business. Reese's saying sorry everyone, we're done making pieces. But in a strange twist, the big move actually benefited Sega Gaga. After all, Tez Okano had finished the game. It was already paid for.

And it would be one of the last games released for a console that had already been discontinued. Instead of being laughed at, why not join the gag? So the timing is extraordinary, completely prescient and weird. Karno has proven to be a little bit prophetic with all of that. SEGA comes out and announces the end of Dreamcast.

which is, like, all the free publicity you could ask for. I mean, the whole world was talking about Sega pulling out of the console business, so it was on TV, it was in the newspapers, and, of course, they're talking about us because we're a game and we're the last game. So it was really great in that way. Still, with Sega moving out of the console business, it wasn't about to support Sega Gaga that hard. The company gave Okano 30,000 yen.

which is about $200 to promote his game. He and his publicist took that money and commissioned a friend to make a custom wrestling mask, one with big letters on top that read SGGG, Sega Gaga. So I just drew the design. That's all I did. I drew design. And then the idea was that I wear masks and go places.

If you happened to be in the famous electronics district of Tokyo when the game launched, you might have seen Okano running from game store to game store in that mask, signing autographs for all of the Sega diehards who showed up.

When Okano was making Sega Gaga, he wasn't expecting Sega's console business to collapse. But when it did, his game took on a whole new meaning. Now, it wasn't just a self-parody of life at Sega during the console wars. The game acted as a sort of memorial for an era. As you move through the story of Sega Gaga, you meet characters from the company's past, like Alex Kidd, Sega's mascot before Sonic took the world by storm.

There's even an Easter egg for the real retro gaming heads out there. A 2D shoot-em-up made in that classic 1980s Sega style. Only the bosses in Okano's game are all of Sega's old failed consoles. The Sega CD, that's in there. The 32X, huge boss. And it all culminates with the Sega Saturn, the daddy of them all. In a literal sense, you're trying to defeat Sega's history. SEGAGAGAというのは悪ふざけのようなゲームです 老悪的で自虐的で

So Sega Gaga is like a practical joke of a game, you know, it's poking fun of the things we made, it's self-deprecating, warts and all. But like, I love games, you know, like I'm really proud of my work as a game creator. The moral of the story is that you know the in the game's ending the character decides to keep making games even after he's seen how challenging it could be you know it's a it's a industry that for better or worse thrives off the passion of the individuals who

pour their creativity and energy into it. And I think, you know, that's the ultimate message of the game. While Okano repeatedly and pointedly pokes fun at his employer, He also wants the people who made the games to know that he sees them. Creating is full of frustration. There's never enough resources and there's never enough time. You can do all the right things.

And sometimes the work just still falls short. But that's okay. Because you made it. You and your team turned an idea into something that people can experience. Maybe even enjoy. And... In O'Connell's world, that is a cause for celebration. Tez Okano is still making video games. His latest is an MSX-style shoot-em-up, or shmup, as I'm learning right now as I read this, which was released in August. It's called The Girl from Goon Makai.

And actually, the song you're hearing right now is from that game. You can find Okano's new game and the rest of its soundtrack on Steam. He also recently released a pixel art movie called Final Request. Learn more about what he's up to at his studio's website, hygastudio.com. That's h-u-g-a-studio.com. When we come back from the break, we're going to wrap up Hidden Levels.

This episode is brought to you by Marshalls, where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard, working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces. Because Marshall's believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshall's store near you or shop online at marshalls.com. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business.

A recent episode features Jonathan Cantor, who led groundbreaking lawsuits during his time in the Biden administration against some of the world's largest tech companies. They're big systems, and the bigger they get, the harder they become to unseed. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of the episode.

Democracy under siege, Democrats treading water, and one outlet after another checking out. All the big media giants are willing to fold. Slate has never been afraid to tell it like it is. And hold powerful feet to the fire. We want to try to defend our communities, our families, our people. But what if you can't? What Next asks tough questions. Without forgetting, who's at the center of our work? You.

Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Roman Mars, I think we got past the final boss episode of Hidden Levels. We did. And what a doozy it was. Yeah, that's right. That Jason DeLeon guy. He's a ringer, man. I heard he was actually once such a heavy video game player that he was globally ranked. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, Jay was a ranked Halo 2 player.

That is amazing. And he used to like fight jujitsu too. Like he's for multi-talented. Don't mess with Jay in the digital or the real world. Fair. Well, Jason's story was a perfect, I think, final video game cinematic to our collaboration. Roman, at the end of our long quest to explore the hidden levels of how the video game world influences the real world, how are you feeling? What are you thinking about?

