GameDev Breakdown

A second virus in less than a month ravages the Mitchell household as GDC goers discover a privacy policy so bad they thought there had been a data leak. We discuss the status of the Red Panda project, Todd's favorite getting-things-done methods, and what to do when you have an actual gamedev breakdown.

This one is all about the progress we've made in taking our red panda archaeology game concept and bringing it to life. It's a look at the implications of the game's concept, the philosophy of the art and character design, our intention to develop a simple map system with Godot's tilemap tools (prior to the recent release of version 4.0), implementation of basic RPG controls and collisions, and the UI work so critical to a story-driven game.

Boss Fight author Sebastian Deken returns to the show to be our first guest co-designer. We discuss city living, echoes of the Satanic Panic, and more. Finally, we pull up the design whiteboard and ask, what secrets would an abandoned Animal Crossing village leave behind?

Jon Loiterman stops by to discuss what we can learn from recent stories like the Doom dispute between Bethesda and composer Mick Gordon, the Superman Demo on Steam story, and more. Catch this chat if you're an indie developer with legal questions and concerns. 

Potionomics composer Greg Nicolett discusses his work with Disney, how he learned the game composer's process, and Shia LeBeouf's unexpected influence on his career.

Former RuneScape developer, Chris Knowles, discusses his time at Jagex, his design philosophy, and the one thing he refuses to do with his upcoming indie game.

Game Master James D'Amato calls in to discuss his latest book, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide - Expanded Genres Edition, how the One Shot Podcast Network became the tabletop RPG play powerhouse it is today, and how James' background in improv comedy serves his writing and his games. 

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Booper, Get Home! developer, Thomas Kildren, calls in to discuss his popular VR project, his experiences as a stay-at-home dad in the game dev space, his work toward autism awareness and acceptance, and more. 

Thomas' links

Author/developer/journalist/critic/friend of the show Mat Bradley-Tschirgi hangs out to discuss his work, surviving freelance work, what's going on around the industry, and how to survive both sides of live events. 

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Dan Harary, founder of the Asbury PR agency, calls in to discuss his new book, Flirting with Fame, his experiences working and networking with practically everyone in Hollywood, and his no-nonsense approach to generating buzz. Listen in for old-school know-how and insight into the mindset of a PR pro who's seen it all. 

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Fellow games podcaster and journalist Roger Reichardt drops in to talk shop and share some laughs. We discuss the highs and lows of writing game reviews, designing games that facilitate learning, how to fix the industry with card catalogues, and more.

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MoreYellow CEO, Jordan Mauriello, joins to discuss corporate and personal brand management, what it takes to turn heads at game launch time, and what generating buzz may look like with the game industry's next set of big changes. 

Jordan Mauriello's links

The freestyle coder himself drops in to discuss the ups and downs of live coding, presenting at and organizing conferences, navigating the world of non-game commercial software development, and more. We also discuss what we're playing now and what games we're looking forward to getting our hands on. 

Chris Gardner's links

Welcome back! Here are some updates--including the scoop on Inside Video Game Creation in the latest deal at StoryBundle--a word on the state of the podcast, and an exclusive interview with Philip Molodkovets, Wargaming's executive producer on World of Warships.

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Following the release of his latest novel, Halo: Divine Wind, we grabbed an hour of Troy Denning's time to talk about Halo, contributing to other legendary series including Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons, collaborating with 343 Industries, how tie-ins differ from other writing projects, his philosophy on productivity, and much more.

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Chad and Curtis McKinney, Ph. D. (yes, both) call in to discuss Chad's experience with Cloud Imperium working on Star Citizen and their collaborative indie efforts on Recursive Ruin, a "kaleidoscopic first-person narrative puzzle game" not quite like anything else you've likely seen.

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Prolific bestselling author Troy Denning calls in on release day for Halo: Divine Wind. We discuss the book's place in the Halo universe, his experiences collaborating with 343 Industries, and the sentimental inspiration for his first Halo story.

For more with Troy, including discussion about his work on Star Wars and Dark Sun books, catch our full interview here on the podcast!

Troy's links

Industry author, journalist, and developer Mat Bradley-Tschirgi returns to discuss his indie game collaboration with notorious filmmaker Uwe Boll, his interview with legendary Sierra Online founder Ken Williams, getting his first article on Polygon, and more.

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Richard Butler, New York-based Editor-in-Chief of RAGE Works calls in to discuss the early days of podcasting, his journey through the geek culture world, and how none other than GaryVee nearly convinced him to give up on his dreams.

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Co-host Matt Hill enters the chat! Community manager Casey Lucas-Quaid and famed composer Rich Vreeland (AKA "Disasterpeace") of Dino Polo Club hang out to discuss their hit indie games, Mini Metro and Mini Motorways. We discuss the Apple Arcade program, keeping the indie spirit alive, navigating Steam Workshop, and more.

