The year is winding down, inboxes are quietening (lol), time is about to lose all meaning, and the year’s great cultural arguments are finally ready to be settled. Perfect timing, then, for My Perfect Console: Game of the Year 2025.

In this special episode, host Simon Parkin is joined by comedian Glenn Moore to build two consoles that capture what this year felt like to play.

Expect games obsessed with truth and lies, long walks through beautiful ruin, and at least one adventure that asks what honour even means when the world itself seems intent on grinding you down. Somewhere in the mix: an audacious reinvention of a familiar legend, a sequel that arrived carrying enormous expectations, and a descent into a world that feels both brutally familiar and eerily transformed.

As ever, the joy isn’t just in the picks, but in the why. What does it take to make a game great in 2025? Is ambition enough? Does finesse matter more than surprise? And how much should we forgive a game that utterly consumes our lives, even when it makes us a bit miserable?

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Harvey Smith is a game designer and writer whose work has helped shape some of the most atmospheric and influential games of the last two decades. After serving in the U.S. Air Force he began his career in video games as a tester on the formative System Shock.

Then he joined Ion Storm worked as lead designer on Deus Ex, one of the most influential immersive sims of the era. In 2008 he became a partner at Arkane Studios, where he co-directed the acclaimed Dishonored series and, most recently, Redfall.

Known for championing player agency, richly layered world-building, and morally complex storytelling, his games invite players to think as much as act. And whether crafting dystopias or dark fantasies, he’s remained a guiding voice in one of the medium’s most ambitious genres.

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Alex Seropian is a pioneering American video game developer whose work helped shape some of the most iconic series in the medium. After studying mathematics at the University of Chicago, he co-founded Bungie in 1991, first developing Operation Desert Storm then titles such as Pathways Into Darkness, Marathon, and Myth.

In 2001, he and his team released Halo: Combat Evolved, a landmark first-person shooter that not only revolutionised console gaming but also established Microsoft’s Xbox as a viable force in the industry. In 2004 he left Bungie and founded Wideload Games, eventually becoming head of Disney Interactive Studios. Since then, my guest has continued to establish innovative studios, most recently, Look North World.

His depth of experience, from the earliest days of Macintosh design to modern cross-platform worlds, has given him a unique perspective on the craft, business, and evolution of interactive storytelling.

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Mark Cerny is an American programmer, and game designer whose career has shaped not only how we play, but the systems we play on. A San Francisco native, he dropped out of UC Berkeley at 17 after receiving an invitation to join Atari. At 18 he designed the arcade hit Marble Madness.

He then moved to Japan to work with Sega, for whom he founded the Sega Technical Institute, developers of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Then played a key role in landmark titles such as Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Resistance. He’s perhaps best known, however, as the lead system architect of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, helping to define the technical and creative possibilities of an entire generation of video games.

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Brandon Adler is an American game director and producer whose career has been defined by his work on some of Obsidian Entertainment’s most acclaimed role-playing games. After serving in Iraq with the U.S. Air Force, my guest studied Game Art & Design at The Art Institute of California.

He joined Obsidian as a tester for Neverwinter Nights 2 before working his way up through various disciplines on games such as South Park: The Stick of Truth, Fallout: New Vegas, and Pillars of Eternity. Known for his meticulous attention to world-building and player choice, he has helped uphold Obsidian’s reputation for crafting richly written, deeply reactive RPGs. And now, as game director on The Outer Worlds 2, he’s leading the studio’s next ambitious chapter in interstellar satire and storytelling.

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In this special correspondence edition, Simon reads out your letters and answers your questions.

Why are guests so often caught out when asked to name their console? What is the best moment in a video game? What might a My Perfect Console game jam look like? And can Simon settle a dispute between a father and his kids in the car?All this and much more.

And congratulations to letter-writer Spencer Tennant, who wins a signed copy of Blood Echoes.

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My guest today is a British game designer whose ingenuity and persistence turned a bedroom project into one of the most iconic multiplayer series in video games. In 1991, he took the characters from the popular Amiga game Lemmings and placed them in a game of his own, a simulation of artillery fire.

At school, the game proved popular among his friends, so he worked on it further, replacing the Lemmings with worms, and calling it Total Wormage. The teenager’s project quickly captured the attention of the industry, launching a career that saw my guest move from lone coder to a key creative figure at Team17.

While Worms became a global phenomenon, spawning countless sequels and spin-offs, he has remained driven by a passion for experimentation, curiosity, and the simple joy of making things that people love to play.

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Shuhei Yoshida is former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, and one of the most beloved figures in the video games industry. After graduating from Kyoto University with a degree in economics, he joined Sony in 1986 to coordinate the company’s PC business.

Then, as one of the early members of the PlayStation project, he helped oversee the development of landmark titles across multiple generations, including Gran Truismo, Legend of Dragoon, and Ico, championing video game-based creativity and experimentation at a global scale. Earlier this year, after almost four decades, he left Sony. But he continues to work closely with independent game developers. Known for his warmth, curiosity, and deep love of the medium, he remains a true ambassador for the art of play.

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Take the Acast listener survey to help shape the show: My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin Survey 2025

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