Welcome to the first episode of How I Made That, a show about the people in and around the game industry, and the things they make.

My first guest is Matt Leone, features editor of the pop culture site Polygon. In January 2017, Matt published a story called Final Fantasy 7: An oral history, and it kinda felt like the game industry stood still — at least for a day, as everyone stopped to read this thing. Over the course of two years, Matt interviewed 30-or-more people with a hand in the making of this historic video game. The online version of the story featured multiple mini-documentaries, dozens of original photographs, required a few different trips from San Francisco to Japan, and clocked in somewhere around 30,000-plus words. It's a massive, meticulous story about the creation, release, and aftermath of one of the most important and beloved video games of all time.

I wanted to talk to Matt about the creation of this piece, and what it was like spending three years writing one story. We ended up talking about a lot more, though, such as how, according to him, it didn't actually take three years to write, the ups and downs of 1UP.com, and how he got his start writing about video games through birthday cards.

Support HIMT: https://www.patreon.com/blakehester

Theme song: https://3dblast.bandcamp.com/track/beyond-nostalgia