Everybody's Talking At Once
Drew Messinger-Michaels, Frances Michelle Cannon, and Lucio Valentino
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A long-form interview podcast where we talk about everything, by talking about games. We gather insights and stories from game developers, designers, composers, writers, artists, directors, producers, and everyone else who makes games what they are.
Available episodes
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Oldest first
May 30, 2023
I Was a Teenage VR Museum, with Sarah Northway and Colin Northway
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 162. Sarah and Colin Northway land on our own little art-loving exoplanet to wax philosophical about The Museum of Other Realities, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and Fantastic Contraption (as well as the spiritual successor to the latter, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom). PRETTY BIG SPOILERS for I Was … Continue reading "I Was a Teenage VR Museum, with Sarah Northway and Colin Northway"
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May 16, 2023
There’s Heart in the Art and the Boat Is Afloat, with Tanya X. Short
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 161. Tanya X. Short descends to our dunj to talk about her ten years as the Captain of Kitfox Games. We talk about about long-term studio survival, what so-called AI really is, and making systems-driven games with heart—as well as the necessity of a tea-witch in all functional partnerships. You can find … Continue reading "There’s Heart in the Art and the Boat Is Afloat, with Tanya X. Short"
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May 2, 2023
A Cozy Kind of Clutter, with Anita Tung
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 160. Anita Tung wends her way to us to talk about The Last Clockwinder, one of those VR games that really and truly could only be done in VR. (For another example, see our recent episode with Chris Hanney). On this week’s show, we discuss the interdisciplinary joys of small teams, the … Continue reading "A Cozy Kind of Clutter, with Anita Tung"
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Apr 18, 2023
Spacefarers, Shredders, and In-Home Lasers, with Chris Hanney
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 159. Chris Hanney is probably best known for his work on Space Pirate Trainer—and particularly on its multiplayer modes, from the Tetris-Galaga–Max Payne melange of VERSUS to the ambitious, tennis-court-scale hide-and-seek-’em-up of ARENA. Here’s a project that walks right up to the edges of what has so far been possible in VR, … Continue reading "Spacefarers, Shredders, and In-Home Lasers, with Chris Hanney"
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Apr 4, 2023
Hackers and Big Robots, with Paul Chamberlain
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 158. Paul Chamberlain originally wanted to be a hacker—which led him to work as a “technologist” (ooh) at the Signals Intelligence Agency and the Australian Federal Police, which led him to work in computer security and “information warfare” (ooh again) at Google, which led him to work on anti-cheat software for League … Continue reading "Hackers and Big Robots, with Paul Chamberlain"
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Mar 21, 2023
More Sleepier Goblins, Fewer Shorter Meetings, with Anya Combs
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 157. Anya Combs joins our crowd (of guests) to talk about her work at Backerkit (and previously at Kickstarter and Nickelodeon), her saxophoning for the Funkrust Brass Band (among a fair many other bands), her love of tabletop, and her blood-feud with meeting culture. Backerkit’s new crowdfunding section is live, as so … Continue reading "More Sleepier Goblins, Fewer Shorter Meetings, with Anya Combs"
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Mar 7, 2023
Adventures & Ampersands, with Irwin Chen, Nathan Dummitt, & Ed Chung
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 156. A fair few of the kids who played Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s are now parents with kids old enough to play Dungeons & Dragons. At the same time, and beyond that: Tabletop Role Playing Games, which were once firmly esoteric and counter-cultural pursuits (not to mention the target of … Continue reading "Adventures & Ampersands, with Irwin Chen, Nathan Dummitt, & Ed Chung"
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Feb 21, 2023
This Game Beyond the Game, with Esther Alter
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 155. Esther Alter started out making games like Neocolonialism and No Pineapple Left Behind, which she now describes as “anti-fun.” But her newest game PROĆEMON is unashemedly fun, in addition to being a thoughtful experiment in how far we can push procedural generation, and in what human-machine collaborations can looks like. Here … Continue reading "This Game Beyond the Game, with Esther Alter"
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Feb 7, 2023
Remake Us Whole, with Trevor Gureckis
