In 2014, the GamerGate controversy started a massive cultural war around the experiences and perspectives of game designers, industry analysts, and players (gamers).

Ten years later, the effects are still being felt. While there has been notable progress, there are major gaps, with each group more siloed than ever.

My goal is to provide resources and solutions to bridge these gaps and build towards a better future. My hope is to share stories and resources that will help foster respect between professionals and players around our shared love of play.

Each conversation is meant to add something new to how we think about games, community, and the emotional impact of interactive experiences.

The video game community is blessed with many things that make it a unique marketplace of ideas. Its members are multicultural, have no set racial, economic, sexual, or age, and yet have a common vocabulary with shared interests. The medium has very low barriers to entry and is accessible to children, but it is also ripe with potential benefits to individual and cultural growth and wellbeing, a fact that has been heavily supported by academics, especially in the educational and behavioral sciences.

Games are built upon logic and systems, yet they are also a medium with incredible emotional power. These traits help to create a wide variety of different thinkers working and engaging in the gaming community. The global video game industry has massive ability to bring about positive sociocultural reform, if only the people in it can work together to better their own environment.

Better Games, Better Gamers is designed around depth and curiosity, not volume or viral growth. The show is meant to produce original insight, not filler.

I spend significant time researching, preparing, and broadening my understanding of the industry so conversations stay honest, thoughtful, and educational.

That level of curation takes time, along with financial and social capital. A slower pace gives me the space to do that work well instead of catering to an algorithm.

My bandwidth is shared across writing, consulting, and building in games and media, and a roughly quarterly release keeps the podcast sustainable, intentional, and sincere.

Rather than making the biggest splash, my hope is the project has a small butterfly effect, quietly inspiring a growing network to make a real, lasting impact on the future of media technology.

Each episode features hand-selected guests chosen for what they can uniquely teach and genuinely contribute to the conversation. I am primarily looking for researchers, nonprofit leaders, and community organizers to share their efforts to encourage better gamers.

While I am willing to explore more “Developer Diaries”-style episodes where I focus on the work of individual studios, my primary goal for the podcast will always be educational, rather than promotional.

If you are looking for support on your marketing promotions, please feel free to reach out to me personally at dlipsonmedia.com to discuss a paid consultation.