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WBUR

Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.

Endless Thread

New to Endless Thread? Wooooo! We're revisiting some favorites from our archives to welcome you.

First up: The cover art for the 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic, spooky sci-fi/fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time" — featuring a rainbow-winged centaur and a green, glowering, red-eyed face — is iconic. And yet, for nearly 50 years, no one has known who illustrated it. Well, not NO ONE. Not anymore... Endless Thread cracks the case!

Episodes we love: Artist Known — Illustrator for 'A Wrinkle in Time' gets long-overdue credit

The final episode of Hidden Levels explores the story of SEGA developer Tez Okano and the bizarre, meta-game he created: Segagaga.

Okano joined SEGA in 1992, witnessing firsthand the company's tumultuous experience in the "console wars" against Nintendo and Sony.

In the mid-1990s, SEGA struggled to make hardware that kept up with its rivals. The SEGA CD, the 32X, and the Saturn were all commercial failures. For Okano and many developers at SEGA, the console wars were both an exciting time to be in the video game business but also an intense and stressful time. They worked long hours, slept at their desks, and faced relentless deadlines. And so Okano decided to turn the chaotic nature of his professional life into a low-budget, self-parodying game about making video games at SEGA.

In Segagaga, the player is a young developer tasked with saving SEGA's market share from the rival DOGMA Corporation (a stand-in for Sony/PlayStation). The gameplay is a mix of a role-playing game (RPG) and a management simulator, where you recruit demoralized, mutant-like SEGA employees by convincing them to join your team for the lowest salary possible.

The gameplay reflects the absurd reality of game development. Players can spend a long time creating an original, hit game or they can quickly make a bunch of trashy titles (or shovelware) that barely keeps the company afloat. Okano even told us that the insults characters used in "battles" were actual quotes he heard in the office.

The game was finished in 2001, just as the highly anticipated Sony PlayStation 2 was effectively dooming SEGA's Dreamcast. As game journalist Simon Parkin notes, Segagaga was released only two weeks before SEGA exited the console business entirely. This timing transformed the game from a self-parody into a memorial for a dying era, inviting players to literally defeat SEGA's failed consoles as bosses.

Though Okano’s bizarre proposal was initially met with laughter by executives, the game ultimately got made and, in a strange twist, benefited from the company's decision to stop making video game hardware. Even in the face of industry chaos, some creators simply can't help but pour their love and energy into making games.

Credits
This episode was produced by Jayson De Leon and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. Original music by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Jocelyne Allen helped translate and interpret our interview with Tez Okano (truly the best).

Special thanks to Lewis Cox and Tom Charnock over at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Their insight on SEGA, the Dreamcast, and Segagaga was extremely helpful in the making this story. Additional thanks to Adam Kuplowsky and 17 Bit’s Jake Kazdal.

Simon Parkin has a book about the history of the Dreamcast called Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works. It’s rich and beautiful and has even more details about Segagaga that we could not fit into this story.

Tez Okano would like to thank the small team that supported Segagaga. Especially Hisao Oguchi, Tadashi Takezaki, and Taku Sasahara.

Hidden Levels is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga

Video games are arguably the antithesis of nature; highly constructed worlds, synthetic, inorganic. If you grew up gaming, you may recall grown-ups telling you to shut down the console, go outside, and touch some grass.

These days, though, touching grass isn’t something you have to do outside. As gaming has grown into a 200 billion dollar industry, the boundary between screen and soil has muddied. New technologies and types of play are getting gamers ever-closer to the experience of real nature. And yet, in a kind of weird feedback loop, those same technologies and types of play meant to simulate nature are now changing the real thing in ways that could outlast us all.

Credits:
This episode was produced by Dean Russell. Edited by Kelly Prime. Mix, sound design, and music composition by Paul Vaitkus. Additional mixing by Martín Gonzalez. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia.

Special thanks to Samuel Åberg, Alex Beachum, Tracy Fullerton, Will Matthee, Kelsey Myers, and Mike Rougeau.

Hidden Levels Ep. 5: Press B to Touch Grass

Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismissed him. The prevailing narrative was that kids who played video games became killers, not doctors. So Butch set out on quest: to show how video games can help make better doctors.

Show notes:

 • The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century (
JAMA Surgery • )

 • Study: High-School Video Gamers Match Physicians at Robotic-Surgery Simulation (
Slate • )

 • We Have to Operate, but Let's Play First (
The New York Times • )

 • He’s really on his game (
Orlando Sentinel • )

Credits
This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Emily Jankowski.

