Danny Peña interview: Creating a career talking about video games

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
September 15, 2022
Updated June 19, 2025
17 min

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 the Dominican Republic.

One day, his grandmother bought him a video game system, 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 job. He started with DJ work and then migrated to this new thing called podcasting.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.