Above: Scott Jones had a brush with death in 2014. That prompted him to create Heavily Pixelated.
GamesBeat: There are some good shows out there, though.
Jones: Honestly, I’ve fallen in love with podcasts in the last two or three years, ever since I got sick. I was aware of them. I was aware of things like This American Life. But it’s really exploded. I’ve met a lot of people and made some connections. It’s certainly not the same kind of experience as being in the games business, but there’s a culture out there. I’m learning how to fit in to that culture.
There are probably five or six shows I listen to each week. I went through a true crime phase. I’m in awe of Gimlet and what they’ve built in New York. There are so many terrific shows out there. Probably the most entertaining moments in my life don’t come with Netflix. They come from listening to podcasts.
GamesBeat: It seems like the challenge is to get people to open up. I wonder if you do some interviews with people who don’t quite get there, or don’t work. Do you have to go through a number of conversations to get to the one you want to broadcast?
Jones: I have done some interviews that just never made it, just didn’t work out. When I was super new, I wasn’t smart enough, or I wasn’t self-educated enough, to have some indicators that needed to be met before I would greenlight an interview.
There are certain things — last night this woman and her husband reached out to me. They live in Winnipeg. They sent me a pitch. They lost their baby about three years ago, and they were just about at rock bottom. Sometime in all this they went to the store and bought the new South Park game. [laughs] They said, “We played the hell out of that game,” and by the time it was over, they felt like they were cleaned of the grief they were feeling. They referred to a couple of specific moments in the game, and I thought, “That’s great. I’ll fly out and meet with them and hopefully get a great story out of that.”
Now they have two daughters. They have an evolved family and they’ve moved on. But they’ll never forget what they got from this South Park game. I love that. It’s a way for people to resurrect themselves, when they’re so beaten down by something like losing a baby. I’m intimidated by the story and by how high the stakes are in the story, how personal this is. But this is exactly where I want to be. I want to be right in the bull’s-eye. If anybody can have that conversation, I’m the one who can have it. I’m looking forward to going out there. I have to find the money, but still, I think all of this is going to be worth it in the long run.
GamesBeat: You’ve got an amazing opportunity here in that you can make a storyteller out of anybody, right? Everyone has a chance to tell some kind of riveting story.
Jones: Everybody has a great story. They probably have hundreds of great stories and they don’t even realize it. Part of this work is coaching them to realize how wonderful things are, even the most tragic things, and how lucky we are to have gone through these things.
GamesBeat: It seems like there’s a chance for good and bad here, too. The WHO has told us that video games can be an addiction. Some people might have these stories of addiction that involve video games. That could also be an interesting conversation.
Jones: That’s the big counterpoint. Again, I’m 49, about to be 50. I don’t have the same unhealthy relationship with video games that maybe I had when I was younger, when I was in more pain than I am now. I have had times in my life when I probably stayed up way too late trying to finish a level. I’m sure every gamer has had those moments.
But again, to put all the blame solely on video games is not fair. There’s a reason why you made that choice. It’s about stepping back and looking at your life and questioning why you chose to do what you did in that moment. I’m playing God of War and I think I’m near the end, but I have an easy time shutting it down after 30 minutes. I don’t have that need to find the next treasure chest. I don’t feel that anymore. But for sure, some people suffer from that.
I don’t know if you outgrow it? I think when you become more satisfied with other things in your life, whether your career is satisfying, or you’re in a healthy relationship, or you have family. Whatever it is, you abuse yourself less. You start treating yourself with the respect you’ve always deserved. That’s my counterpoint. It’s really a personal choice. There’s a lot of things a person could do.
I know there are extreme examples, but I think that’s a small percentage. I’m not a physician or a researcher, but from anecdotal experience, I’ve never encountered someone with an obscenely unhealthy relationship with video games. It doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, but it’s just that I’ve never seen that. Although I’ve known plenty of alcoholics and drug addicts, for sure.
GamesBeat: It sounds like there’s usually an uplifting part to these conversations for you. As you say, they’re therapeutic. They lead to something good.
Jones: Honestly, editing the shows—I’m sure I’ve put a thousand hours into doing this at this point, learning what I had to learn and making the mistakes I had to make. I feel like there’s therapeutic value for me in editing these episodes. That means listening to the episode 50 times or 100 times, trying to get everything just right, to balance all the audio and make sure everything is in the spot it’s supposed to be.
I feel like, when I’m listening — one of Canada’s greatest game collectors passed away recently. He was a friend of mine, and I got to know him quite well. I’m editing his story, and I listen to this 40 times, and I’m crying on the 41st time. I know this story, but the beats of the story still have power for me. Those tears — being able to let myself feel what I’m feeling, to let myself cry if I need to cry, all of it’s therapy for me. I love it. I feel like I’m getting something from it. Something inside me is healing. I’m making my peace with losing this friend of mine in tragic circumstances. I feel like the people who do the show, there’s therapeutic value for them as well.
GamesBeat: In the world of broadcasters, there’s not as many people who are as good at listening as they are at talking. Sometimes they tend to shift the attention from themselves to their subjects. It sounds like you’re much more interested in listening.
Jones: Yeah, I have no problem sitting in the back seat. I just want to create a space where people trust me, trust that I’m going to position their story in a way that’s honorable. That’s a lot of work for me. Part of it, it helps that I worked on a TV show for 10 years with Victor Lucas. A lot of people just trust me because I was on TV every day at 11 p.m. But sometimes getting people to trust me takes work. I feel like I’m in a position where I have — people are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, so I’m trying to take advantage of that a bit.
