Y-Button: Andy Robertson (Ludocene)

Last week, I welcomed games journalist Andy Robertson to Y-Button to talk about his new project Ludocene — a video game recommendation deck-builder in the form of a simple dating app. Ludocene’s special sauce lies in its human-centric connections (players who liked this also liked this) and “expert cards” that you can use to augment your recommendations — tastemakers that Andy and team have paid (which is where much of the Kickstarter contributions will go in the future).

About half of the episode is focused on some nitpicky details of Ludocene. The other half gets to the mystery and organic nature of video games, and why adults should lean into curiosity as opposed to dismissal of the new gaming experiences kids prefer.

This episode came together extremely quickly. I read The Guardian’s post about Ludocene, I connected with Andy on Bluesky, he recognized me from a conversation we’d had years ago, then he DMed an offer of a press kit to write something up. I agreed, but quickly realized it’d be more fun to talk about Ludocene on my podcast. Andy agreed. The next morning we recorded for an hour (before I rushed to work), I blurted out an intro and outro, sent the recordings to my editor AJ Fillari, I listened back, and we launched the episode in less than 24 hours. Podcasting pros out there may not think much of that, but for three people in three different time zones (and one with an extremely busy day job, speaking for myself), it felt like quite the feat. I’m really proud of this one. And I’m very excited for Ludocene.

Y-Button: 15 - Andy Robertson (Ludocene, Family Gaming Database, Taming Gaming): Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts