The Ben Heck Show turns game console modding into entertainment

Benjamin J. Heckendorn—better known simply as Ben Heck—is Internet famous. He’s probably the best known console modder in the world, and is the creator of the renowned Xbox 360 laptop. And now he has a TV show. An Internet TV show, to be precise, appropriately titled The Ben Heck Show. Ars had a chance to speak with Heck to learn just how one man modding game consoles can translate into an entertaining and educational 15-minute show.

Hosted by element14, the show itself is structured in a way that allows Heck to tackle both large and small projects. Each episode features a viewer challenge, such as the one-handed 360 controller from the show’s debut, that is created from beginning to end over the course of the 15 minutes. But there are also larger projects that will take several episodes to complete. Currently, Heck is building a laptop from a 360 Slim model that will be completed in six episodes and then given away to one lucky viewer.

And that’s one of the major selling points of the show: its community focus. Not only are some of the mods given away to viewers, but the viewer challenges actually come from audience suggestions.

“I want them to feel like they have some input,” Heck told Ars. Unfortunately, this also means he has to “weed out” a large percentage of the suggestions, which tend to consist of ridiculous and unfeasible combinations of various consoles and other electronics. But when it comes to the projects he does decide to tackle, Heck explained that he tries to select ones that can “teach something useful” or “help someone.” For example, the viewer challenge in episode one was a one-handed controller created for a fan who had lost the use of his right hand, yet didn’t want to give up the joys of gaming on his 360. “The projects are not super fancy,” said Heck, “but they try to solve something.”

The Ben Heck Show teaser

While he’s already popular among the modding community, Heck hopes that the show will help him reach out to a wider audience.

“We’ve gone from hands-on people to people who think computers are magical,” Heck told Ars. To spread that excitement, the show features step-by-step instructions and even offers links so that viewers can purchase the various tools and parts used on the show. It’s all designed to get people “excited about building.”

Of course, there’s more to making a TV show than just being informative. You also have to be sure to keep people interested. “I want to make sure it’s entertaining,” explained Heck. Originally, Heck wanted to pack much more content into each episode, but found that there simply wasn’t enough time. “It’s a good amount of time to keep people interested,” Heck said of the 15-minute time limit, explaining that the episodes need to be kept shorter due to the short attention span of most viewers.

The plan is to keep the show going for at least the next year, and after the first six episodes Heck will be tackling a much bigger project: a pinball machine. And like everything else on the show, it will be heavily influenced by viewer suggestions, and may even feature viewer-submitted art. It’s a project that Heck told Ars he has wanted to tackle for a while.

“Somebody has got to keep pinball alive.”