Episode 23 and this one's different. No theory — just the two games that made me. When I think about the games that matter to me, they're always about other people, and these two are about my dad, who I lost to a heart attack over ten years ago. Doom is my whole family on the weekend, cousins and fathers trading high scores, me on his lap pointing out the blue doors, and the day I cracked the cheat codes and he looked at me like I was a prophet. Age of Empires is where I got my love of history — Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, a voice I can still hear decades later — and the reason I care about stories and analysis at all. I talk about being an ADHD kid in the '90s before anyone had the words for it, the Man in the River scenario that still gives me nightmares, and the strange difficulty of describing the games that gave you your start — becaus ...