Cliff Bleszinski was lead designer on the popular video game Gears of War, and also worked on other classic titles such as Unreal and Fortnite. His new memoir Control Freak describes his rise from Nintendo fanboy to rock star game designer. "It's 300 pages of my life story, starting when I was a pimply faced teenager who didn't really have any friends or even a girlfriend," Bleszinski says in Episode 531 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I didn't really like the world in which I lived, so I decided to pursue a career in the video game industry, in which I could not only manipulate the worlds that I played--in the games that I played--but also create those worlds myself." Control Freak is a surprisingly candid look into the life of a game designer, detailing Bleszinski's many mistakes and insecurities.

I am too much of a control freak to let another player screw up my good work. But I really wanted to try It Takes Two because, first, it was in every single top games of 2021 list and, second, the game is about a couple on the verge of divorce who must find a way to work together. And a little over a year ago, my wife and I were in the same situation. In It Takes Two, the spouses become tiny dolls who must work their way through their suddenly gigantic house, solving puzzles to reunite with their weeping daughter. In real life, we did family therapy.

I don't, for example, enjoy riding in cars driven by other people. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled when Chinese tech giant Baidu (BIDU, Tech30) offered me a chance to ride shotgun in a car driven by a computer. But I was able to put my unease aside, for journalism's sake, and agreed to take Baidu's new driverless car for a spin in Wuzhen, a city located roughly 130 kilometers west of Shanghai. The car is called Yun Xiao, or "Cloud Ride," and it doesn't look like much. It appears to be a very typical sedan, in fact, until you notice the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) device perched on its roof.