Nick Thompson is a games industry veteran, with over 35 years in the business. He has worked on top-tier titles, such as the original XCOM series, Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix series, Runescape, Carmageddon and Dirt Rally 2. His experience ranges from coding games in the Assembler language to booking studios and voice actors as a producer. He has seen it all in games. Now retired, he discusses games' roles in his life, balancing Last of Us with babysitting his grandchildren. Nick has worked with industry greats like Geoff Crammond, the Gollop Brothers and Patrick Buckland. Hear real life stories of the industry, as well as Nick's thoughts for the future of games for the later-life segment.

Some titles mentioned in the episode:

Psytron

Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2

Avatar

Barbarian

Super Smash Bros

Stunt Car Racer

Pong

Seventh Guest

Alan Wake 2

Still Waits the Deep

Hogwarts Legacy

Grand Theft Auto

Grid

Grid Legends.

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We're looking into the future in this episode. Kieron and John discuss various topics about gaming in later life, as well as more on our plans for the series. Those plans involve our listeners! If you want to be on the podcast, get in touch via our Facebook page or Instagram.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Streaming old games as part of the podcast.
• How the ecosystem around discussing games has changed since our early days, where it was centred around magazine reviews, like Crash.
• What's the potential for games-based communities keeping folks connected with others in retirement.
• Will your grandchildren have fun playing video games with you? Is there an overlap of interest? Is it a shared hobby?
• The idea of recreating childhood memories in VR to share with your children and grandchildren.
• Can you go back and play the games from your youth? Will they still be fun? Could we replay them for the podcast to find out for you?

We also announce who will be our first interviewee!

Check out the episode, follow us on your podcast platform and find us on social media on the links above. We would love to hear your thoughts on all these topics and anything else about gaming in later life.