4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Call of Duty, Fortnite, Animal Crossing.... The video game industry generates billions of dollars each year. But not so long ago, video games were mostly played by the programmers who made them. On our new season, we’re telling the story of how video games broke out of university computer labs and found their way straight to the heart of popular culture.
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0:14.2 | podcasts. |
0:16.5 | Wondry. It's 1966 and close to midnight in the foothills of Palo Alto, California. |
0:29.0 | Bill Pitts creeps up the quiet moonlit road. Pitts spotted the road earlier today and followed it to a |
0:36.0 | low-rise semi-circular building. He's been a student at Stanford for two years, but he only |
0:41.8 | noticed this place this evening and he doesn't have a clue what's inside. |
0:46.0 | That's part of the fun. |
0:48.0 | Pitts gets his kicks from exploring restricted areas of the university. |
0:52.0 | He loves the thrill of being where he shouldn't be. |
0:54.8 | He's picked locks on buildings across the university, climbed to the very top of the Hoover Tower, |
1:00.7 | and spent hours crawling around the steam tunnels underneath the campus. |
1:05.0 | Now his heart beats faster as he nears the top of the hill. |
1:09.0 | But when the facility comes into view, Pitts freezes in his tracks. The lights are on. |
1:14.3 | are on. |
1:15.3 | Cautiously, he approaches the entrance and tries the door. |
1:19.8 | It's unlocked. |
1:21.8 | Pitts feels cheated, but having come all this way, he might as well see what's inside. |
1:27.1 | He clips his Stanford ID badge onto his leather jacket and starts down the curving corridor. |
1:38.2 | There's no sign of life. He presses on toward the double doors at the center of the building. The sign above them reads, Main Hall. |
... |
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