There are lots of podcasts out there designed to lull people to sleep, be it through guided meditation, gentle storytelling, or straight-up hypnotism. Get Played is not one of them. In 2019, Rick & Morty writer Heather Anne Campbell and baleful Doughboy Nick Wiger launched the podcast over their shared love of video games, in which they played and reviewed the worst and weirdest ones of past and present. Their producer, Matt Apodaca, soon became the show’s third chair, and in 2022, the show broadened its purview to cover gaming in general. The show is full of deep lore and geeky humor about gaming tropes, franchises, frustrations, and creators. The hosts discuss jury-rigging custom joysticks, compare processing speeds, and swap cryptic Hideo Kojima quotes. It’s very funny: I’ve listened to countless hours of it, and I often have zero fucking clue what they’re talking about.
I’m curious about video games; they’re a major pop-culture blind spot for me, and, unlike other blind spots like sports or Dimes Square, I actually enjoy hearing about them — and I really enjoy falling asleep to people talking about them. When I listen to podcasts about subjects I have a stake in, my mind jumps in with arguments and opinions. But because I don’t play games, the listening experience is totally passive; I let the hosts’ takes wash over me. This starts to turn my brain off. Then, once they get into the weeds of describing the mechanics of gameplay, I conk out entirely. It doesn’t matter if they’re talking about something as soothing as Pokémon Snap or disturbing as Silent Hill. This isn’t to say Get Played is boring. None of this would work if it weren’t entertaining; the show is energetic and raucous, full of original music and spontaneous impressions (Campbell is a scary-good improviser). But it also has a comfortable routine of recurring segments and a welcoming rapport between hosts, making it audio Ambien at 3 a.m.
The flip side of falling asleep to a podcast is that there’s something unsettling about relying on your own familiarity with strangers’ voices in your ear, in your bed, to maintain good sleep hygiene. It is both too intimate and vaguely insulting; Apodaca, Campbell, and Wiger put effort into this pod, just for it to make me go honk shoo honk shoo mimimimi. How would they react to this?
Pretty well, it turns out.
Rebecca Alter: I mean this in the nicest way, because I love the podcast, but I listen to Get Played to fall asleep. Have you heard from fans who listen in other strange or specific contexts?
Matt Apodaca: I feel like we’ve gotten people who are like, “I listen to this when I’m playing a game that doesn’t require hearing what the story is,†or whatever.
Nick Wiger: No Man’s Sky is a big one. A lot of people play No Man’s Sky and zone out while they’re playing it, get into that flow state and listen to the podcast.
M.A.: We’ve heard from people that listen to us at 1.5 or 1.75x speed. We did a livestream show, and people had to listen to us at normal speed, and they thought we sounded drunk.
They speed-run the podcast.Â
M.A.: Basically!
I’m not a gamer at all, and that’s part of why I find the podcast relaxing. Do you have many non-gamer fans, and what do you think it is about the pod that appeals to both people in that world and gaming agnostics?
Heather Anne Campbell: My guess is that there’s fewer hard-core gamers that listen to our podcast than most gaming podcasts because our rhetoric is pretty off-putting to somebody who’s religious about games. We tend to be less serious than other gaming podcasts. The other is: We’re friends. A lot of the things that I’ve read online are just like, “It’s like I’m hanging out with my three buddies.†I’ve heard the podcast referred to as “It’s my two older brothers and my older sister talking about games in another room.†I like that. That warms my heart.
N.W.: We try to not go too deep into too many acronyms or too much gamer slang, or too many internet in-jokes — that stuff that can make gaming inscrutable for somebody who’s a casual gamer or doesn’t play at all. I was surprised at first that there are people who listen to the podcast who don’t play games, or played until college and then decided to be an adult. But we’re not just dumping a bunch of terms at you. We endeavor to define something if we think it’s not widely known. That could have something to do with non-gamers still listening to our show.
M.A.: But that’s not to say that our show isn’t inscrutable. If you’re jumping in now, and you heard, “Welcome back bucket!†you’d be like, “Well, I’ve had a stroke.â€
H.C.: I’m shocked at the number of people who listen to [the spinoff podcast] Get Anime’d! who don’t watch anime. It seems like a significantly higher percentage of people who are like, “I’ll never watch any of this, but listening to you guys talk about it is weird and fun.†Though I used to listen to the shipping forecasts. There was a U.K. shipping-forecasts podcast, and I’d be like, “I don’t know any of these words. This is manic!†It’s not even words that I can improvise and be like, “It’s like this!†Because the words are medical-sounding yet about the weather. It was great.
M.A.: That’s the most Heather thing I’ve ever heard.
I fall asleep listening to you talk about video games. Have you ever conked out while playing a game?Â
Nick and Heather at once: Yes.
N.W.: I don’t play games in bed anymore. I don’t just bring a Game Boy Advance to bed. These days, if that happens, alcohol is involved. It’s less passing out because I’m playing a game, and more because I’m drunk.
H.C.: My answer is the same as Nick’s. I used to fall asleep playing The Last of Us a lot. It was always go to a bar, come home, throw on the game, wake up, and be like, I lost this round. I don’t remember the round. I don’t remember starting the round.
M.A.: This is gonna seem weird. We’ve never discussed this, as the three of us. There’s a certain time of night for me where starting a video game is too much. You’ll never see me turning on a game at 11:30. That, to me, feels like I should be asleep already. I’ll start something before, if I’m trying to wind down and go to sleep. Maybe a light Stardew Valley–type thing. But you won’t ever see me playing The Last of Us at 1 a.m. I can’t do it. So I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep playing a game.
N.W.: It’s kind of a microcosm of Heather’s personality that what calms her when she’s trying to go to sleep is playing an online version of a game set in the apocalypse where you’re trying to kill each other with improvised weaponry. She just nods off.
H.C.: Good night!
I want you to know that when I drift off to one of your episodes, the next night I’ll scrub back to the parts I missed. I try to listen to the whole episode, even if it takes five nights.
N.W.: However people listen to the show works for me. If you wanna listen to 2.5x speed while you’re sprinting on a treadmill, that’s fine. If you want to listen to it while you’re falling asleep, or if it’ll get you through your commute, get you through your shift, whatever it is!
M.A.: Completion rates in podcasting now are very important. So however you get from :00 to the end is completely fine. Whatever you gotta do!
More From This Series
- The Bedtime Entertainment Secrets of Veteran Sleepers
- The Best Horror to Stream As You’re Falling Asleep
- The 20 Best Movies to Stream As You’re Falling Asleep