PODCAST · leisure
Total Playtime
by Total Playtime
Total Playtime is the official podcast of Jank.cool and is a conversation about videogames, mostly, by games industry veterans Alice Bell, Nate Crowley, Brendy Caldwell and Jon Hicks. Join them for discussion of the latest and most interesting PC and indie games, grumbles about the state of games media, and impromptu quizzes dredged from the unknowable depths of Nate's brain. Public episodes are released every two weeks, and if you subscribe to Jank you'll get weekly episodes. Send us questions, ideas and feedback at [email protected], and follow us on BlueSky if you like.
Episodes
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Episode 45: Literacy Was Too High a Price to Pay
It’s another bijou two-hander this week, as Alice and I meet to pick over the remains of another week in PC gaming and get the latest updates on her dog and her neighbours, both of whom are making annoying noises. Annoying noises in gaming, meanwhile, come from the resurfacing of the GTA leaks…
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Episode 44: Delivered in the Tone of Igor
Total Playtime is the official Jank podcast, funded entirely by our paying subscribers (and formerly our backers on Patreon). This week’s episode is free, but subscribers get additional episodes every other week. You may join them by subscribing here, and you can find all previous episodes here....
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Episode 43: Question-mark Interrobang?‽
Alice is away this week, so three grown men get to sit around and puzzle over a particularly baffling week of news items and become steadily less certain that we were describing reality. There were some positives: Nate got to let a year’s worth of Hearthstone annoyance off his chest, Brendy got…
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Episode 42: Subpoena the Teenage Snitch
Total Playtime is the official Jank podcast, funded entirely by our paying subscribers (and formerly our backers on Patreon). This week’s episode is free, but subscribers get additional episodes every other week. You may join them by subscribing here, and you can find all previous episodes here....
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Episode 41: The Hubris Era
Total Playtime is the official Jank podcast, funded entirely by our paying subscribers (and formerly our backers on Patreon). This week’s episode is free, but subscribers get additional episodes every other week. You may join them by subscribing here, and you can find all previous episodes here....
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Episode 40: The Coriander Of Space Marines
It’s a free-to-all episode this week, so Alice, Nate and myself turned ourselves to the major issues of the day: Xboxes are really expensive, how a Skyrim username error can get you wrongly imprisoned for soliciting minors, a new Thimbleweed Park and a very detailed explanation of how good the...
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Episode 39: Suck Off Frankenstein
This week it’s a free episode available to all, in which our four hosts gather to judge the news of the week - chiefly, Bethesda’s smoke-bomb declaration of Fallout 5 in an effort to distract from laying off a number of people who would have made it; Sony’s abandonment of discs as a storage…
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Episode 38: Call the Waspman
Total Playtime is now the official Jank podcast, and is produced through the munificence of our paying subscribers (and formerly our backers on Patreon). This week’s episode is free, but subscribers get additional episodes every other week. You may join them by subscribing here, and you can find...
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Episode 37: Mr Beast's Beef Lumps
Total Playtime is a weekly podcast about PC games, formerly funded by Patreon and now part of Jank. This is a free episode, but premium episodes are published every two weeks and are only available to paying subscribers. You can join them over here. The prodigal dad returns! Yes, Brendy finally…
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Episode 36: The Devil Is Always Sexy
This week's episode is late, for which we apologise and blame Geoff Keighley because let's face it, he's the one pulling all the strings these days. Jonty was still sat in meeting rooms in LA when this episode was recorded and Brendy is still doing dad things, so it fell to Alice and Nate to…
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Episode 35: The Hot Ones
This week Alice and I gathered in hot rooms to have hot takes on the main news stories of the week, chiefly the end of Destiny (and perhaps the employment of many of its developers) and the start of the Disco Elysium sequels. We also attempted to understand the Warhammer Skulls Showcase without...
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Re-Run: Let's Fix This With Product Placement
I regret to say that we were unable to record a regular news episode this week. Everybody was away or ill or both, with the exception of Brendy who is a new parent and thus is going to be preoccupied, exhausted and/or covered in body excretions for the forseeable future. To tide our regular...
