They Create Worlds Podcast By Alex Smith and Jeffrey Daum cover art

They Create Worlds

They Create Worlds

By: Alex Smith and Jeffrey Daum
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Love of the worlds created by video game designers and personalities drives Alex Smith & Jeffrey Daum (history, law, CS degrees) to provide a scholarly yet light-hearted discussion of how arcade, home console, and PC games merged into a Video Game Industry. Emphasis is on the combination of business and creative elements needed for financial success. Interviews of Atari, EA, Activision, & other execs with detailed source evaluations produce the insights you hear in these 240+ hours!

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Episodes
  • The Elder Scrolls: Arena & Daggerfall

    The Elder Scrolls: Arena & Daggerfall
    Mar 15 2026
    TCW Podcast Episode 254 - The Elder Scrolls: Arena & Daggerfall Bethesda Softworks, founded in 1985 by Christopher Weaver with sports titles like Gridiron and Wayne Gretzky Hockey along with licenses like The Terminator, pivoted to RPGs. Demo scene legend Julian LeFay hired Vijay Lakshman as designer and buffer to management so LeFay could focus on games. Together they birthed The Elder Scrolls: Arena, a gladiator combat simulator that morphed, nine months into a 13-month development cycle, into a first-person 3D epic inspired by Ultima Underworld. Arena evolved from a combat management game to a full RPG with a procedurally generated world, unique races like Argonians and Khajiit, and a plot to topple the wizard Tharn. With the second game, LeFay, challenged by Sandy Petersen's claim that CRPGs could never match tabletop RPGs, made Daggerfall a massive world the size of Great Britain: 15,000 cities, towns, and dungeons; 44 regions; 100 factions; skill leveling based on what players actually did; and reputation grinds to unlock quests and plot. Ted Peterson, who took over lead design after Lakshman left, wove a complex plot with gray themes, diverse motivations, and moral quandaries into a simulator packed with layered systems rather than pure RPG simplicity. It sold out the initial run, hit 700,000 units, and became Bethesda's best game yet, bringing fresh air to a fallow RPG era! TCW 156 - Madden for Some Football: https://www.theycreateworlds.com/episodes/TCW156 Gridiron (Amiga): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0q7sc_T3FU Wayne Gretzky Hockey (NES): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Apj9IRcpQ Tell Me Your Name (Russia Heat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYpcZ2NfMYU (Explicit) Sodan & Magician 42 - TechTech (Amiga): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB5CujcTN8A Terminator 2029 (PC/DOS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-PBi-N1hQo Flesh+Blood (Trailer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVyLe-k16gw Jason And The Argonauts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq4requMqvY Khajit/Khajiit Has Wares: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/khajiit-khajiit-has-wares Ultima Underworld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee4PUcpGSn8 The Elder Scrolls: Arena (Box Art): https://bigboxcollection.com/TESArena.3DBox The Elder Scrolls: Arena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjEn6ETA7EM What Do You Do With a B.A. in English? (Avenue Q): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYenQEjvlD0 Walk Across the Entire Map in Dragonfall Unity (Timelapse 512x): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xTvdK88cww The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpX5y6jiafg New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month! TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com BlueSky: @theycreateworlds.bsky.social Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1 Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Masanobu Endō

