Dev Game Club

We are off for one more weeke, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview Carlos from the Discord, an independent graphic novelist and publisher and former AAA game developer. Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp  Discord  [email protected]

We are off for the next few weeks, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview RobotSpacer, who talks about his streaming, his hobby game development, and other topics. Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp  Discord  [email protected]

We are off for the next few weeks, so we are again reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview Brad Smith, who talks about his independent developer life, art, punk, and skateboarding, among other topics. Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp  Discord  [email protected]

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we revisit our series on Portal with another bonus interview with Kim Swift. We get a look at the game from which it came before hearing about the development proper. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 1:23 Interview 1:03:02 Break 1:03:25 Outro Issues covered: Kim's history, deciding where to go to college, learning to program, working with a team over multiple years, pitching each other, mixing interests, learning to work together, figuring out collaboration, the student showcase, showing to Valve, a sudden audience of twenty, walking away with a job offer, taking away only the ideas, showing at the IGF while building the new game, acquiring in Valve, a six month tech demo, borrowing the art direction, a useful constraint, extending six months more, the everyday feeling and being able to have fun, getting another year to go in the bundle, adding the behind the scenes stuff, the writing and level-building process, evaluating player progression and feeling, post-processing and robotizing your voice actress, mapping out the levels in little triples, responding to the player, a master class in tutorialization, iteration through playtesting, celebrating just shipping... and then, testing the games, focusing on your own stuff, always learning, going back to the roots, brand management, getting to do lots of new things, a game that reflected its own making, games being hard enough to make, feeling the joy, a great constraint, growing the world-building, no macro plan, how games reflect their making, explaining SKUs. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Narbacular Drop, DigiPen, Valve, Gabe Newell, Erik Wolpaw, Left 4 Dead, Airtight Games, Quantum Conundrum, Amazon Games, EA Motive, Google Stadia, XBOX, NEAR Studios, Game Boy Advance, Super Nintendo, Tim Schafer, EverQuest, Jeep Barnett, Garrett Rickey, Dave Kircher, Lost Vikings, Robin Walker, Team Fortress 2, Crystal Dynamics, Realm Lovejoy, Human Head, Prey, Half-Life (series), Randy Lundeen, Chet Faliszek, John Guthrie, The Orange Box, Heather Cerlan, Hawthorn, Pikmin, Outer Wilds, Calamity Nolan, Final Fantasy IX, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Next time: More Pikmin? Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp  YouTube Discord [email protected] 

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we try something a little different. Unattached to any particular game, we chat with Ed Fries, a long-time video game developer most well-known for his work  shepherding the early days of Xbox and Microsoft Game Studios. We talk about five games of his early years that particularly affected him. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 1:16:35 Break 1:16:48 Outro Issues covered: a new model for interviews, productivity software wars, a child of engineers, Lunar Lander on a calculator, 6800-based kit computer and programming in assembly, cardboard computer, jumping from BASIC to assembly language, using a print terminal, modem sounds, competitive Asteroids, the first real video game, oscilloscopes and radar, complaining to the dentist, inspiring a generation of programmers and engineers, learning by typing from magazines, the 8-bit microprocessor, getting a 6502 square root routine from Woz, using a computer terminal, an intro to Rogue and its procedural elements, a things-going-wrong simulator, "there were not that many games in the world," building a game for different player types, the D programming language and other alphabetic languages, a short remembrance of Dani Bunten Berry, Multiple Use Labor Elements, how M.U.L.E. plays, screwing your buddies, similarities to Euro strategy games, the auction phase, crystite mining, a literary game, the first original IP character in a video game, moving from real caves to fantasy, some connections, album covers from EA, expensive personal computers. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Frogger, ROMox, The Princess and the Frog, Ant Eater, Sea Chase, Tom and Ed's Bogus Software, Tom Saxton, Sucker Punch, Microsoft, Ender's Game, Phil Spencer, Xbox, Bungie, Ensemble Studios, Rare Limited, World of Warcraft, Gabe Newell, Atari 2600, Halo, 1Up Ventures Fund, Psychonauts, Keeper, Tim Schafer, Boeing, Digital Equipment Corporation, Lunar Lander, CARDIAC, Nintendo Labo, Apple ][, Atari 800, Space Wars, Asteroids, Nolan Bushnell, Ampex, Ted Dabney, Computer Space, Nutting Associates, Computer Trivia, Pong, Homeworld, Steve Wozniak, Rogue, Defeating Games for Charity, Dark Souls, HACK, PDP-11/VAX, Epyx, Walter Bright, Sid Meier, Civilization, Bruce Shelley, Age of Empires, M.U.L.E., Dani Bunten Berry, Seven Cities of Gold, Settlers of Cataan, Diplomacy, AJ Redmer, Maxis, Will Wright, Dungeon/Zork, Don Daglow, Tim Anderson, Colossal Cave Adventure/Advent, Infocom, Frank Cifaldi, Video Game History Foundation, Kate Willaert, Will Crowther, Don Woods, Mike Haas, Andrei Alexandrescu, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Populous, The Bard's Tale, Outer Wilds, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Next time: TBA! or more Pikmin TTDS: 40m 6s Links: Ant Eater source  Princess and Frog source Sea Chase source  Nitro source Errata: I misspoke with respect to the co-inventor of D, it was Andrei Alexandrescu. We regret the error. Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp  YouTube  Discord  [email protected]