You do not need to play, know about, or remotely care about video games to admire the work that Jason Schreier does writing about them. I know this because I am a thoroughly non-gaming American who has read him for years, both because he's a very good writer and reporter and because video game stuff is extremely weird. That an industry worth $180 billion flies more or less under the radar—or, anyway, beneath the consideration—of most mainstream media is baffling enough on its merits. That it is feudal, lawless, and totally berserk qualifies as gravy.
It is unquestionably for the best that I not Get Into Games, as someone with a number of bad habits that I will almost certainly never shake or even significantly modify. But as someone who likes having deeply strange things explained to me by smart, patient people, I could not have been more excited to have Jason join us on the podcast this week to talk about his new book Press Reset, Curt Schilling's doomed gaming concern and worrying fixation on centaurs, and all the many things that don't work in the huge, strange, and still new industry he covers.
But the gaming stuff was only the first half hour. The back half was probably just about as chaotic, but this was very much by design, as we led Jason through a rousing round of encounter therapy related to his beloved and benighted New York Jets, with a special emphasis on their unique organizational prioritization of fullbacks. The Funbag afforded us a brief history lesson on how video games used to be shitty, the food-related aspects of the broader nonstop sensory horrorshow of being a parent, and the doleful impact of our ongoing pandemic on the nation's apex philanderers.
Jason seemed somewhat disappointed that there wasn't more Jets chat, and I suppose I was as well. But this is the life Jason Schreier has chosen, not just in the sense that he cares about the Jets on purpose, but that he is the best reporter working on one of the very few things on Earth that's reliably stranger than the Jets.
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