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Episode 34: Five or Six ETs Could Tear Joe Rogan Apart
It’s an emergency episode this week: both Alice and Brendy were away, so I had to dial in from Vegas to assist Nate in judgement of the main news events. This lead to some sub-optimal audio and a diminished runtime, for which I can only beg your forgiveness. Other errors include misrepresenting…
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Episode 33: Wee Butt Mode
In a rare treat this week’s episode is not talking about layoffs, but I contrived to introduce them as additional context for Pete Hines being savagely critical of what happened to Bethesda, so the narrative thread is maintained. Otherwise this is quite a good-natured look at the latest PC gaming...
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Episode 32: Mr Beast Big Naturals
This week we have fun (for a given value of fun) discussing Epic's mass layoffs, Sony's dynamic price testing, and the difficulty in reviewing Crimson Desert, maybe. One of these results on an extended discussion of the world's favourite glassy-eyed YouTuber. Please note, Jimmy, that the title is…
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Episode 31: Stoatal Playtime; Our DLSS 5 Is ON
This week we bring you an accidentally AI-themed extravaganza, as Krafton lost their Unknown Worlds/Subnautica 2 lawsuit for the funniest reason possible: they asked ChatGPT what to do. But just before that, Nvidia unveiled their new Super Sampling and its more like Super SLOP, am I right? Many...
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Episode 30: The Phil Spencer Xbox Explosion
It’s a quiet one this week, as Alice is away doing mysterious things and Nate is away on a secret mission which you’ll have to hear about in two weeks’ time. It thus falls to Jonty and Brendy to ruminate on Xbox without Phil Spencer, games journalism without humans, and deciding which Pokémon...
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Episode 29: Extremely Online Beef People
This week it's a conspiracy theory special, as Alice develops increasingly outlandish theories about the forces and decisions that shape the games industry, the pharmaceutical industy and the world, and Jonty and Brendy try and talk her down. Plus, layoffs again, pondering the ideological…
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Episode 28: Bugpunk
It was claimed that Sydney Sweeney was excited about the Split Fiction movie, and that’s an excuse for Alice to be absolutely livid about the Split Fiction game, so please strap in for ten uninterrupted minutes of her choking on her own bile. After that, we manage to find time to discuss the…
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FREE TO ALL: Text Adventure: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
This episode was previously exclusive to our Patreon backers, but we're making it available to everybody to show what you're missing behind the paywall. You can get access to more Text Adventure plus a year of other subscriber episodes, at patreon.com/TotalPlaytimePodcast. Text Adventure is our...
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Episode 27: The Legendary Milk Egg
It's a heady intersection of belief systems this week, as we combine Alice's insomniac enthusiasm for weird Instagram crystal sales with Nate's rigorous interrogation of Tim Cain's Types Of Quests. Plus: a horny dog, a nightmarish Pikachu, the Roman god of webinars and Games Anubis joins our...
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Episode 26: New Year's Resolutions
It's 2026, and Alice's dog is still being a dick so she had to leave Jonty, Nate and Brendan to share their gaming New Year's Resolutions, only for the wheels to come off immediately because Nate won't commit to playing new games and Brendan won't commit to resolutions as a concept. We were...
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Episode 25: The Awards Awards
Merry Christmas, sausages one and all, and please enjoy our seasonal gift of grumbling about a Geoff Keighley event. All four of us, plus Anthony Hopkins, took time out from Christmas shopping/wrapping/disorganisation to judge the best of the year-end awards season, and also debate movie series...
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Episode 24: They Play Horses, Don't They?
In this episode we discuss the (frankly, needlessly) controversial HORSES, an Italian surrealist horror game that has been banned from Steam and, latterly, the Epic Game Store, and boy everyone and their mother has been yapping about it. What do we think of Steam's ban? Is nudity ever okay? And...
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The John Cena Xbox 360 Anniversary Special
We celebrate the birth of the Xbox 360, and God's own sausage-in-a-suit-jacket Phil Spencer. But mostly the Xbox 360. We reminisce about what the 'box mean to us, and Jonty reveals some of the behind-the-scenes dead-eyed virtual child Milo goss you've been waiting for. Plus! Games Satan returns...
