Media Consumption: 2K Games' Jason Bergman

Today’s Media Consumption, a weekly column that digs deep to find out what our favorite game developers have been devouring in the four basic media food groups of audio, video, printed word and games, speaks to 2K Games PR Manager and former Internet journalist tearaway Jason 'Loonyboi' Bergman. Though Bergman nowadays helps handle PR for titles such as 3D Realms/Human Head's Prey and Firaxis' Civilization IV over at 2K Games, he's also known for his stints as editor at both the Blue's News and Shacknews video game websites, as well as his own Loonygames site. Nowadays, he keeps a lower journalistic profile with his own Loonyblog, but was happy to help us out with his select media choices. Sounds: Bergman "...plays a ton of games, so I have a tendency to listen to a lot of game-related music. I just got my hands on the soundtrack to Darwinia, which is just great. I’m not big on electronic music, so it sounds completely unlike anything I’ve ever listened to before. It’s made me curious about some of the retro-musicians out there who work with old game hardware. Also great is the soundtrack to Stubbs the Zombie. I’m way too out of touch with modern music to recognize any of the artists on the album, but the remakes of 50’s music are really quirky and well done. And I can’t wait to listen to Terry Scott Taylor’s Imaginarium, which collects the soundtracks from The Neverhood and Skullmonkeys. I’ve had the soundtrack to The Neverhood stuck in my head for nearly ten years, so when I stumbled across Imaginarium while randomly web browsing (it’s available via danielamos.com), I had to order it." Moving Pictures: "I’m really enjoying Masters of Horror, the anthology series on Showtime. The quality varies from show-to-show, but they’re all entertaining in their own way. On DVD, I’m watching season three of Farscape (fun for sci-fi nerds), the first season of Arrested Development (David Cross is a genius), season seven of The Simpsons (always great, especially the commentary tracks) and season two of Superman: The Animated Series. The TiVo is empty at the moment with so many shows on holiday hiatus, but once they start up again I’ll be watching new episodes of Lost, Alias, Family Guy, American Dad and Smallville." Words: "I’m attempting to read everything Philip K. Dick ever wrote (yes, I’m a big sci-fi geek), so I’m on volume three of his collected short stories. I recently read Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers, which is great for people interested in World War II. I also read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, which I found to be surprisingly thought-provoking. And of course I read a billion comic books. I read everything with the Superman logo on it, most of the Batman books, and a couple of Vertigo titles (Y: The Last Man and Fables). I also finally got around to reading Superman: Birthright, which is this generation’s origin rewrite. I had avoided it for a while, fearing it would be as disappointing as the John Byrne revamp in the 80’s, but it was actually quite good." Games: "I play a lot of games, and with the holiday break I got caught back up on a bunch of different things. On DS I finished up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (which I loved), on PSP I’m playing GTA: LCS, Burnout: Legends and Lord of the Rings: Tactics, on PC I just finished up Darwinia (which I found to be absolutely brilliant), on Xbox I played through Ultimate Spider-Man (short, but lots of fun and it looked great) and just the other night I started up Shadow of the Colossus (which deserves all the acclaim it’s gotten). Plus I’m playing a bit of multiplayer Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War from time-to-time, and I occasionally fire up ScummVM to poke around The Secret of Monkey Island or one of the Broken Sword games."