I mean, I loved this collaboration. It was so much fun to explore video games in depth. And particularly because video games are this place in which Every pixel, every decision, every piece of design came out of someone's brain. And it tells you so much about their values, what's important to them, what's important to the gamer. It's just this great way to explore a lot of things. things that I like to think about all the time. Absolutely. And I think we're in a really interesting moment

to look at video games in this way, right? Video games are going through some of the disruptive change that so many creative industries are going through, film, art, animation, AI, other technologies, conglomeration, these kind of larger tectonic sh- shifts, bring a lot of uncertainty to how we do and think about

I guess, telling stories. So it's been wonderful to celebrate that. And what Jason's story, I think, typifies and what gives me some hope is that humans are endlessly, amazingly creative, you know, whatever the larger trends in the industry bring. Yeah. And I think it's important to note is that so much of our premise was that video games influence the real world. But video games in and of themselves are just worthy of study. They are fascinating. They tell you so much about what.

life is like and what life means to people. It's just a rich text. So this is where our couch co-op of Hidden Levels ends for now. I think my mom got us some chicken nugs that we can heat up in the microwave. I brought them out and do. This is where gamers and I see eye to eye about the... Just the virtues of Mountain Dew, the greatest strength that was ever invented. Do the Dew. But of course, yeah, I do the Dew way too much for a 50-year-old man. But regardless.

This is not the end of hearing from us at 99% Visible and Endless Thread. We have new stories coming to listeners every single week. Make sure you follow both of our shows, subscribe to both shows, because we're both people who like to describe and interview. Like chicken nuggets and Mountain Dew, man. Perfect together.

Reminder to folks as well that if you want to keep playing along, we have two, count them, two side quests in the Endless Thread feed if you haven't listened to those yet. And now, like any good AAA video game or podcast, roll credits. This episode was produced by Jason DeLeon, edited by Meg Kramer, mixed by Martine Gonzalez, fact-checking by Graham Haitian, original music by Swan Real and Paul Veitkus.

Extra special thanks this week to Jocelyn Allen, who helped translate and interpret our interview with Tez O'Connor. Truly the best. And also special thanks to Lewis Cox and Tom Tarnock over at the Dreamcast Junkyard. Their insight on Sega, the Dreamcast, and Sega Gaga was extremely helpful in making this story.

Simon Parkin has a book about the history of the Dreamcast called Sega Dreamcast Collected Works. It's rich and beautiful and has even more details about Sega Gaga that we could not fit into the story. Additional thanks to Adam Kaplowski and 17-Bits Jake Kasdahl. Tez O'Connor would also like to thank the small team that supported Sega Gaga. especially Hisao Oguchi, Tadashi Takazaki, and Taku Sasahara. The managing producer of Hidden Levels is Chris Berube.

Endless Threat is a production of WBUR Boston's NPR. Our team tackling unsolved mysteries, untold histories, and other wild stories from the internet includes my illustrious co-host, Amory Sievertson, managing producer, Samata Joshi. Producers, Grace Tatter, Franny Monahan, sound designer, Emily Jankowski, and our production manager, Paul Bikus.

Thanks, by the way, to Ian Bogost, one of the great video game thinkers and writers of our time. His work you can find at The Atlantic and in many books. You should check it out. And Marijam did. She's a gamer, developer, and author who has a great... book on a similar subject to our series. It is called How Video Games Are Changing the World. It's full of amazing stories. You should totally read it. And for 99% Invisible, Kathy Tu is our executive producer.

Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lay, Lasha Madon, Jacob Medina-Gleason, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% of the logo was created by Stephan Lawrence. The art for this series was created by Aaron Nestor. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful.

Uptown, Oakland, California. By the way, where is WBUR? Like, what neighborhood is that? Roman Mars, it is in beautiful, lovely, rainy, Boston. Or Brookline, depending on who you're asking. You can come visit anytime. Ben, thank you so much. Roman, thank you. I'll see you in that video game lobby. And thanks, everyone, for listening. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business.

On a recent episode, Jonathan Cantor, former Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division in the Biden administration, discusses the need to balance industry and government. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of the episode. What is at stake for ordinary people when this balance is not struck? Yeah, it's...

It's freedom. I mean, not to be overly dramatic, but it is true. When monopolies run the economy, they impose rules on how we live our lives. They might control what we see, hear, and listen to. We'll have outsized power in terms of influencing the government. I think we can see some of those things happening in our daily lives and in our political lives today. Again, it's not to suggest that antitrust enforcement is the solution to every problem. I'm not naive. I get that there are other...

issues relating to rule of law and regulation that are going to be important. But when we have a centralized economy of very powerful players, it affects how much you pay. It affects what you...

read in the news. It affects what shows up in your algorithms and your feeds. As a public, we are turning more of that decision-making and more of that... control over a small number of players who have very specific interests and it is why i think that private regulation, should anybody who cares about power and regulation in the public sphere should care about power and regulation in the private sphere as well.

Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Mayrothra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.