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Episode 22: GTA6 Definitely Won't Be Delayed Again
This week is another two-hander, as Jonty and Nate are both away, so Brendy earns his keep by joining me as we have mild opinions about Rockstar delaying Grand Theft Auto VI, but stronger opinions about Rockstar firing a bunch of developers out of nowhere. We also discuss an interesting interview...
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Episode 21: An Xbox Where His Hand Should Be
This week we're down a Jonty (not permanently, don't worry) but up a new chair, thanks to our Patreon pals! And it's been a week of upheaval elsewhere, as Microsoft and Xbox has been the focus of a lot of news. Halo is re-back, but also on PlayStation!? What do we think this means for hexboks?...
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Episode 20: A Series of Developer Complaints
Alice is unavailable so we are joined by another voice of podcasts past: James Archer, the RPS master of waring hard. He assists us in considering the latest collection of furious developer commentary and shares his judgement on the handheld Xbox thing, for which he is rewarded by being anointed...
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Episode 19: I Thought It Was A Joke When You Said Jared Kushner
Circumstances forced us to once again talk about serious things this week, as EA has (subject to approval, lol) been bought by a consortium of definitely not the worst people you don't know. Meanwhile, we got a first look at Insomniac's Wolverine game, and for a 'cat rescued from a tree' sorry of...
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Episode 18: Thematic Insect Attack
Alice has been Nic Cage Wickerman'd by her own dog, a sorry state of affairs, but one that does at least tie in with talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong, a somewhat popular game, as we understand it. You know who else is popular? That Mario fella. He turned 40 this past weekend (sort of, if you...
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Episode 17: A Motorhead Tour in Reverse
Alice went to Gamescom and she's here to tell us all about it: games, German KFC, stealing from the Capcom booth and posing with the Farming Simulator tractor. A pretty standard Gamescom experience, all told, although she didn't go to the shitty bar that all the other Brits attend or get…
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Episode 16: Goo-Pilled To The Max
Nate's on deadline so it's just Alice and Jonty this week, considering the newly independent Digital Foundry, the not-at-all-newly-scandal-engulfed Roblox, the latest on the Subnautica 2 and Itch.io drama, and all the games we've been playing. Anybody would think this is a podcast about…
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Episode 15: What Fight Have Been
Alice was out of action this week, so Jonty and Nate met up to ponder Battlefield 6, cringe over Jonty's new collection of sex games, and reposition the Bioshock jar in the fridge. Plus: the thicc man of Europe, the best artillery in videogames, and another attempt at deal-making. You can listen…
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Episode 14: Very Effective Form of Censorship
In a first for us, this week we end up discussing a developing news story, which then further developed after we recorded on Monday night. Had we recorded after Itch also took down adult content we would probably have been less complacent and more angry. As it is, we're still pretty angry about...
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Episode 13: Can't Live Without A Grunger
It would be nice to do an episode in which we don't talk about layoffs, wouldn't it, but it's once again the main news event so we have to. Jonty and Nate conferred to despair over Microsoft's cutbacks, consider potential comedy games, and commend some actually good news about games media. Alice…
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Episode 12: You're Late, Here's Your Gun
We catch up on the undrama around Mindseye, a game that was both unexpected and unexpectedly terrible. Plus, all of us have actually been playing games this week, and Jonty has his first game of Sweeten The Deal (with poor attempts at speaking French). You can listen to the episode directly right...
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Episode 11: The Weekend Showcase Showcase
We're all thoroughly exhausted from Keigh 3, a weekend containing an interminable number of videogame presentations. Join us as we navigate what actually happened at Summer Game Fest, State Of Play, the Xbox Showcase, et al. There are several games we liked! You can listen to the episode directly...
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Episode 10: Bespoke Farm-To-Table Art Theft
This week we, despite all being busted, discuss Palworld's woes, Marathons woes, and also the philosophical question of what it means to be a 'beasted butler'. Plus! Jonty has been playing Helldivers II and getting grit in his shower (the two events are unrelated). You can listen to the episode...
