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Van Burnham has spent three decades making the argument that video games are a legitimate art form — pretty much before anyone wanted to hear it. She's the author of Supercade (MIT Press), one of the most important books ever written about this medium. She has collected nearly 500 arcade machines, interviewed the people who built this industry from the ground up, and is now working to build what she hopes will be gaming's first world-class museum.

In this conversation, Van and Greg cover her origin story — born in Raleigh, raised in Cary (now home to Epic Games), then New Jersey, where her dad brought home an Odyssey when she was five — and the mall arcade in Cherry Hill that Supercade is actually named after. She talks about arriving at Wired in the mid-90s as the default "games evangelist," the leap from magazine writing to a publishing deal with MIT, and what it took to track down the last known Abscam cabinet — a Pac-Man clone inspired by the 1980 FBI sting, made in the same Amityville town as the Amityville Horror.

They also get into the preservation crisis: how operators destroyed unprofitable cabinets, how the game industry still doesn't fund preservation the way film and music do, why the "ephemeral age" essay in Supercade Volume 2 should be required reading, and how the new deluxe edition of the original book finally lives up to the sequel.

By the end of the episode, you understand why a museum isn't a vanity project. It's a rescue operation.

About re:Play: Long-form conversations with the people who built this industry — peer to peer, not press to talent. Hosted by Greg Off.

Find Van: supercademuseum.org · shop.supercade.com

Find re:Play: replaypodcast.com · Substack: gregoff1.substack.com

Amir Satvat spent 15 years in investment banking and enterprise tech — Goldman Sachs, VMware, Amazon — before finally breaking into games at 38. Then over Thanksgiving 2022, friends were laid off right before the holidays, and he sat down and built a simple Google spreadsheet of open jobs. Three and a half years later, that spreadsheet has become ASGC (Always Supporting the Games Community): 2,500 volunteer coaches, a 13,000-person Discord, and more than 4,700 confirmed job placements — with Amir pushing toward 5,000 by the Fourth of July.

In December 2024, Geoff Keighley called his name at The Game Awards for the inaugural Game Changer Award and the room rose for a standing ovation. Within days, the hate mail arrived — targeting his wife, his family, his employer. He answered it the way he answers everything: by getting back to work.

In this conversation, Amir and Greg cover the long wait of loving an industry from the outside, the moment a spreadsheet turned into a movement, what the layoff data actually says heading into 2026, why 80–85% of a successful job search has nothing to do with applications, the Game Awards moment (and the backlash that followed), and the strategy guides, the WoW raids, and the wife who keeps him grounded.

This is a conversation about what it looks like to choose to be a tank for an entire industry — and to do it without losing yourself.

About re:Play: Long-form conversations with the people who built this industry — peer to peer, not press to talent. Hosted by Greg Off.

Find ASGC: asgc.gg

Find Amir: linkedin.com/in/amirsatvat

Find re:Play: replaypodcast.com · Substack: gregoff1.substack.com

Get a first listen to re:Play, a new podcast about the ins, outs, and upside downs of the games industry, from game development, publishing, marketing, and everything in between. Hosted by industry veteran Greg Off, this short trailer shares what the show is about and who it’s for.

Get ready to discover how re:Play will spotlight the people behind your favorite games. From AAA studios to scrappy passion projects, including a special first episode featuring a live panel from SXSW. Subscribe now so you don’t miss new episodes as they drop!