In 2022, my colleague Clayton Ashley and I spearheaded one of Polygon’s most ambitious projects: a feature-length documentary about a 1996 post-Cold War video game which featured real spies. We had learned that ex-CIA director William Colby (see: the Vietnam War) had played himself in a video game — alongside real-world ex-KGB major general Oleg Kalugin. We needed to know how the two actual titans of Cold War espionage ended up in an American video game in the 90s. So we started asking questions.

This project spanned three years of production, and features narration from New York Times columnist (and Cold War media aficionado!) Jamelle Bouie. For more on the creation of The Great Game, listen to our appearance on the Video Game History Hour podcast.