Episode notes
In this special episode of re:Play, Greg Off swaps chairs with Cord Smith. Cord, founder of Inevitable Studios and a re:Play guest earlier this year, interviews Greg about a career that runs from a San Fernando Valley game shop to Diehard GameFan, PS Extreme, and Off Base.
Greg looks back on the people and accidents that shaped each turn: the bookstore clerk who sent him to Diehard, a magazine assembled in the back of the store, a move to the Bay Area just before PlayStation's U.S. launch, and an agency built on relationships that began more than 30 years ago.
In this episode:
- Growing up in the eighties: comics, cartoons, arcades, and a roll of quarters.
- A forced school change, community college, and getting back on track.
- Mail-order imports, Kinokuniya, and finding Diehard Gamers Club.
- How Diehard GameFan came together, and what working there taught him about leadership.
- Monitaur, the character Greg had been drawing since he was a teenager.
- Moving north and launching PS Extreme across the street from Sony.
- Early looks at Crash Bandicoot and Syphon Filter, and honest feedback on Rise to Honor.
- Starting Off Base with no business plan, and the 20-hour days before the first hire.
- The PS4-era digital documentation platform that nearly sank the agency.
- Being an introvert on camera, imposter syndrome, and the podcast as a collection.
- Greg's re:play pick: OutRun.
Recorded remotely, the conversation keeps returning to relationships built over decades. As Greg puts it: "You put good stuff out there, hopefully at some point it comes back."
Links & References