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Episode 9: Grand Jeff Auto
This week there was even more news about what remains of games media, and a new GTA 6 trailer following the delay of GTA 6, which itself is probably bad news for games media. It's rough out there, folks. We discuss all of these things plus Sean Bean, the joke that will kill Nate, and the GTA...
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Episode 8: Revenge Of The Ouibs
The internet briefly tore itself apart over how good games are allowed to be, most specifically Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a French JRPG (??) that everyone loves - or possibly loves too much. We discuss this, Todd Howard cucking us (and indie games) by shadow-dropping the Oblivion remaster…
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Episode7: Running A Marathon
This week Jonty is away in Europe not doing counter espionage, so Alice and Nate talk about Bungie's new game Marathon, which looks fine, I guess. We discuss whether it's worth going to see the A Minecraft Movie (no). Also, Nate explains Civ 7 and Age Of Empires patches, and forces Alice to…
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Episode 6: Ubisoft Is Doing Fine, Why Do You Ask?
Ubisoft's latest stab-fest did really well, hurrah! But they still did that weird subsidiary plan with Tencent, hurroo. At least the official Ass Creed social media account got in a few shots. Plus: Bloodlines 2 delayed again, Game Informer is back, and we prepare to fight Gul'dan. You can listen...
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Episode 5: Everyone Hates Sony's Leaked A.I.loy
This week everyone is trying to make fetch happen, from the leaked demo of an infinitely genAI small-talking NPC, to Ubisoft finally launching the rumoured Animus Hub alongside Assassin's Creed Shadows. Sometimes you just have to do something to get your manager off your back. Plus: we've been...
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Episode 4: Digital Ownership and Discoverability
The I've had three hours of sleep and can't think of a better title edition! This time we discuss Warner Bros. doing more redundancies and how digital ownership is an illusion. Plus! Steam Next Fest demos, and the new discoverability app everyone's talking about. And more! We've been playing...
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Episode 3: The Great Review Score Debate (Forever)
Our episode this week was recorded... this week! Regular episodes are back on current events schedule. We talk about techxecutives, trying to make Meta happen, and argue about review scores, as games media are cursed to do until the sun explodes. Plus! We've been playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance...
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Episode 2: Most Anticipated Game Things Of 2025
It's another catchup episode we recorded far too long ago! The next one will be more timely, but here we're discussing the games that we're most looking forward to in 2025. Mushrooms! Dinosaurs! Kings! Some of these games have already come out and we take no responsibility for their quality. You...
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Episode 1: Everything We Missed Since We Got Fired
In this bumper episode of Total Playtime we discuss everything* that we would have discussed if we were on air at the time, except we all** got fired*** six months ago. Where things are out of date or have changed since we recorded we have endeavoured to provide more up-to-date context in the…
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Episode 0: Hello World!
It's a big commitment, deciding whether to listen to a new podcast, so for our first episode we're giving you a little taster. An amuse bouche but for the ears, as it were. Alice, Nate and Jon(ty) introduce themselves anew to you, our lovely little sausages, and talk a bit about what the podcast...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Total Playtime is the official podcast of Jank.cool and is a conversation about videogames, mostly, by games industry veterans Alice Bell, Nate Crowley, Brendy Caldwell and Jon Hicks. Join them for discussion of the latest and most interesting PC and indie games, grumbles about the state of games media, and impromptu quizzes dredged from the unknowable depths of Nate's brain. Public episodes are released every two weeks, and if you subscribe to Jank you'll get weekly episodes. Send us questions, ideas and feedback at [email protected], and follow us on BlueSky if you like.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Total Playtime have?
Total Playtime currently has 48 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Total Playtime about?
Total Playtime is the official podcast of Jank.cool and is a conversation about videogames, mostly, by games industry veterans Alice Bell, Nate Crowley, Brendy Caldwell and Jon Hicks. Join them for discussion of the latest and most interesting PC and indie games, grumbles about the state of games...
How often does Total Playtime release new episodes?
Total Playtime has 48 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Total Playtime?
You can listen to Total Playtime on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Total Playtime?
Total Playtime is created and hosted by Total Playtime.
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