Once again, I am here to tell you about a brand new Friends at the Table podcast! I’ve written about Friends at the Table as a whole, with a focus on their tabletop gaming, and the second podcast they started in 2024, Media Club Plus, as it covers the 2011 anime Hunter x Hunter, but they just started somethig brand new a couple weeks ago (episode two came out the week this was posted). It’s a video game discussion podcast called “Side Story” and it is exactly what it sounds like. Austin Walker, noted video game journalist of quite a few places (perhaps most notably Waypoint back in the day), has apparently been getting requests from people for years to go back to talking about video games the way he used to before the career change that brought him to the now-closed Possibility Space video game studio. Now that he’s choosing to focus his time and energy on Friends at the Table, rather than continuing to keep it as a side project, he’s started this video game discussion podcast with a cast made up of other Friend at the Table folks. So far, he’s only had two other people join him for both of the podcast’s first two episodes (Jack de Quidt and Janine Hawkins, both people who have written for video games in the past), but Austin has been clear that he intends to have the rest of the Friends at the Table cast on at some point. Given that the whole premise of this particular video game podcast is to just talk about the games they have been playing, rather than seeking to provide stringent reviews or high-concept disucssions, it’s perfect for someone looking for a relaxing discussion of video games of all types (recent, older, indie, big-budget, etc) that ranges from the light “this was fun” to the critical “I played this but found the experience strange and possibly unpleasant” and even the hopeful “this game is promising a lot and seems to be actually delivering during its early access phase.”

Now, two episodes is not a lot to judge and entire podcast on, but I’ve been listening to Friends at the Table for half a decade now and have been supporting their patreon almost that whole time, so I know that they’ve already been having these kinds of discussions the whole time. The only real change is that now these talks are the focus of a podcast rather than a tangent that gets cut out of an episode and included in one of their “Clapcast” episoeds (available to any one subscribing to their patreon from one dollar upward). I’ve always enjoyed hearing their opinions on video games and always immediately ate up anything Austin ever wrote about video games (including the post that has inspired me to play a game I can never seem to remember exists when i sit down to think about what to play next), so this podcast hit at exactly the right moment for me. I was literally thinking that I needed a new podcast now that I’d finish my re-listen of all of Friends at the Table’s Sci-Fi seasons (a monumental endeavor, but one absolutely worth the months it will take you) and caught back up on everything else I listen to when I went to Bluesky and saw the FatT account posting about a brand new podcast that was about to drop. I gave it a listen, fell in love with the theme music that Jack de Quidt wrote for it, and have been eagerly awaiting new episodes ever since.

In additional to this podcast, there’s also a new let’s play series that Side Story is putting on. The first episode is free for anyone to watch, but subsequent episodes are only available to people subscribed to their patreon at the ten dollar tier and above. Now, even if you’re not a huge fan of let’s plays, I can’t recommend this one enough. Not only do you get the fun of watching people play through a video game, you get to listen to industry professionals talk about it as they go, get all kinds of fun facts from the backseat backpack-removal-reminder (the game they’re playing, Outward, strongly suggests you drop your backpack at the start of every combat encounter to improve your mobility), and some genuinely hilarious video editing that heightens the comedic moments of this series. It’s absolutely worth the $10 entry fee, and that’s even without all of the other great stuff you’d get from the Friends at the Table patreon for supporting at that level. I already support past that level, but this is absolutely the kind of thing that would convince me to upgrade (and I’m considering upgrading my membership since it feels like now I’m getting so much more out of what I’ve already been paying them) were I not already at the limit of what I can afford to contribute.

All-in-all, it’s a worthy use of your time if you want to hear smart, interesting people with strong, well-founded opinions talk about video games that you might have never heard about. So far, across two episodes and seven or eight games, I’ve heard of two of them and played only one, though that might change after hearing about these games. There’s a lot here that sounds interesting to me, especially this Blue Prince puzzle game. I love puzzles. Anyway, it’s got a fun energy and is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking to fill one and a half to (maybe) three hours with (given Austin’s penchant for what he and his network of fellow podcasters have taken to calling 5-star runtimes) on any given day. If there’s any kind of let down about the whole series, it’s that episodes drop every other week, so I have to wait another week and a half for another new episode… That feels like such a long time right now, when I’m all caught up on podcasts. Turns out it only (very) temporarily fixed my “I need something new to listen to” problem since it’s so brand-spanking new. Give it a listen and I’m pretty confident you won’t regret it unless you hate video games and then, honestly, why did you even decide to listen to a podcast about video games? This one’s on you.