Good (mature) gaming podcasts

[cpugeek13]

I've been looking for some decent podcasts about gaming, but its kind of frustrating. I am sick of wading through so many crappy, immature gaming podcasts. I'm especially surprised by (fairly) professional sites like IGN putting out such horrible podcasts. I was hoping you guys could give me some suggestions.

Things I want:

- Analysis of games and the gaming industry. I want to hear people talking about recent trends and movements in gaming.
- In depth interviews with developers. I don't care what their favorite beer is or what their favorite childhood cartoon is. I'm looking for more meaningful conversations.
- Professional, unbiased reviews. I know that there is no such thing as completely unbiased, but some of the utter BS on the internet (I'm looking at you Jim Sterling) is just ridiculous.
- Decent coverage of indie games. I don't want a pretentious prick who raves about every shallow 'art' game just because they're obscure.


Things I don't want:

- Half the podcast spent talking about random off-topic subjects. I don't care how drunk you and your friends got while playing CoD or how you know every 90's cartoon theme song by heart.
- Obnoxious over-exaggeration (unless its done sarcastically) or snobby opinions. I don't want any of this "Call of Duty is the worst game ever" or "sports games can suck it" kind of attitudes.


As much as it might sound like I want overly serious podcasts, some humor is good too (as long as its tasteful). Anyone have any suggestions?

[riadsala]

If you are at all interested in strategy games, then Three Moves Ahead is probably one of the best gaming podcasts. They sometimes talk about wargames too much for my tastes, but they make up for it by having whole shows devoted to AI War, Frozen Synapse, etc. And Soren CivIV Johnson has been on as a guest the last few shows. Interesting guy.

[Kadayi]

Well I wouldn't say Giantbomb is particularly serious, and they do go off topic a lot (mainly about food), but the game talk is always interesting and they are genuinely funny without having to go to the juvenile. Gamers with Jobs is well worth listening to as it always has talk about current games, as well as a topic and occasionally have developers on. You might also like Weekend confirmed, which adopts a similar approach. Mobcast used to be quite good for discussion, but has dropped of a bit since it went monthly. Also you'll find Ken Levine does a podcast called irrational interviews where he gets other developers on to talk about the process of making games.

Giantbomb also do a lot of quick looks of games which are always entertaining and informative: -

http://www.giantbomb.com

They do cover across the board in terms of games, from titles like E.Y.E and Hard Reset through to the AAAs

[TillEulenspiegel]

PC Gamer UK is the best of the lot, but they're pretty infrequent. Don't bother with their US counterparts.

[DigitalSignalX]

A while back I posed a similar question about podcasts to RPS. Of the replies, I found the Idle Thumbs archive ( http://www.idlethumbs.net/archive ) to be an absolute gem. While the majority obviously aren't current - their humor and insight into the industry was still new and refreshing. Not to mention their takes on games and 'current' events felt like enjoyable auditory time travel. I would advise though to start at the beginning though and work your way forward, as the humor and group meme's are evolved (WIZARD!) over time and may not make a lot of sense if you jump into the middle.

[Ricc]

I second the Gamers with Jobs podcast. It's probably coming closest to your description. Apart from that I can also recommend the Giant Bombcast, although it's decidedly less serious. Still my favorite podcast, though. :) Also worth a try is the new Joystiq Show. They recently changed the format. It's about one specific topic every week and has interviews and roundtable discussions. Very informative so far.

[AndrewC]

Brainy Gamer has 'serious' podcasts of the kind you are after. It tends to suffer from the guy spending five minutes talking about himself before things get started, and a sometimes precious and back-slappy atmosphere that might feel at odds to someone who feels at home with the more sarky RPS attitude - but there's lots of interviews, and it's *about* stuff. Worth a go!

[Heliocentric]

Three moves ahead is and great serious, but why are we afraid of a little humour?

[koen]

I love to listen to the Rebel FM podcast, although they often go off topic. Still gaming related off-topicness though, if you would like to call it that. Definitely my favorite podcast, also lots of humor. But I suspect it's not quite what you're looking for. Still, listening to one won't hurt anybody. Then you can decide for yourself.

[Stellar Duck]

A while back I posed a similar question about podcasts to RPS. Of the replies, I found the Idle Thumbs archive ( http://www.idlethumbs.net/archive ) to be an absolute gem. While the majority obviously aren't current - their humor and insight into the industry was still new and refreshing. Not to mention their takes on games and 'current' events felt like enjoyable auditory time travel. I would advise though to start at the beginning though and work your way forward, as the humor and group meme's are evolved (WIZARD!) over time and may not make a lot of sense if you jump into the middle.

I might add that it's also great fun to hear them predict stuff like Kinect, Tony Hawk Skate and what not by just stating the most silly thing they can imagine. And now we know it became real.