"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Surgical Precision: One doctor's quest to show how video games can save lives

Machinima — a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema” — refers to movies filmed inside video games. The art form had a renaissance in the 1990s, and many thought it had a future in Hollywood. Among the early pioneers were the New York animation collective the Ill Clan, who puppeteered characters in real-time inside the video game Quake, bypassing traditional animation rendering. This technique exploded into a cultural phenomenon through the 2000s with hits like Red vs. Blue, South Park’s Emmy-winning World of Warcraft episode, and This Spartan Life, a live talk show filmed inside Halo 2's unpredictable virtual world.

However, machinima.com faced controversies and eventually shut down, erasing its archive and leaving many original artists sidelined. Today, machinima is experiencing a powerful resurgence in documentary filmmaking. Projects like Grand Theft Hamlet, filmed during the pandemic entirely within Grand Theft Auto 5, proved that sophisticated feature films could be created in active, real-time virtual environments. Award-winning documentaries like The Remarkable Life of Ibelin showcase the medium’s emotional depth and its potential for democratizing creativity. What started as a technical workaround has evolved into a legitimate art form that continues to redefine the meaning of movies, and games.

Credits:
This episode was produced by Andrew Callaway and edited by Chris Berube. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Original music by Swan Real, Jamilah Sandoto and Paul Vaitkus. Fact-checking by Lara Bullens.

Hidden Levels Ep. 4: Machinima

Today, Stef Sanjati is a creator on YouTube with over half a million subscribers. Her content mostly focuses on her two greatest loves — makeup and gaming — often combining the two with her otherworldly video game-inspired beauty tutorials.

Growing up in small-town Ontario, though, Stef was a quiet, introverted kid who was bullied a lot. For one thing, she looked different from her peers. Having been born with a rare genetic condition called Waardenburg Syndrome, Stef has several distinct physical features, including wide-set blue eyes and a natural streak of white hair.

But there was something else that she didn’t quite have the words for back then – something she felt closest to while playing as her favorite avatar in World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. That something else was that Stef is trans.

Choosing your player is a near-ubiquitous experience in gaming. Whether it's picking from a stock of ready-made options in Mario Kart or carefully calibrating a custom avatar in World of Warcraft, a gamer's choice of character has a huge impact on the gaming experience. But when a gamer is given the chance to choose, or even build, a brand new identity outside of the one they experience every day, the potential impact goes far beyond simple gameplay.

Credits
This episode was written and produced by Frannie Monahan and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Paul Vaitkus.

"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)

For decades, the U.S. Army has been on edge about recruitment, hitting its goals for a few years, only to miss them again. As part of their strategy to combat recruiting concerns, the Army has turned its focus online: to the world of gaming and competitive eSports.

With nearly 80% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 28 playing video games weekly, the Army has identified this community as a vital demographic for potential recruits. The core goal of this outreach is to use gaming as an entry point, which is nothing new — the precedent was set decades ago.

With the end of the draft in 1973, the U.S. Army found itself faced with new recruitment challenges. Campaigns like the “Be All You Can Be” ads of the 80s were popular and led to short-term bumps in recruitment, but they didn’t last. The Army failed to meet its recruitment goals in 1998. It failed again in 1999. In response, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel spearheaded the development of America's Army, a free-to-play first-person shooter launched in 2002.

The game was designed to offer a "virtual test drive" of Army life. Before the players could enter the full combat portion of the game, they were required to complete certain training modules covering topics like physical fitness and weapons use. The game was designed to reflect the Army’s values and structure. And despite the game’s promise to represent the true Army experience, the relatively limited depiction of gore and gruesome violence raised concern from some critics. Other critics, including anti-war activists and the ACLU, condemned the project for "gamifying war" and serving as propaganda that targeted impressionable youth by design.

America's Army became a significant cultural and recruiting success, accumulating over 1.5 million downloads in its first month and eventually earning the title of the "Most Downloaded War Video Game" from Guinness World Records with more than 42.5 million downloads.

After a two-decade run, the U.S. Army officially shuttered America's Army. The way Americans played video games had changed since the game launched in the early 2000s, and the Army began to pivot its approach to gaming to leverage the success of existing games and opportunities posed by the increasingly popular competitive eSports scene. Today, the Army eSports team competes in commercial titles like Rocket League, Call of Duty, and Valorant, continuing its outreach. This modern presence remains contentious — critics continue to question the ethics of military outreach in spaces that include children.

