The best video game podcasts for people who play for the lore

Games journalism has been through a rough decade, but games podcasting has quietly held the line. The shows that survived are often better than the publications that shrank around them. If you care about games as a medium, there is a lot to listen to.

You are probably on this page because the gaming site you used to read got bought, then thinned out, then quietly stopped publishing. The conversations you want about the medium did not die. They moved to audio. The best of them are very good.

Here are the best video game podcasts worth your attention, and where to go when you want to listen on the days no new episode has dropped.

Why games podcasts keep getting better

The medium is weird. Games are massive, expensive, communal, technically strange, and emotionally direct in ways film rarely is. A good games podcast can hold all of that at once. A thirty-minute film review cannot, because film critics have a language they can lean on. Games critics are still building theirs, and the podcast is the place where most of that work is happening.

The format also lets developers and designers talk. The best episodes of most games podcasts are the interview episodes, where someone who shipped the game gets to explain what they were thinking. Nothing on YouTube matches that when it is working.

What to look for in a games podcast

Hosts who actually finish games. A shocking number of podcast hosts review games they played for three hours. The serious ones finish.

A willingness to talk about the industry, not just the products. Games are made by people in bad conditions a lot of the time. A podcast that never acknowledges that is pretending about something important.

Technical fluency. The hosts do not need to be developers, but they need to understand why a ten-second load time matters, or what sixty frames a second really means, or what a bad UI actually does to a game. A lot of hosts wave at this. The good ones get specific.

Real enthusiasm. Too much games media has drifted into performative fatigue. The best games podcasts are still in love with the medium, and it shows.

The best video game podcasts to try

Remap Radio

The alumni of Waypoint went independent and built Remap. The result is some of the most thoughtful games writing and audio on the internet, covering mainstream releases, weird indie games, the industry, and whatever is catching the hosts' attention. The most reliably smart show in the category right now.

Triple Click

Kirk Hamilton, Maddy Myers, and Jason Schreier. Three critics and reporters who have been doing this a long time. Gentle, curious, technically fluent, and usually funny. A good default recommendation for anyone getting into games podcasts.

The Besties

A shorter show, four friends picking the best game of the week. Closer to a recommendation engine than a deep-dive podcast, but the hosts are old hands and their taste travels. Great for building a backlog.

Retronauts

The long-running retro games podcast. Bob Mackey and a rotating cast digging deeply into specific games, platforms, genres, and eras. For anyone who feels unmoored by modern releases and wants to remember why they fell in love with the medium in the first place, Retronauts is the home.

Giant Bombcast

The elder statesman. Still weekly, still cranky, still doing what it has been doing for almost two decades. If you grew up with it, you are still listening. If you never have, pick an episode from the last month and see if the voice lands.

Noclip

Documentary-style. Danny O'Dwyer's team does long-form interview pieces on the making of specific games, and the podcast arm is where the cutting-room-floor material lives. Essential listening if you care about how games actually get made.

HearLore

A games library, not a games podcast. HearLore has audio entries on the lore of specific games, on the careers of developers and studios, on the history of genres, and on the cultural context that produced the medium. You can start with an entry on Elden Ring's Lands Between, follow the thread to the greater pantheon of Outer Gods, to the writing of George R. R. Martin's contribution, to the broader FromSoftware canon, to the history of the soulslike, and end the walk an hour later knowing more than any single podcast episode could teach you. The listening is continuous. The library does not wait for the next episode.

Which one is right for you

If you want the smartest current conversation about games, Remap Radio.

If you want consistent weekly listening from familiar voices, Triple Click or the Giant Bombcast.

If you want to fall in love with old games again, Retronauts.

If you want documentary depth on how games are made, Noclip.

If you want a library that stretches across lore, developers, genres, and cultural context, with a thread that keeps playing as long as you keep walking, try HearLore.

A quieter thought

Games are the most demanding medium most people engage with. They ask for hours of attention, real skill, and emotional investment. The writing around them should match that, and it is starting to. Podcasts carry the bulk of that work now, and the best shows treat the medium with the seriousness it has always deserved. A listening library does the same thing at wider scope.

Pick a thread. Keep going.