So the problem with working on too many podcasts is that recording them? Not the timesink, especially if you're not the notes bitch*. The part that sucks is EDITING them, because at best, you still need to listen to the whole thing again start to finish. At worst, you're manually tweaking sync, volume, removing cross-talk or interruptions so the whole thing is listenable, adding sound effects or clips, underlaying music, it's a whole production. I guess literally, it's audio production.
If you're just listening to podcasts, it's very pleasant. I know, I used to be one of you. "Podcast game" meant something different for me at the time, as I'd fire up an open-world title or b-tier JRPG, run around between some objectives, and very occasionally pause the cast if I stumbled into a major event in the game that needed more attention. Now? I often desire and rarely have a game I want to play which is fitting as a "podcast game" while editing.
The best possible games for an editor with a complicated show on deck are turn-based or pause instantly if you alt-tab away. You also want them to have as little voiced text as possible at any given time. My brain can read a little slower than usual and still handle editing, but if I have to start picking out if the crackle I'm hearing is on a cohost** or someone in the game got their lines overcompressed, everything's going to go to hell fast. It's a bonus if I can kill the music and have very fine control over different audio levels. Do you recall me griping about Metal Gear Solid V/Survive having some of the worst audio settings I've ever seen in a AAA game? This is why.
The issue is that a lot of the best titles for this are either a) very, very bland open-worlds where I can just do some checklist shit for an hour or two without issue, or b) 16-bit JRPGs, and I've run through the vast majority of those which are in English already. I kinda hate replaying most JRPGs unless they have very freeform systems (not a lot do! If you've ever wondered why I love the SaGa games, this is a big part of it), and I would chew through a lot of them anyway, given that I have between 1-5 edits a week on deck to take care of.
The problem is that the game can't be too good. If it's distractingly interesting, and it draws focus off of the editor going in the background, you're going to have problems. Or if the soundtrack is good enough you don't want to turn it down. Or if it's a nightmare to resume it on pausing. Whole genres of game get kicked out because of this. I would love to just fuck around and learn more fighting games this way but I can't just drop that on a dime if I'm playing online, and very few games have AI I don't have to pay some attention to. Shooters, similarly, seem like they'd be great but this is a genre full of some great music, as well as the fact that nothing is going to get you killed faster than trying to resume a boss fight in progress. Action-adventure games and platformers are creeping in on this but also, you need to be able to stop a game instantly if you catch something that needs looking at, and I found out with Mega Man 11 that things like disappearing block rooms are a guaranteed death doing this.
Please, suggest me the strangest little titles which fit this role. I tend to return to very casual puzzle titles when I need them, but after 500+ hours of League of Mermaids***, or running through entire franchises of solitaire titles on Steam, or just finding out that there really are only so many variants on match-3 gameplay, you begin burning out when you queue up the tracks and realize you're about to throw three hours into the hole just click click clicking away this evening and maybe you want to play something the slightest bit engaging.
* I am always 99% of the time the notes bitch. Also please be aware that "notes bitch" is the technical term no matter how much some "family-friendly" shows try to couch this role in a label like "researcher" or "intern". No. Everyone who is not you is internally thinking of you as the notes bitch.
** At one point in time I was viscerally angry about this website and presumed it was some kind of op designed to make it impossible to find people to podcast or present with. I'm still not unconvinced it's not a way to subtly make my job as a podcaster harder, but it beats the shit out of Twitter either way.
*** There is no indie developer I'm sadder about the probable-dissolution of than Alder Games, who made an incredibly clever title by doing two things: flipping Puzzle Bobble over so you were dropping things instead of firing into the sky, and adding a physics engine, so that skill shots, more impressive level designs, and aiming to Asshole Physics your way into combos make for a real fun way to extend gameplay or turn the endless mode into a perfect timesink. They haven't done anything in almost 7 years now and the majority of their titles seem to have vanished or been absorbed by their publisher. Good dudes.