‘Game Changers’ Boss on Shocking Histories of Iconic Games That May Surprise You

Innovation and vision meet opportunity in Game Changers. The Discovery Channel limited series tells the origin stories of iconic games. After the premiere shows featuring Nintendo and EA (Electronic Arts)-Madden, other episodes will tackle everything from Monopoly and Atari to Minecraft and Call of Duty. Inventors, journalists, video game enthusiasts, authors, and more talking heads sit down to break down the monumental moves and dirty deals that brought these games to store shelves and into the hands of the public. 

Who better to take viewers on this fun ride through gaming history than Nacelle CEO and series director, Brian Volk-Weiss. The mastermind behind similar projects like The Toys That Made Us, The Movies That Made Us, Behind the Attraction, and Icons Unearthed. Here Volk-Weiss delves into the show that digs into cornerstones of this billion-dollar industry. 

What kind of feedback have you gotten so far about Game Changers so far? 

Brian Volk-Weis: If I had to guess, I’d probably read at least 250 comments and read only two bad comments. One of the bad comments I took as a good comment because it was basically how are you going to do Mario Bros. in 58 minutes. It’s cool when people are asking for more. The other bad comment was just bad. I’ll give him credit for that. He didn’t like the show, but at least 250 comments I read do. 

I certainly learned some jaw-dropping things from the Nintendo episode. Like that Mario and Donkey Kong really was born out of developers not being able to use Popeye and Bluto. 

Without a doubt, you have this company that the majority of the public thinks is about 50 years old, and it is close to 150 years old. Just the idea they were just goofing around trying to figure out how they would make money during post-World War 2 Japan. They did all this weird stuff that had no conneciton to each other. Then you have a guy goofing off in the back room making some plastic arm-grabbing thing and that plastic arm-grabbing thing led to Mario, Luigi, Zelda, and everything that got buried into human culture. It literally started with an employee in his off time putting together a plastic hand-grabber thing. It’s crazy. 

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It’s crazy some of the lengths some of these companies went to and the shady business tactics they utilize to get the leg up. We definitely saw that in the EA and Madden episode. 

If you watch a lot of our shows, a lot of what you’ll see is this very bizarre dance of corporations within capitalism. They may start fighting, but then they get into business together. That is more common within capitalism than people realize. One of the biggest surprises for me is how the CEO of SEGA, Nintendo, and EA  were so nonchalant about getting into lawsuits. 

By the way, if two of the three companies, including Nintendo lost their lawsuits, the company would have gone away. The fact they were just willing to fight, reverse engineer things, and use all this dubious language to protect all their shenanigans….You look at where Madden started as and now it’s a billion-dollar-a-year game. That’s shocking. 

Tell me about the board game episode we’re going to see this season. 

When we do shows like this, you think about what your North Star is. I decided, right or wrong, our North Star here was popular culture games. Not just video games. Once we made that decision it was like cool we got to do Monopoly. We got to do Scrabble. While were doing that it became evident that Operation was the perfect game that showed how the business of games was starting to shift from wooden pieces, cardboard, and cloth to pixels and screens and resolution and bites and bits. 

We really wanted to show in an episode the base of where games come from because a lot of the back end of the gaming industry of the Parker Brothers era definitely got incorporated into the video game world as well. Everybody who worked on Pong had gaming experience and/or computer experience. The gaming experience then was board games. God willing we make more seasons, and it looks like will be. We want to do Clue. I want to do Battleship. I think they are all part of the story of games. 

The Nacelle Company

And when technology fails or the power goes out we go back to these games. 

Exactly. And we made a joke about that, don’t you worry. 

Do you have a favorite episode? 

Without a doubt, Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft. Minecraft is one of the most bizarre stories we’ve ever covered…Minecraft is the most up, down, left, and right. The good guys become the bad guys. The bad guys become the good guys. It is one of the greatest examples I have ever seen where I don’t know how the wheels stayed on the bus. 

It’s crazy you say that now because I’ll go to the movies now and see a preview for the upcoming live-action Minecraft film next year. What do you make of how these game properties have extended into the TV and film world? 

I think it’s great because it creates a flywheel. The movies help support the games and the games help support the movies. This is the case for TV shows too. Fallout I think it’s great. The wrinkle and tricky part is I can not think of any movie that could be greenlit more risky and more dangerous than trying to turn a game or toy into a movie. How do they get Fallout to work? Can you imagine being a studio executive who has greenlit $25 million an episode and starting to watch rough cuts of that? The confidence.

For every Fallout that is a success, there is a Doom starring The Rock. There is Super Mario Bros. where the entire cast was drunk off their asses because it was so hard and depressing to make….That movie is crazy. And it was very, very expensive and a very, very public failure. I think it’s great, but I would also caution anyone with greenlight authority. I hope you have a lot of money in the bank in case this doesn’t work. 

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Coming up is an episode that explores Sonic. What can we expect from this one? 

Sonic, I’m not going to say it’s my favorite episode, but it’s up there. What we try to do with every episode is really try to have an almost equal A and B story. We always give the actual game 50 to 60 percent of the episode time, but it’s as much as the company and people at the companies that make these games. 

Yes, we’re talking about Sonic and tons of scoop there with the history. It is as much an episode about SEGA. This scrappy company that was ont the verge of going out of business for six years until they said, “We’re not going to take it anymore. We need our own Mario.”That’s literally what happened. That’s why Sonic exists. It was a Hail Mary, and it worked. In the very last days of 2024, there is this third movie coming out for Sonic. That tells you something.

What do you think the future of games is within our culture? 

I think we have one more generation that is going to be a console where you put a disc or cartridge or download games from the web. I think we have one more of those. I think that will be 5 to 7 years. Then I would be absolutely shocked if the generation after that, if we didn’t get a chip in our heads and look down and close our eyes and play the video game in our brains. I mean no glasses, no headphones, no nothing. You get a chip in your head. You are either born with it or put it later and that’s how you watch games, movies, and TV. I wouldn’t invest in a company that makes screens anymore. I’ll put it that way. 

Game Changers, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Discovery Channel (Max)