Victor Lucas, Emmy winner–it's got a nice ring to it. And Lucas, creator and host of Electric Playground, the longest-running–and arguably the best–television magazine show about video games, is proud of the accomplishment.

He, along with producers Ryan Nicholas and Christopher Peeler, landed the Emmy–awarded by the southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences–for "outstanding achievement advanced media excellence: news" for a GameTap News segment about Sony's MotorStorm. It stands as a formal acknowledgment from the mainstream television industry that television coverage of video games exists and is worthy of praise.

The smooth and intelligent Lucas is a Vancouver success story, recognized and appreciated around the world. Pierre-Paul Trepanier, director of marketing for Nintendo of Canada, called Lucas "one of the founders of video-game-industry coverage" and said that he is "one of the top-10 faces in video-game media".

Lucas graduated from Kitsilano high school in 1986. "I've always been an escapism junkie," he confessed in an interview with the Straight at his Vancouver office. He admitted to obsessions with everything from Star Wars to Batman to Indiana Jones to Magnum, P.I. He got himself a Detroit Tigers baseball cap like Magnum and was all set to study criminology at SFU. Then he realized that he didn't really want to be a detective–he wanted to play a detective. So he decided to be an actor instead.

But after a couple of years, "I was getting fed up of being an actor waiting for somebody to discover me," he said. He also didn't want to be beholden to anyone for his success. In an effort to be master of his own destiny, he created Electric Playground, the first television newsmagazine about video games in North America.

Like comics and movies, video games were part of Lucas's life. "There is something about escaping into a game that no other art form and no other form of storytelling can provide," he said. "When people tap into that, it's a profound thing."

Lucas believed the makers of the video games he loved to play deserved media attention. "What I did is created a show that nobody had seen before," he explained. "I pitched an amalgam of Entertainment Tonight and Siskel & Ebert. I showed it to lots of producers and production companies and sent it to video-game companies, who were very receptive." Knowing that the industry was supportive helped get things rolling; Lucas borrowed some equipment and started shooting demo footage.

One of the first people in the industry to encourage Lucas was David Perry, founder of Shiny Entertainment and the designer of games such as Earthworm Jim and Enter the Matrix. Perry had written an article in Next Generation magazine criticizing American television for not including coverage of video games the way his native Britain did. The column inspired Lucas to write to Perry. "I met with him [Lucas], and he was super-passionate," Perry said on the phone from his office in Orange County, California. "He really wanted to make it happen, and he did. He's one of the rare examples of someone that said, 'I'm going to do it,' and then actually went off and made a whole show."

In 1994, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was the king of home-based video gaming, with Sega's Dreamcast close behind. The next year would bring a shift in the industry when Sony launched its CD-ROM–based PlayStation in North America, the announcement of which was made at the first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Lucas was there with the only Betacam crew in the building.

While at that first trade show in 1995, Lucas met Tommy Tallarico, a video-game-music composer. "He was walking through E3 with an entourage of strippers and midgets. And he wore a gold lamé jacket and sunglasses," Lucas recalled. He had been looking for a personality who was already inside the video-game industry, and Tallarico was perfect. He joined Electric Playground as coproducer and cohost, and continues to provide a counterpoint to Lucas on it and on their spinoff program, Reviews on the Run.

"Vic was the first guy to say to everyone, 'Let's put video games and video-game makers–developers and publishers–on television. Let's go behind the scenes,'" said Tallarico, on the phone from California. "Back then it was just us, one camera crew covering the entire E3. At last year's E3, there were probably 500 or 600 camera crews. Everyone from CNN to NBC to E! Entertainment."

Lucas's Greedy Productions self-syndicated the first 13-episode season of Electric Playground. The first broadcast deal was with KVOS, an independent network based in Bellingham, Washington. That meant Lucas could tell Canadian broadcasters that Americans were picking up Electric Playground, which helped land contracts with Craig Broadcasting's A-Channels and CHUM's rural networks in Ontario. The first episode aired in September 1997.

Heading into the 11th season, Lucas and Electric Playground are at the top of their game. "Rarely do you find anyone who has better access to some of the top developers in the business," said Matt Levitan, marketing and public relations manager with PlayStation Canada. This sentiment was echoed by Perry: "He [Lucas] can go to any studio in the world, and go in and walk around the studio and be welcomed. He gets on the inside more than anyone."

Not everything has gone smoothly, however. Electric Playground has flirted with delays and cancellations, and survived changes at networks and broadcasters. Lucas has taken other jobs, notably a design job with Black Box Games prior to its acquisition by Electronic Arts.

Now Lucas and the staff at Greedy are overwhelmed with work. "The idea always has been to generate new, cool concepts," said Lucas. In addition to Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run, Greedy has added to its production slate GameTap News (for Turner Broadcasting), The Art of Play (for GameplayHD), and The Lab With Leo Laporte and Torrent, both of which air on G4techTV in Canada and the How To Channel in Australia.

In October 2006, Greedy had a staff of 13; now it's 25. Even so, Lucas has been spending time in the editing suites. With six shows on the slate, there's lots of work to be done. "It looks like we're doing super huge, but we're a Canadian production company," he laughed. "And I like it."

But his heart is in video games. "Victor has become the de facto historian of our industry," Levitan claimed. Perry thinks Greedy Productions has the best library of video-game coverage in the world. "When they realize that the video-game industry is here to stay, and they start to take it a little more seriously, that is going to be a very valuable archive. It'll be interesting to see historically how relevant his stuff is. I think it's going to be unbelievably important."

If Lucas wasn't already working at his dream job, he'd consider returning to game development. "It would be amazing to be able to grow this company. I've always had this dream of Greedy Games. That would be pretty cool.

"I built Electric Playground on the potential of the video-game business," Lucas continued, "and that potential is yet to be realized. But I know that it's coming."