Interview with Danny Peña: Create a career by talking about video games

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Danny Peña has one of those fairy tale stories that the video game industry is so good at creating. He grew up in a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, the son of divorced parents, as well as in the Dominican Republic.

One day, his grandmother bought him a video game console, and it changed his life. He played too many games growing up. His parents worried about his studies and what he was going to do with his life. But like so many creators and influencers, Peña decided to create his own craft. He started with DJ work and then migrated to this new thing called podcasting.

In 2005, he started Gamertag Radio with his brother and was later joined by Peter Toledo and Parris Lilly. The audience has grown and now his podcasts have been downloaded over 14 million times. He showed up at the Xbox launch in 2001 and played a game with Bill Gates.

He had the opportunity to interview industry luminaries such as Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer and Reggie Fils-Aime (former CEO of Nintendo of America). He co-hosted our GamesBeat Summit 2022 event last April and he interviewed Fils-Aime about his own post-Nintendo book.

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Peña's inspirational story is now the subject of a self-published children's book, Danny Loves Video Games, created by 2 Quality Kids, a children's book company run by Peña's cousin and his wife, Mr. Luna and Mrs. Ani. It came out today. I've seen Peña's success grow over the years and I've seen him become an inspiration to various people getting into gaming. He still does Gamertag Radio and works at G4. We talked about the book and his life.

Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

Danny Peña started Gamertag Radio in 2005.

GamesBeat: You must be very proud to release this book.

Danny Peña: Yeah, I'm thrilled. This is a passion project for me and my cousin. It comes out next week.

GamesBeat: Does your cousin have a children's book label?

Peña: That's right. It's called 2qualitykids. It's him and his wife. They've been doing it for about two years. He was the one who proposed the idea to me. He wanted to do a book based on my life, and I thought that would be great. Let's talk about it. He asked me a few questions, I answered them, and they came back with some excerpts from the book a few months later. I loved the concept.