Credits:

This episode was produced by Katelyn Harrop and edited by Christopher Johnson. Mix, sound design and music composition by Paul Vaitkus. Additional mixing by Martín Gonzalez.

"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Hidden Levels Ep. 3: This Game Wants YOU

In this second episode of Hidden Levels, Amory traces the history of the humble-yet-genius joystick — from early 20th century aviation, to 1970s video game consoles like the Atari 2600, to the Nintendo 64 thumbstick in the 1990s, to what some consider the joystick's greatest implementation: the dual-thumbstick controller.

This optimal interface has changed the game, and not just the video game. The modern dual-stick controller is now considered an MVP in the military, and in medicine.

Hidden Levels Ep. 2: Stick It to 'Em

Welcome to our all-new collaborative series, "Hidden Levels," in which we team up with 99% Invisible to explore how the world of video games has impacted the world beyond. We’ll dive deep into how games are made and designed, exploring everything from the history of the joystick to the faithful recreation of nature in digital spaces.

Whether you are a lifelong gamer or have never picked up a controller, "Hidden Levels" uncovers how games have quietly changed culture, technology, and the way we see the world...starting with a '90s arcade classic.

Developer Mark Turmell worked at Midway, which was known for iconic games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Mortal Kombat. His creation of NBA Jam in 1993 pushed the company in a new direction. It debuted at the height of the Chicago Bulls' dynasty, aiming to capture the energy of professional basketball in a high-octane, over-the-top format.

The game was a hit out of the gate, captivating players with its digitized graphics (with the heads of real NBA players) and fantasy gameplay where players could become "on fire."

At the heart of the NBA Jam gaming experience was the voice of its announcer, Tim Kitzrow. Turmell and the game's sound team had realized they needed a voice that could match the game's energy and cut through the din of an arcade, without the budget for a professional NBA commentator. So they turned to Kitzrow, an improv comedian and journeyman actor, who was initially hired by Midway for pinball voiceovers — it was just a fun side gig. He had no idea that his work on NBA Jam would make such a lasting impact on the industry.

Kitzrow modeled his energetic, flamboyant delivery on NBA announcer Marv Albert, infusing it with his own ad-libbed, short, and punchy catchphrases like "REJECTED!" and the game's most famous line, "Boomshakalaka!"—which was suggested by an artist and inspired by funk group Sly and the Family Stone. The game became a monumental hit, reportedly making $1 billion in quarters in its first year, with its catchphrases entering basketball vernacular.

***

Credits:
This episode of "Hidden Levels" was produced by James Parkinson, edited by Emmett FitzGerald, and mixed by Martín Gonzalez. Original music by Swan Real, Jamilah Sandoto, and Paul Vaitkus. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. This story was adapted from James Parkinson’s podcast, Gameplay. 

The Managing Producer for "Hidden Levels" is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. "Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread.

Hidden Levels Ep. 1: Mr. Boomshakalaka

Have you ever jumped on something as you're moving through the real world, and heard that Mario bouncy sound in your head? Or maybe seen someone acting like an NPC when they're a real person? Maybe you know that the first real "in-app" purchase was actually a weapons store in an arcade game version of Double Dragon 3.

Wherever you go in the real world, you can find signs of the influence of videogames. But you have to know where to look. That's why Endless Thread and 99% Invisible are launching a new limited series together called Hidden Levels.

Today Roman Mars and Ben Brock Johnson kick off the series with a little preview of what's coming.

Announcing 'Hidden Levels': how the videogame world has changed the world beyond videogames

What makes the world’s first documented bar joke funny? No one knows. 

In a tweet that garnered thousands of responses in March, the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted about a 4,000-year-old proverb written on a clay tablet. The line, which experts believe is a joke from the ancient civilization of Sumer, starts with the set-up, “A dog walks into a tavern.” But the punchline has left scholars and online commenters scratching their heads. The joke’s meaning has been lost, and finding it could reveal something unique about early human civilization.

In this episode, the first of two parts, Endless Thread journeys back in time, attempting to deconstruct the origins of humor and explain an unexplainable joke from the forgotten tablets of the past.

******
Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the co-hosts.

What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

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