It's a great podcast and everybody should listen to it.

[sinister agent]

One Life Left doesn't perfectly match what you specified, but it got me through some miserable all-nighters at work a few years back. I believe at least two of the regular three presenters are well acquainted with the RPS organisms, too.

[Fiyenyaa]

One Life Left doesn't perfectly match what you specified, but it got me through some miserable all-nighters at work a few years back. I believe at least two of the regular three presenters are well acquainted with the RPS organisms, too.

In fairness, if he doesn't like Off Topic, he won't like OLL at all (I love it).

[Estel]

The Irrational Podcast is damned infrequent, but always interesting and definitely... serious.

Other than those already mentioned, it might be worth giving the Eurogamer podcast a try: it recently went through a format upheaval, and whilst decidedly less entertaining than it used to be, there's no doubt it's now more... serious.

[Axyl]

The Hate-Me Gaming Podcast | Monday Mayhem.

Hate-Me Gaming is my own Gaming Community me and my brothers have started (platform unlimited, but we're mostly PC Gamers) and this is our weekly podcast. 10 Episodes (including the frankly awful Xmas Special) and we've now dropped it down to monthly in order to free up weekends for more community gaming events.

We're still very amateur.. but are enthusiastic and highly driven.

All i ask.. if you hate it (and I'd understand why.. we're still new at this as i said).. be gentle.
Hints, tips, constructive criticism and pointers regarding sucking less are very welcome. :D

If, by some freak chance you like what you find there.. sign ups are open to all and our features are free for members to use.

I figured this wasn't a completely shameless plug as it's relevant to the OP. :D

Edit - Podcast is also on iTunes - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...ay/id495364399

[Skalpadda]

The RPS Electonic Wireless Show? It's extremely infrequent of course and a lot of the episodes have atrocious audio quality but the ones with John and Jim are listenable.

Other than that, Idle Thumbs is probably my favourite gaming podcast ever, made by a bunch of games journalists and developers, but they stopped making them (again) about a year ago. PC Gamer UK is also OK.

[Fumarole]

Another vote for Three Moves Ahead. Don't forget the coffee!

[gromit]

It seems Idle Thumbs might be re-reborn! Check http://www.idlethumbs.net/

Chris Remo and Steve Gaynor both left Irrational Games in December - I wonder what happened there.

In the meantime their GOTY page was updated for 2011.

[squareking]

Another vote for Three Moves Ahead. Don't forget the coffee!

+1 Vote of Agreement, though Bruce is a bit of an ultrageeked blowhard at times.

[field_studies]

Another vote for Three Moves Ahead. Don't forget the coffee!

And another. But I wanted to add that this one's so good that even if you think you're not really interested in the strategy genre, you should still give it a go. The majority of the games they discuss (a lot of turn-based hard-core strategy) are ones I know I'll never play, but the level of conversation is high and engaging; my favourite of the gaming podcasts I've tried. Oh, and once in a while they'll surprise you with a show on racing games or tower defence, etc.

I've beeing trying to get into Gamers with Jobs as well, but it falls into some of the pitfalls the OP mentions. Still, many of the Three Move Ahead folk do double-duty on it, they refreshingly sometimes have women as co-hosts, and of the regular-weekly-cross-platform-cross-genre podcasts I've tried, it's become my listen of choice.

Brainy Gamer should be tried. Selectively, maybe. I think he's at his best when he's either doing a 'gamer's confab' session with others, or tackling a very specific topic (the episode on game music is maybe the finest). Other times it is too precious, too bucolic. I find myself craving disagreement, sarcasm, and a little less Zelda-love. But I'll disagree a little with the previous poster--I actually wish the host would inject more of himself into the show. He's a college drama teacher, and I'd like to hear him more directly and more often find useful comparisons between the two mediums. His show's uniqueness comes from his specific training and position, and I wish he embraced it a little more.

Oh, and one general recent observation: my initial reaction to a lot of gaming podcasts has been embarrassment--for the juvenile sound of the shows. But lately I've been ranging more widely in podcast land, trying out more amateur (as in not produced by a major non-podcast media organization) podcasts, and I've found that that tone that makes me cringe in many gaming shows is present across all sorts of podcasts, and has less to do with content than it does with the way that four guys sitting around chatting about a familiar topic tend to sound. So I'm personally trying to get past the sort of 'bro' aesthetic of some of these gaming shows and give myself time to decide if the content warrants my listenership. Anyhow, so long as I've got my headphones tightly on, nobody else has to know what I'm listening to ;-)

[ReverendMoosey]

I'll put in a vote for the PC Gamer UK podcast. Funny, but rarely frivolous and very informative.