I'm your host Max Govill. Before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. Next week, IGN, myself included, is heading down to San Diego Comic Con. We're going to be putting up coverage from July 19th to 23rd. And then we're having a big huge two day live show, which kicks off on the 21st. And that's across all IGN platforms. Please tune in for the next week.

Please tune in for that. You can expect tons of trailers and reveals and gameplay and interviews and show coverage and stuff from the show floor and the games and the movies and the TV shows and maybe some of the comics and probably me running around on the show floor talking about action figures, which is one of my favorite things to do. Now, as for this show joining me in SF is the one and only Jada Griffin. And then hey, what's up? If you're if you seem distracted, it's because you're giving away codes. I am giving away codes. Yeah, we've got a live stream going on. Not not to anyone watching this show because this is pre recorded. We have a lot of fun.

The live thing going on in Jada gets to play Santa Claus. I do. It's great. I get to like Santa Claus like so many times out of the year. It's wonderful. It's funny. It's so positive. Now joining us from New York is our special guest, Jordan Minor. What's up, Jordan? Hey, X, grab me on. Now in just a second, we're going to be talking about EA's newly announced Black Panther game and Baldur's Gate 3 and a hilariously bad last of us rip off, which is sadly not coming to PlayStation. But first, Jordan, you are here because you just published a book, which is a compendium of physical paper paper.

And then there are some pages which are assembled using some sort of adhesive and it contains words. Tell us about your book. Sure. So there's one. There's a bunch behind me and then I have one with me right now. So the book is video game of the year is a year by year guide to the best boldest and most bizarre video games from 1977 until now. The book is a video game history book where each chapter is a critical essay on what I pick to be the most significant game of that year.

Whether it's the most influential game or important game or just so bad, but call us some other good things happen later. And with those picks, it was individual picks. I hope to tell a comprehensive story of viewing history as a whole. It's really cool to kind of just get the bird's eye view of just the medium like that. And obviously, I was able to contribute. You hit me up ages ago about writing a little blurb as well as IGN's Rebecca Valentine. I haven't actually read what she wrote in there.

But you've got a ton of people from sort of around the industry. You got Dan Ryker did the forward. What was what was the what was the hardest one to pick like what was the what was the biggest sort of hurdle for you as a writer.

Some years just have so many incredible gains that it's just impossible. I did I was on Reddit and someone asked me why didn't you pick half life for 1998 and I said well, I picked Metal Gear Solid. And and then each chapter also has like a runner up pick. And for 1998 the runner up is Starcraft.

So some some some years are just so are just incredible. So what was cool about the format to me is that it forced me to make these hard choices. And it forced me to get like a variety of games to kind of cover gaming as a whole.

So Metal Gear, I could talk about the stealth game. And then I picked Counter Strike in the year 2000. So I talk about Valve and Half Life in that chapter. And so you know, I wasn't trying to repeat too many franchises, too many genre.

Nice. Yeah, I mean, it's we run into this ourselves of trying to sort of narrow things down for whether it's game of the year or just for top 10 list or whatever. I think we recently did a thing talking about just the best years.

It was night was we did that on beyond. Yeah, we talked about what our favorite years and what we thought was the best year. Your years was minus 2017 2017. Yeah, that was Breath of the Wild near Automata.

Automata Automata Automata Automata Automata Automata. Yeah, but 98 is definitely one of the one of the big ones. I think 2007. And like this year is obviously going to be kind of a banger. Jordan, if you had to had to make an extra DLC chapter on 2023. What would you go with? Do you think so far?

I think I would go with Zelda parts because I just love it. I think it's phenomenal, but also because I could not pick it for 2017 because I had to pick Fortnite for that year. Oh, not I could not talk about Fortnite in this book. So Zelda had to get shot to the off to run or up.

You know what? It burns me. Yeah, I believe that. But you know what? Honestly, I think if we do get a DLC where you can just ship out like two pages to glue into the book for 2023 to add tears of the kingdom.

Is the kingdom is a better fit than Breath of the Wild. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the pretty pretty safe answer. I think a lot of people are going to be not shutting up about tears the kingdom for a very long time. Yeah, what was was any game that that kind of caught you off guard or you like some little hidden gem or one of a blind spot for you that kind of took you by surprise. And now you are a big fan of it.

Well, I'm not a big fan of it, but I think one of my more controversial chapters is sport for 2008. Not because I think sport is the best game of any year, but I want to talk about gaming history as a whole and sport to me was very useful example of talking about gaming culture.

Just having too much hype and too many expectations and thinking things and do things that are just impossible. You see that now with crowdfunded games or like games of service that launch in a really rough state and then only like years later become what you initially wanted.

So I thought that sport was a good way to talk about that. And at the time was a really like people were excited for that game. It was really in that way. That was one of those ones I remember hearing about.

Like when I wasn't when I was doing a bunch of other stuff wasn't too tuned in on gaming and I would just sort of like.

This sounded cool, you know, it's the guy who made Sim City, it's going to be wild. What's it going to be and just periodically just checking in with my like, you know, more hardcore gamer friends being like, what's up with that's is sport out yet.

And they're like, no, when I when I moved to San Francisco for college, it was that was around 2008. And I remember they had in union square, they had a sport setup, which was the world's smallest billboard.

And it was just like a like a piece of like office paper that they mounted on the side of a building. And then there was like a telescope you had to look at it through, which was so stupid.

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