Press Pass: Wasting Time With Robert Ashley of "A Life Well Wasted"

We talk with the former Ziff Davis freelancer about his unique podcast and what it says about the direction of game journalism.
9/24/2009 5:00 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Head on over to the iTunes Podcast directory and search for "video games." Pick one podcast at random. Ninety-nine times out of 100, that podcast will adhere to a certain standard format: a bunch of videogame fans sitting around a microphone and rambling about videogames. Likely they'll talk about what's in the news that day or week, review games they've been playing recently, and maybe answer some letters from readers. If you're lucky, they may talk to a game developer or touch lightly on some larger themes surrounding gaming culture or the industry. If you're really lucky, they'll avoid the kinds of inside jokes and rambling asides that make most gaming podcasts hours-long bores.

But if you're extremely lucky, that videogame podcast you picked out at the beginning will be the one in 100 that doesn't fit the standard formula. If you're that lucky, you've probably stumbled upon Robert Ashley's "A Life Well Wasted." (ALWW)

More than just a gaming podcast, ALWW is, as the tagline puts it, "an Internet radio show about videogames and the people who love them." Rather than just jawing about whatever comes to mind with other game journalists, Ashley actually tracks down and and interviews gamers inside and outside the industry, on subjects ranging from game journalism to game preservation, independent development to fan fiction, hardware hacking to cosplay. Ashley then snips the best parts from the interviews and cuts them together with music from his band, I Come to Shanghai. The result is a roughly hour-long audio story that resembles public radio shows like "This American Life" or "Radiolab" more than other gaming podcasts.

"The idea is to focus on the people, the human aspects of the gaming scene," Ashley said in an interview with Press Pass. "There are a lot of people out there for whom gaming is something that almost defines them, in the same way there are people out there for whom music really defines them, or cooking, or watching certain television shows. Gaming is everything to some people, and that's really interesting to me."

Ashley said he first got the idea for a different kind of gaming podcast while working as a regular freelancer for Ziff Davis. "I started going on all those podcasts at Ziff Davis and realizing people were downloading these two-hour long conversations with people just randomly mouthing off about things and seeming to enjoy it. I thought people might be into a real radio show," he said. But Ashley's responsibilities as a freelancer prevented him from giving the idea the attention it required until this year. "It was definitely when Ziff shut down and sold to UGO and shut their last magazine that I really got the fire lit under me to do it," he said." I definitely prefer what I'm doing now to what I was doing a year ago."

While ALWW takes gaming lifestyle and culture seriously, Ashley said he's careful not to let the show become overly serious, a feeling he says is reflected in the show's somewhat jokey title. "I don't know if everyone feels this way, but a lot of people who are into gaming who I know, that are creeping toward middle age, can start to feel a little weird about their gaming habits," he said. "I think to acknowledge gaming as a serious subject is a little bit of a waste of time -- even though I take it really seriously in the show, I think you have to be a little playful with it and not pretend you're studying the Bible or something."

The balance seems to be just right for many gamers. Since its launch, ALWW has garnered glowing reviews from around the industry and attracted 30- to 40,000 downloads each for the first four episodes, Ashley said. "You can't overestimate the power of the gaming audience as far as overall numbers," he said. "The kind of presence gamers have on the Internet compared to real life... In real life, gaming is like a weird little store in the mall that teenagers go to, but on the Internet gaming is in the center. [On the Internet] gaming could be like half of New York City; it's so active and there's so much community around it that things get popped around more than a lot of other culture stuff."

But Ashley also hopes that ALWW will appeal to people who aren't already completely immersed in the world of gaming. "I do consciously try to leave the show open to people who are not familiar with games," he said. "I can pretty easily hit all the serious gaming sites, but when it gets picked up elsewhere it's a little victory, and I'm definitely seeking that out. I probably wrote Jason Kottke like 10 times trying to get him to listen to it before he posted about it, because I just felt like that was the audience that I wanted. This guy, he was into games, but also culture and art and really interesting stuff, and I know lots of different kinds of people subscribe to his blog. So I feel great about it when it gets picked up outside of gaming."