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Former Nintendo employees Fay and Martyn Maillardet call in to discuss life after the pro industry and the creation of their first proper indie release, Shindig.

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Former McAfee CTO Rosen Sharma--now CEO of BlueStacks, now.gg, and Game.tv--discusses his transition into gaming and where software distribution in the industry may be headed, including his thoughts on a future beyond mobile app stores. It may come sooner than you think.

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Steven Morgan--accomplished Netherlands-based comedian, actor, musician, and writer--joins to discuss comedy in the pandemic times, embracing your introversion, navigating unexpected viral attention, and more.

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Brian Riggsbee calls in with loads of insight about the arcade classic Rygar and the scoop on the upcoming second edition of his sold-out book, The Legend of Argus: The complete history of Rygar.

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Over half of the VR market is controlled by a social media platform with no clear process for human support. What happens when something goes wrong? In this episode, Todd goes over a hack on his Facebook profile that resulted in a bricked Quest headset and nowhere to turn. Here's how it ended up.

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Indie accelerator GTR's director of business development calls in to discuss his time as a pro eSports competitor, his transition into the business of making and publishing games, and what indies need to know about marketing themselves, attracting funding and business partners, and more.

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To celebrate the life of community rockstar Abel Wang, we revisit our 2018 discussion with him at GDC joined by Microsoft cloud advocate Jessica Deen.

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Buildbox CEO, Jonathan Zweig, and Design SVP, Doug Manson, call in to address questions about the company, its game development products and services, and concerns raised in the development community about recent revenue changes for developers.

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Susanna Pollack calls in as Games For Change kicks off its 18th annual festival exploring the impact of games on education, healthcare, research, civics, and social issues.

Festival highlights

3D Generalist Rik Oclon calls in to discuss his project Retro Space Ball, how he navigated a huge debacle with a major games publisher (and received no payment), and he gives us some great data about his player base as well as some insight into his marketing and community management research.

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Luis Alonso of Recombobulator Games calls in to walk us through his experiences contributing to series like Need For Speed and Mass Effect--or if you prefer, Hannah Montana and VeggieTales--before going indie with his wife (accomplished writer Michelle Franklin) to realize a creative vision that's stayed with him since childhood.

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Todd promotes--and in one case, absolutely does not promote--his new book, Inside Video Game Creation, in three more chats with industry podcast hosts at Moonlight Game Devs, What Else Do You Do?, and GamerHeads.

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Sebastian Deken calls in to discuss his book, Final Fantasy VI from Boss Fight Books, and how his musical background led to his unique approach in covering the game. We go over the Final Fantasy series' history in the US and how the games have progressed over time. There is almost no gotcha journalism.

If you're already a fan of the Boss Fight Books series, you know that each author tends to bring a unique approach to their installment. Some books revolve around deeply personal stories while others are a result of incredibly thorough investigative journalism. In Final Fantasy VI, Deken introduces yet another approach: a music-first exploration of one of the most popular RPGs of all time.

Deken brings the perspective of a well-studied professional musician to the challenge of capturing what makes Final Fantasy's metronome tick, and he's been reflecting on the magic of the third/sixth installment (we refresh this timeline in the episode) since the day fate placed a knowledgeable toy store sales associate in his father's path just after the game's North American release. His verdict? Final Fantasy VI's music is much more than background noise.

"I pitched it as sort of a look at the game through the music and how the music functions within the game to advance the drama and to hold the game together, because the script is a disaster," Deken joked during our discussion. "It's just--it's a trainwreck. There's so much going on that it's hanging by a thread, the story."

During our chat, Deken explains how music helps move the game's narrative throughout its notorious twists and turns in gameplay. The book explores these choices, the soundtrack's later transition to live performances, and the composer's achievements in bringing video game music into its own as a legitimate genre.

Final Fantasy VI is available in ebook format from Boss Fight Books with a paperback edition coming this summer.

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Adam Fligsten of Silen Audio calls in to discuss his process, his projects, and his path into music and audio composition for TV, film, and games. His credits include Marvel vs. Capcom, Saturday Night Live, NBC Olympics, and much, much more.

I think that people put these tools on a pedestal and they shouldn't. It should be accessible to everybody...- Adam Fligsten

Adam Fligsten has been composing music for decades. After working in the music industry in both New York and Los Angeles, he's leveraging his incredible resume including tons of highly visible work in TV and film to get more heavily involved in video game sound design and composition.

Tactic Studios developer and CEO, Jesse Attard (BioShock, BioShock 2, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (2006)), calls in for a podcast chat about the studio's new Portal-style puzzle adventure game, Claire de Lune. We discuss his transition from major AAA teams to heading up an indie studio, parenting at publish time, best pandemic home office purchases, and more.

