Today on Game|Life, ubiquitous internet presence,

Veronica Belmont.

She's everywhere, and now we've got here here.

(energetic music)

Welcome to the Game|Life video podcast.

Today we got a very special guest with us.

She is the host shows such as Tekzilla

and Fact or Fictional, it's Veronica Belmont.

Well first, thank you so much for being here.

Of course.

We're so happy to have you.

You are gaming royalty.

Your mom was a VP at Coleco.

Yeah, well she was VP of corporate communications.

But she was in charge of all the campaigns

for Coleco Vision and --

(gasps)

Yeah, so I had a Coleco Vision way back when,

and I got a lot of toys from them, I was kind of spoiled.

You must have had every cabbage patch kid.

I did, I did.

We actually, we still have a basement

full of cabbage patch kids, which is kind of creepy,

if you visit my house.

I bet it is.

I feel like their eyes are looking into my soul.

But it was a very cool way to grow up.

And that really kicked off my love of video games as a kid.

So how is that manifesting itself today?

What are your gaming tastes, what are you playing now?

I'm still on Infinite, I'm still playing Bioseshock Infinte.

I'm still in it too, so we won't talk about that.

Okay, no spoilers.

No Bioseshock Infinite spoilers, because you guys --

It's been a long time coming.

[Chris] Get your stuff together, basically.

Totally.

Well, I actually started a bit of a firestorm on Twitter

because I started talking about

the race elements in the game,

and how a lot of reviewers made a kind of big to do

about how forward-thinking it was,

that they introduced race as a theme,

when a lot of other video games don't do that.

But I found it to kind of be a shallow take on it,

more of a set piece,

rather than an issue that was being dealt with.

And people were like, well,

it wasn't really supposed to be dealt with,

it's just supposed to be a sign of the times.

Which I understand, but then I think people

maybe shouldn't have made that much of a point about it.

The fact that it's being engaged

in any level of gaming is good.

Yeah, I said that as well, in the next tweet.

So, race is one of those things.

What isn't being dealt with in gaming for you?

What would you like to see more of?

That's a really good question.

We ask the hard ones.

Yeah.

I think we're seeing a few more strong female leads

in a lot of games.

I'm really excited for Beyond: Two Souls

and the Last of Us, things like that,

where it seems like there's really strong female characters

in the main storyline.

Of course, Lara.

Do you guys say Lara or Laura?

I say Lara.

I say Lara.

Is it supposed to be Lara?

I feel like you can't say anything

without getting crap about it.

It's not Laura, because there's no U.

Look, I'm just saying, when I first read the name,

I must have been like 15 years old, 14 years old.

[Veronica] Too late to change.

No, it is!

It's burned in your head, and that's how you deal with it.

There's people today who say Mario, you know?

And those people, I think should just be --

[Peter] Executed, summarily?

That's fine.

[Chris] Yeah, like to the head.

That's pretty dark.

It's a little dark for Mario.

I'm being honest.

Talk, yeah.

(laughs)

So I wanted to ask you, is there anything on your wishlist

for the next generation?

You know, I'm just looking for more immersive.

At the end of the day, that's kind of what my ultimate

endgame is for consoles.

Anything that makes my gaming experience more immersive,

anything that makes me feel more like I'm in this experience

is good for me.

I am a little concerned about the always on type stuff.

You know, I understand the necessity

for an always on scenario

when you're watching streaming content,

or if you're doing a multi-player game,

obviously you need to be on the internet.

But for single player campaigns, and single player modes,

we've seen that not go over so hot on the PC side recently,

and with EA in the past.

So hopefully that won't be so much

of a technological hurdle going forward.

So many questions

that hopefully we're going to get answered

really soon as we get closer and closer to E3.

Maybe even a Microsoft event later this month.

But we have been talking here, the Game|Life video podcast

with Veronica Belmont, geek royalty and star of Tekzilla,

and star of many other shows.

And you have a mere 1.5 million Twitter followers,

so if you want to add yourself to the giant,

shambling horde that is Veronica Belmont's Twitter crowd,

that's @Veronica.

It is, yes.

Veronica Belmont, hardest working person in technology.

Check her out.

(energetic music)

This has been the new Game|Life video podcast for Wired.

I want to thank our guest, Veronica Belmont.

If you stick around, we're going to have Jonathan Blow on,

and then all four of us are going to sit down,

and Veronica and Jonathan are going to figure out

what the deal is with always online.

To the death.

No.

No?

No.