    Masanobu Endō
    Mar 1 2026
    TCW Podcast Episode 253 - Masanobu Endō Masanobu Endō is one of Japan's most important game designers, yet remains relatively unknown in the West. Starting from an uncertain role at Namco, he first made his mark by turning Dig Dug play notes into an official strategy booklet, then shifted into programming work where he learned from Namco's maze games, including Pac-Man. Assigned as a programmer on Xevious, he stepped into the lead role when the original planner left, pushing for a coherent world where every enemy and structure had a purpose in a larger mythology. The secrets, patterns, and hidden elements he built into Xevious encouraged dedicated players to map routes, chase glitches, and hunt for new techniques in a way that feels very similar to how modern communities approach speedrunning and score optimization today. Endō then expanded these ideas in The Tower of Druaga, fusing Dungeons and Dragons style dungeon crawling with Babylonian and Sumerian myth, cryptic treasure requirements, and a real ending instead of an endless loop. The result helped shape how Japanese designers approached action adventure, including early thinking around what would become "The Legend of Zelda." A Super Basic Summary of Gundam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16tDMkmZKiA Blockade (Gremlin 1976): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUacA8Dj3BY Atari Football (Atari Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ZOtqMWHoU Battlezone (Atari Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdfKy4c7yuc TCW 029 - 50 Years of Namco: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/50-years-of-namco/ TCW 116 - The Atari Games You Are Looking For: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-atari-games-you-are-looking-for/ Dig Dug (Atari): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ZD7VCiBes Pole Position (Atari/Namco): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeYZGtwydIA Learn Assembly in 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S5KRJv-7RU Scramble (Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p08J-AK-BE Galga (Stupidly Explained): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pE2SbPgzd0 Space Runaway Ideon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYI251fFCAY The Nazca Lines (SciShow): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EILw-mKefew The Nazca Lines Part 1 (Astonishing Legends): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYIUJuFj9h8 The Nazca Lines Part 2 (Astonishing Legends): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F9UMJcSCRg Xevious (Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stjrz3CM8R4 Haruomi Hosono - Video Game Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO7qAggk6-I&list=PL4NXUZspQ7Bxi8nsNylZBWBK392FgMlAT Xevious (Famicom): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bS_SAzknk Dungeons & Dragons ET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hJdhL1Ni_w Pac Man Ghosts: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/1136hi/pac_man_post_from_rgaming_i_thought_it_belonged/ Tower of Druaga (Arcade): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCCGIP4SifE New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month! TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1 Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • A Guitar Hero

    A Guitar Hero
    Feb 15 2026
    TCW Podcast Episode 252 - A Guitar Hero The rise and fall of the Guitar Hero franchise and the rhythm game craze of the mid to late 2000s. Red Octane got its start making Dance Dance Revolution pads, but a partnership with Harmonix Music Systems, a studio building technology that let people interact with music without learning an instrument, led to the creation of Guitar Hero. Major retailers refused to carry it until Best Buy set up in-store demo units that sent sales skyrocketing, and Red Octane could barely keep up with demand. The franchise's success drew corporate attention: Activision acquired Red Octane, MTV Networks acquired Harmonix, and a lingering dispute between Activision and Viacom over the Star Trek license split the partnership in two, giving Activision Guitar Hero and Harmonix Rock Band. Both landed blockbuster bands from Aerosmith to the Beatles, but an endless flood of sequels and add-ons saturated the market, and what once felt like a cultural phenomenon burned out almost as fast as it arrived. TCW 167 - Activision and Kotick Part 1: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/activision-and-kotick-part-1/ TCW 168 - Activision and Kotick Part 2: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/activision-and-kotick-part-2/ TCW 169 - Activision and Kotick Part 3: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/activision-and-kotick-part-3/ Dance Dance Revolution (PSX): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IammLWeNE TCW 052 - The Many Faces of Konami: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-many-faces-of-konami/ Guitar Freaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-gDC1VXqqM PaRappa The Rapper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3SI4Grases Tribe on Conan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLrA00pKRHo Bimini Run (Genesis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1QdtG3YOE System Shock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1QdtG3YOE Thief - The Dark Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH_6ER0-voQ Simpsons - I can See the Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyNtUpMeBTE Frequency (PS2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z7n36dozeY Amplitude (PS2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goH4ygJ48_c Karaoke Revolution - Drive - Incubus (PS2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ-yIxE9-hg The NES Hotseat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvws5tOHsEE AntiGrav for EyeToy (PS2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9FheIXFrWc Guitar Hero 1 IGN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQW2MGFY-us Guitar Hero 1 (PS2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slJA7xwDRWk Guitar Hero 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQAUCBDU4Qg Guitar Hero 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elOxCIpg4rI Rock Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AavdHq3pemQ GH3 - DragonForce - Through the Fire and Flames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMkjmiVo6jA Rock Band - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PGF3uAYCW0 New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month! TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.comD Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1 Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode - Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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    1 hr and 32 mins
All stars
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Alex Smith and Jeffrey Daum get to the heart of the story by speaking with those involved in the creation of the systems and games we have loved and hated. I enjoy the banter as these two communicate who, what, why, and how entertainment systems and game systems succeeded and failed over the decades

CEO/CIOs, creative/marketing Success & Failure

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