A "Fantastic" Transition to Indie Development

It's difficult to imagine a triple-A veteran more optimistic than Jesse Attard. Since 2005, he's contributed to major projects at Ubisoft, Capcom, and Digital Extremes, putting him in the right places at the right times to work on everything from old flip phone games up to the BioShock series and even a late port of Street Fighter II. You'd be right to anticipate a story about burnout and the evisceration of hope in a notoriously brutal industry, yet Attard simply describes the move to indie development as a nice change of pace.

"Oh, it's fantastic. It's great. I love doing it," Attard says about the move from the major-budget studios. "I love having my own engine. I loved working on [Digital Extremes'] engine as well...because you have a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can do and add to it."

Tactic's upcoming title, Claire de Lune, uses the studio's own proprietary engine that the team started building back when the major game engine terms weren't nearly as inviting as they are now. The graphics and gameplay seen in the game's trailers look right at home alongside just about any modern title.

Attard has stories about why game engine freedom is important to him.

"BioShock was on [Unreal Engine]," he says. "And so we worked on BioShock, and you're terrified about touching any of the Epic code because if Epic decides to change that code, now you've got to merge them and it's just a big nightmare. Having your own engine, you have 100% flexibility. You can make it do exactly what you want. It's much easier to work with, from our standpoint. So that's been great."

Beyond leveraging his technical experience, Attard is enjoying the additional creative influence he has as part of a small team. He wrote and took care of the full sound design for Claire de Lune.

Tactic Studios is targeting a June 14th release date for Claire de Lune.

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Christopher Arnold of Crowned Daemon Studios calls in to talk about the studio's mental health-focused game, Syntherapy, the inspiration behind its development, and its reception in the community.

Crowned Daemon Studios wants to guide you through an exploration of therapy and mental health issues unique from just about any other. Its visual novel adventure game, Syntherapy, places you (a therapist) in charge of the diagnosis and treatment of an artificial intelligence in a story with over 30 possible endings. This is not your average visual novel; Crowned Daemon leveraged publisher support to put together a fully voice-acted experience, and the sense of dramatic immersion is real.

While you'll interact with an artificial patient in the game, the story's influence is both real and personal.

"A lot of it's just personal history," says Arnold. "This actually started as sort of a cathartic exercise of sort of externalizing thoughts and feelings and things that I was trying to figure out in a format where I could read it back a little bit later and it wasn't just on my mind all the time." He says the idea of making the game's patient an AI came from the realization that we look at mental health in terms of functionality, much the way we tend to troubleshoot technology.

In terms of professional consulting and research, Arnold says the writing of psychologist blogger Scott Alexander provided an eye-opening look at the mindset of a practicing therapist. Arnold credits Alexander's work with his understanding of the field's complicated relationship to society and its problems that don't always have perfectly clinical answers.

Syntherapy is available now on Steam.

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Jonathan Ovadia of AEXLAB calls in to discuss the progress and the story behind the studio's upcoming virtual reality multiplayer competitive shooter, VAIL. He shares insight into a relatively new funding model for games, his team's vision for a connected, persistent VR experience, and more.

AEXLAB aims to bring competitive multiplayer tactical gunplay to VR

Jonathan Ovadia has been playing video games all of his life. What started as a love of Pokémon and other classic video games has resulted in his co-founding and leading AEXLAB, a virtual reality technologies and game studio. AEXLAB is currently aiming to bring the quality and polish of shooters like Halo, Call of Duty, and Counter-Strike to VR to create a truly immersive competitive multiplayer experience, and he wants to work with other gamers to do it.

The team funded VAIL VR out-of-pocket for years before seeking external funding and, eventually, allowing members of the game's community to become direct investors in the game. Since that time, AEXLAB has successfully raised a million dollars in funding toward the game's continued development.

"We're definitely not start-up guys," Ovadia says of his team. While he has an aggressive vision for the future of VAIL and AEXLAB, he says he prefers very slow and deliberate growth and that he doesn't care how long the game has to stay in development before it's ready.

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The Inside Video Game Creation virtual book tour continues with a segment for the always-entertaining Podcast vs Player podcast crew. We discuss the book, unusual interview experiences, balance and sacrifice in the industry, and more.

Show Notes and Links

Todd appears on Carl Leducq's podcast, Zero to Play, to discuss his new book, Inside Video Game Creation, indie game development, trends in the game industry, and more.

Show Notes and Links

At long last, Todd's Q&A interview book is out!

Accomplished writer Michelle Franklin of Recombobulator Games calls in to discuss cats, floods, and Space Boat, a shiny upcoming narrative adventure game being developed by a team of triple-A industry survivors with credits on Mass Effect 3, DeadSpace 2, Hannah Montana, and more.

Michelle Franklin, Recombobulator Games, and Space Boat

Welcome to GDC Showcase week! This is your first podcast check-in from the event. Hear about the sessions so far, including great chats with the legendary Warren Spector and Sucker Punch Productions co-founder Brian Fleming, then get tips for the event and what to keep an eye on for the rest of the week!

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