It’s a special! So special we only talk about adventure games for about 10 minutes at the end. So, things have got a bit chaotic in the BSD household. Various big life events (for the Danes rather than the Limey) have resulted in us having to t

Season V, Episode 12: Season Finale Round Table

May 28th, 2018 1h 52m

It has been roughly a year since we said goodbye for the last time on season 4 and got blown to pieces took a hiatus, and it feels rather fitting to end this latest season as the summer sun threatens to tan our pallid hides. Once again, we have

Season V, Episode 11: Bechdel Designers

May 21st, 2018 1h 11m

“Diversity” has become one of those words so overused in such inappropriate ways that it’s almost lost all meaning. But it does mean something. What is it? And how does it apply to narrative gaming? We invited Jess Haskins along to find out. Th

Season V, Episode 10: I Am Delighted to Say I Had Absolutely Nothing to Do With “Custer’s Revenge”

May 14th, 2018 1h 35m

Staying motivated in the games industry must sometimes be hard. Especially if you were an adventure game developer in the late 90s and being told that your beautifully hand-painted 2D game had to change into an ugly, polygonal mess before any p

Season V, Episode 9: I Can See What I Was Trying to Do, But I Wish I Hadn’t Done It

Apr 30th, 2018 1h 11m

We’ve all been there. We’re playing a game from a bygone era — perhaps one we remember fondly — and thinking to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone updated this for the modern era?” And then, having thought this, perhaps even out loud,

Season V, Episode 8: It’s sort of a vocabulary dick-waving contest

Apr 23rd, 2018 1h 7m

Interfaces are vastly important. They are what allows you, the player, to interact with the game world, and just as an intuitive interface can enhance the story of a game, a non intuitive one can conversely bring the whole thing down. With the

Season V, Episode 7: Not the Footballer

Apr 16th, 2018 1h 11m

First off, we must apologize to all the fans of Alexander Mejia, the Colombian soccer star who was in the squad for the FIFA World Cup in 2014. We have an entirely different Alexander Mejia on the show. One who is working on some truly trailbla

Season V, Episode 6: Sierra 404

Apr 9th, 2018 1h 11m

We’re nothing if not self-referential on this show. And this show harkens back to the very first episode we ever did, all the way back in August 2014, where Fred and I talked about the impending revival of Sierra as “Sierra Games.” When we did

Season V, Episode 5: I Think You Like It

Apr 2nd, 2018 1h 6m

Worldbuilding in any work of fiction is not something to be trifled with. It takes a lot of effort to construct a believable world that you can immerse yourself in, but it takes almost zero effort to yank you out of that illusion. Consider a sc

Season V, Episode 4 – Juggling (Frozen) Doves

Mar 26th, 2018 1h 11m

We’re only four episodes into this season, but already we can sense a pattern emerging. Much of the conversation we’ve had so far has evolved around “the rise of the auteur,” so to speak: Games that are, essentially, developed by a single perso

Season V, Episode 3 – Poking the Well-dressed Bear

Mar 19th, 2018 59m 10s

Fresh off the mass murder of the BSD hosts at the end of Season 4, we welcome back Francisco Gonzalez (a.k.a. Grundislav Games) to talk about streaming, adventure games and Virginia Capers. Doing shows with people we have met “eye arr ell” is a

Season V, Episode 2 – Four Men and a Little Lady

Mar 12th, 2018 1h 10m

If you’re familiar with our little show, you may recall that one time we interviewed Shawn Mills for a special episode about the impending demise of his company Infamous Quests. Even by our standards, it was a particularly salty, expletive-lade

Season V, Episode 1 – A Licence to Print Money

Mar 5th, 2018 59m 57s

Fortune smiles upon us this season premiere, and indeed, vicariously, onto you. For we have with us in our midst, yet again, a self-made man with a plan — Mr. Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games. Dave has been with us once before, back in August 2

S4 “Memorial Episode”

May 27th, 2017 1h 6m

So. A fortnight ago we released the final episode of Season 4, in which Jean-Baptiste de Clerfayt and “San” Francisco Gonzales talked at length about adventure game communities before the brutal and horrible murder of the regular hosts. That wa

S4E17 – “Handjobs In a Parking Lot” Is One Of Bono’s Finest Songs

May 14th, 2017 1h 19m

Sometimes, you only really consider something when it’s held in front of your face. For instance, I first met my co-hosts, Troels and Gareth, on teh interwebz around 2002. While I am not completely certain as to when curt resentment turned into

S4E16 – We Are Not Done Yet, And I Will Not Tell You Anything

May 7th, 2017 1h 2m

I am sometimes asked what games I play by people who don’t play games. I try to explain what an adventure game is by mumbling words like “story-driven” and “object puzzles,” and often the faux-interested response is, “Like, role playing games?”

S4E15 – A Strange, Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk: A Phat Paradigm Post-Mortem

May 1st, 2017 1h 24m

One of the wonderful perks of getting noticed more and more for our juvenile microphone antics is that we sometimes get approached by actual game designers, who will ask us if we’re interested in featuring their game on the podcast. (That was e

S4E14 – What Is the Safe Word?

Apr 23rd, 2017 57m 58s

We’re back from our mid-season break. Today, we’re interviewing Marcus, Matthias, and Tristan of Backwoods Entertainment, creators of the upcoming mystery adventure game Unforeseen Incidents. It’s a mystery game in several ways. First of all, t

S4E13 – I Quit

Apr 9th, 2017 42m 23s

Startling news and revelations! One of the Back Seat Designers quits on the air! And, for some reason, we didn’t stop recording, kept going, edited, and released the episode anyway! Well, of course it’s just a joke, because we really are quite

S4E12 – Pandora’s Big Box

Apr 1st, 2017 1h 19m

They say, “Never meet your heroes.” Luckily, they are sometimes wrong. With apologies to my two lovely co-hosts, I’d like to start this blog post with a personal anecdote. Through the magic of simply switching on a microphone and yammering into

S4E11 – A Fucked Up Stick Figure Looking Game That Doesn’t Make Any Sense

Mar 25th, 2017 1h 8m

The history of computer games. A list of one fucking game after another leading to perfection – King’s Quest V. We have pushed this view of history for a long time on this show. But apparently there’s another way to look at things. To put us st

S4E10 [TEN] – This Is Brown Note Territory

Mar 18th, 2017 1h 14m

Background music in fiction is something we tend to take for granted. That’s not to do say it’s not appreciated. It very often is. But how often do you sit down in front of a game and consider what dramatic impact the music has because it sound

S4E9 [NINE] – I Was Left With a Whole Bunch of Digitized Nazis and a Thing to Explain

Mar 11th, 2017 1h 11m

It’s sort of amazing how positive things will converge at random times. The entire guest roster for this season makes us all warm and fuzzy inside, but once in a while, a very special guest will say yes to partake in our shenanigans. Truthfully

S4E8 – I Was Surprised You Were 16

Mar 4th, 2017 1h 6m

There are certain topics you should not trust a partly Danish conglomeration with. Global warming is one, but the one topic that really stirs up controversy is religion. We’ve never actively tried to shy away from controversy on the show, but w

S4E7 – Have You Ever Been Al Lowe’d?

Feb 26th, 2017 1h 16m

You remember Richard Cobbett, right? From our scintillating Christmas special of Open Crowd Source back in 2015? No? Then you might remember him from other things, such as the talk about comedy in games, or the interview with Rihanna Pratchett,