Game One

Game One was just these guys playing games and talking shit for hours. Nils, Eddy, Etienne, Budi, Simon. Nobody performing, nobody trying to be anything they weren’t. They’d mess up, laugh at the right moments, mock each other relentlessly. That was the whole show.

For years before that I’d watched GIGA. You’d disappear into an afternoon, park yourself, and just sit. Grown men destroying controllers and keyboards, and then you’d spend the next day in forums arguing whether Lara Croft was anything beyond a pair of tits or if Goombas had some secret soul. It was a specific kind of loneliness—thousands of people thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time, which somehow meant you weren’t entirely alone.

When GIGA disappeared it felt pointless. Where were you supposed to find it? What was the point of caring about games when there was nowhere to voice that? You only understand how much you need that once it’s gone.

Game One brought back the exact same feeling. Same hosts, same energy, same guys who didn’t give a shit about impressing anyone. They wanted to play and talk and mock each other. If you were watching, you were part of it. You got to sit with your best friends.

That’s something worth being grateful for. Not just for the nostalgia or the entertainment, though both are there. But for the permission to care about this stuff without apology. For knowing that somewhere people took it seriously enough to build a show around it. That you weren’t alone in it.