Special Guest: Meagan Byrne is the founder of Achimostawinan Games and Digital Interactive Coordinator with ImagineNATIVE. She gives us the backstory on Exposition in Games. Can games tell stories in their own unique way? How can mechanics driv

Episode 53: Escort Missions

Nov 27th, 2019 1h 4m

Special Guest: Mike Bithell is the Director of John Wick Hex and in this episode he guides us through designing escort missions in games. What makes escort missions bearable? Are there games that get away with it more than others and what if I

Episode 52: RNG

Nov 5th, 2019 1h 4m

Special Guest: Jeff Larkin is a VFX Artist at Gunfire Games, the studio behind Remnant: From the Ashes. He spontaneously rolls his way into a discussion about random number generation in games. Why do we use so much RNG in game design? How fair

Episode 51: Dialogue Options

Sep 11th, 2019 1h 21m

Special Guest: Nina Freeman is a designer behind games like Cibele and Tacoma and she chose to talk with us about her philosophies on Dialogue Options in games. What sense of agency does this give the player? What are our expectations of conseq

Episode 50: Climbing & Parkour

Aug 15th, 2019 1h 9m

Special Guest: Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an IGF-nominated developer here to run with the topic of climbing and free-running in games. Is this mechanic a product of popular culture or is it here to stay forever? How does this dynamic traversal affe

Episode 49: Minor Issues 2

Jul 17th, 2019 1h 4m

Steve and Jarrod tackle issues with some of video games’ minor mechanics such as, Ladders: How do they work? Metroidvania: Guess who’s back and Closets: What lives in yours? We also discuss the state of the show and exciting new possibilities f

Episode 48: Detective Vision

Jun 11th, 2019 4h 4m

Special Guest: Carolyn Petit is the Managing Editor at Feminist Frequency and on this episode we’re on the case of Detective Vision in games. Why have we seen so many recent games use this mechanic? Does it change the way a player perceives the

Episode 47: Crafting

May 29th, 2019 1h 35m

Special Guest: Chandana Ekanayake is the creative director with Outerloop Games, the team behind the VR game Falcon Age. He soars his way over a discussion about Crafting systems in games. How does crafting tie into the rest of a game’s mechani

Episode 46: Cutscenes

May 14th, 2019 1h 25m

Special Guest: Daanish Syed is a developer at NetherRealm Studios and host of the podcast Someone Should Make This. He stops for a quick interlude on the subject of Cutscenes in games. What makes narrative delivery in games unique to other art

Episode 45: Karma & Morality

Apr 30th, 2019 1h 27m

Special Guest: Doc Burford is a game developer on Paratopic and is the author of the blog, Stomp. We discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of Karma and Morality systems in games. Why do we see these systems so often in games? What does a karma

Episode 44: Adaptations

Apr 2nd, 2019 53m 54s

Special Guest: Juan Vaca is a narrative designer with Endless Entertainment and a Latinx in Gaming co-founder and we’re talking about video games that are adapted from other IPs. How do video game licenses work? Who truly gets to keep the right

Episode 43: Health & Hit Points

Mar 12th, 2019 1h 32m

Special Guest: Amanda Farough is the managing Editor at GameDaily.biz and she makes a house call for a regular check up to discuss health and HP mechanics in games. What does HP represent? How has healing changed over time and what is the meani

Episode 42: Tutorials

Feb 26th, 2019 1h 27m

Special Guest: Will Lewis is the Co-Founder of Rose City Games and lead community organizer of the Portland Indie Game Squad. He holds our hand through a discussion about different approaches to onboarding in game design. When is tutorializatio

Episode 41: Side Quests 2

Feb 13th, 2019 1h 32m

***Producer’s Note: We had some technical issues on Steve’s mic that gets worse over time. You may hear some clicking and popping towards the end that we were unable to get out. The problem has been fixed for future episodes. We apologize for t

Episode 40: Quality Assurance

Jan 29th, 2019 1h 29m

Returning Guest: Matthew Burnside certifies our discussion on how the QA process works for video games. Why do we have so many Day 1 patches these days? Is the QA team considered developers? How many hours does it take to ship a game? He helps

Episode 39: Dailies and Weeklies

Dec 19th, 2018 1h 26m

Special Guest: Dr. Anthony Bean (aka The Video Game Doc) is a clinical psychologist and author. He makes a house call to walk us through daily and weekly quest design in video games. Do those quests deliver effective or meaningful expereinces?

Episode 38: Emotes

Nov 27th, 2018 1h 25m

Returning Guest: Kahlief Adams from Spawn on Me dances his way into a discussion about emotes in video games. What are the origins of emotes in games? How have emotes worked their way into game mechanics? Who owns the IP of an emote? How to flo

Episode 37: Educational Games

Nov 13th, 2018 1h 25m

Special Guest: Elaine Gómez is a game designer at E-Line Media and content developer for Make Room. She schools us on the topic of Educational video games. What’s more effective: A game where you learn through mechanics or a game that identifie

VOTE!

Nov 5th, 2018

November 6th is election day in the United States. Please let your voice be heard. Voting is a gift and a responsibility that we all share. Check out www.vote.org for information about same day registration and a locator for your polling place.

Episode 36: Puzzles

Oct 30th, 2018 1h 25m

Special Guest: Osama Dorias is the senior game designer at Warner Bros. He stopped by to piece together how puzzles mesh with the rest of the game. What defines something as puzzle game? How has the internet changed the nature of puzzle design?

Episode 35: Open Worlds

Oct 16th, 2018 1h 38m

Special Guest: Tristan Moore is the co-founder and lead designer at Broken Widow Studios. He accepted a sidequest from a message board and ended up walking us through Open World game design and theory. We’re back after our short hiatus to ask:

Bonus Episode: Aging Games

Aug 27th, 2018 58m 33s

Steve and Jarrod take a moment to discuss how Aging Games are holding up with a modern context. Is it important to play games in their day? Does Half-Life 2 hold up? Does games-as-a-service mean the doom of a huge portion of gaming history? Sen

Sorry, We’re AFK

Aug 13th, 2018

Sorry! We’re AFK this week but we still have a bunch of Narcosis codes to giveaway. While you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for us to return, go back and check out Epsisode 34: Romance with Victoria Tran. That episode contains instruction

Episode 34: Romance

Jul 30th, 2018 1h 18m

Special Guest: Victoria Tran is a community developer at KitFox Games and currently working on Boyfriend Dungeon where you get to date your weapons. She helps guide us through the lovestruck world of Romance in video games. How do you fit human

Episode 33: Community Feedback

Jul 16th, 2018 1h 39m

Special Guest: Dany Peña, founder of Gamertag Radio, throws in his two cents about how Community Feedback is considered in the game development process. How do we interpret an influx of opinion and implement it in an actionable manner? How do w