The 10HP Podcast started as a game club with only two members. We realized that single-player games were more enjoyable when you played them with your friends and could discuss them as you went through. We realized this while playing through Mass Effect 3 together. Afterwards, we decided to started a club where each person would take turns nominating a game and then everyone would play that game and discuss their experiences. We culminated the entire experience with an end-of-the-month recap dinner, where we would meet up and discuss what we liked or disliked about the game and announce what game we would play next.
One of the core tenants of the club is, when you nominate a game you buy a copy for everyone else. In this way you only buy games you really like and want to play (so you don’t feel like you’ve wasted your money) and you can tailor the game of the month to your budget (if you’re poor, you could pick a free-to-play game). Also, it scales uniformly. Instead of buying a game each month, you buy several games once every couple months. This means you’re spending the same amount of money as you would on the club if you had to buy your own copy of each game, each month.
The nominees usually pick something they can get cheaper than usual, so we play games that are last season or within the last couple years. There’s no restriction on the games we choose though so you could just as easily see things decades old as brand new. Often, a Steam Sale will drive the selection of the next game.
The goal is to get 10 hours played (10HP) before the discussion session. This gives you an adequate experience with the game so you can justify your impression of the game and have a meaningful conversation about it. Often 10 hours is not enough.
The 10HP regulars are 30-something guys who play video games, unprofessionally. Our members are:
Editors
Chris Peters
Chris is the host and co-founder of the 10HP podcast. He does the bulk of the work maintaining the 10-HP.com website. Additionally, Chris has the most extensive “pile of shame” unplayed-game collection and is working to catch up and play all the games he’s thrown hard-earned money at. You can find discussion of those games under the backlog tag on the website.
Chris has been an avid fan of video and board games his entire life. His first gaming system was an Apple II-E, he graduated to an IBM PC XT at the age of five and the rest is history. While he owns and operates most available console hardware, he prefers his PC.
Paul Main
Paul is the co-founder of 10HP Podcast. Paul focuses his efforts on improving the podcast, and increasing viewership. He is a huge fan of highly strategic or narrative games. His current obsession is e-sports and League of Legends.
Anthony Nguyen
Anthony was the first recruit to the 10HP cast. He contributes regularly to our site under the “Mobile Gaming” tag. It is his personal memoir-style blog on whatever he feels is pertinent to gaming.
He is an avid mobile gamer, but he enjoys a wide range of games from deep turn-based tactical strategy games (on the tabletop as well as on the computer) to fighters to hack-and-slash loot-grindy games.
Core Participants
- Glorious Tran – Glorious joined before the podcast began airing. His selection–Sins of the Solar Empire: Trinity was the first official 10HP game. Since then, G has been a consistent participant on the podcast, playing, nominating and adding insightful commentary on all the games the club has experienced.
Guests
- Sherry Main – Paul’s wife and typically a non-gamer. Interested in the Walking Dead TV show, she joined us to play Telltale’s TWD adventure game.
- Scott LeMay – Scott has joined us for a few of the more recent podcasts, his first being Unepic. As a childhood friend, we have been trying to involve him in the podcast since the beginning.
- Simon Bhavilai – Simon was an early participant predating the podcast. He joined us as we experienced XCOM: Enemy Unknown and left a few episodes into the podcast. He may one day return, but is currently on an indefinite hiatus.
- Riki Flint – Another childhood friend, Riki has been actively recruited for several months but first joined us for Unepic.