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 154. Trevor Gureckis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and an increasingly prominent voice in horror scoring—most recently, in the remake of DEAD SPACE, a project that aims to flesh out an already quite fleshy (in more ways than one) sort of narrative. Here Trevor talks about the intriguing weirdness of remakes, the joys … Continue reading "Remake Us Whole, with Trevor Gureckis"
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Jan 24, 2023
On Tropes and Triads, with Garry Schyman
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 153. Garry Schyman isekais his way back to the show to forspeak about his work on FORSPOKEN—which is out today—as well as his other recent scores for Torn and Metamorphosis. (If you want to hear about his work on the BioShock trilogy and the Middle-earth duology, we’d direct you to Garry’s previous … Continue reading "On Tropes and Triads, with Garry Schyman"
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Jan 10, 2023
What We Heard and What We Learned in 2022
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 152. Before we dive into this year’s interviews, we thought we’d take stock of last year’s, as has become tradition here on the ‘cast—connect a few dots, and provide a sort of a digest for anyone who’s missed some (or all!) of our 2022 episodes, and for first-time listeners. So join us … Continue reading "What We Heard and What We Learned in 2022"
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Dec 27, 2022
What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2022: ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 4
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 151. Another year, and another ‘cast in which to review said year. For (somehow!) the first time ever, Drew, Lucio, Franny, and L are all together to talk about what they’ve played, what they haven’t, and what they’re planning on playing—that last category covering both stuff that’s currently in their to-read piles, … Continue reading "What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2022: ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 4"
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Dec 13, 2022
This Episode Has Gone to the Shadow Realm
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 150. Drew here, with an update. At the time I recorded this episode, I was not aware of A.M. Darke’s accusations against Zack Johnson. Among the numerous reasons this sucks (though by no means the most important one) is that it’s embarrassing. Research is something I’m generally pretty good at, so missing … Continue reading "This Episode Has Gone to the Shadow Realm"
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Nov 29, 2022
Trust, Rust, Tech, and Meat, with Anton Hand
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 149. It would be quite the understatement to say that things have changed in VR in the six years Anton Hand has been working on Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. Companies have entered and exited. Platforms have risen and fallen. Things have gotten vastly stupider in various ways—but all while VR … Continue reading "Trust, Rust, Tech, and Meat, with Anton Hand"
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Nov 15, 2022
Shakespearean Shōjo and Wholesome Horror, with Robert Boyd
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 148. Robert Boyd takes our stage to talk about This Way Madness Lies, his studio’s new “Shakespeare-themed magical girl JRPG” (a thing that there ought to be more of). The game isn’t exactly faithful to its source material—but then, Shakespeare was never all that faithful to his, either. Frankly, we’ll take enthusiasm … Continue reading "Shakespearean Shōjo and Wholesome Horror, with Robert Boyd"
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Nov 1, 2022
The Past and Present of Sword & Fairy, with Johnny Liu
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 147. Johnny Liu schools us on the history of Chinese RPGs in general, and the long-running, massively impactful 仙劍奇俠傳 series in particular. It’s been called Sword & Fairy in the West (when it isn’t being called Chinese Paladin), but that title doesn’t fully capture what these games have to offer—and that simple … Continue reading "The Past and Present of Sword & Fairy, with Johnny Liu"
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Oct 18, 2022
The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 3
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 146. Drew, Lucio, and L check in on what they’ve been playing these past few months. Splatoon 3 naturally comes up, as does Drew’s continuing project to catch up on Final Fantasy XIV. Meanwhile, L has been messing around with her new Steam Deck, so prepare to hear about Rune Factory, about … Continue reading "The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 3"
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Oct 4, 2022
Root and Branch, with Aidan Moher
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 145. Aidan Moher is probably best known for his long-running, Hugo-winning blog A Dribble of Ink and its spiritual successor Astrolabe, or else for his short-form fiction, which prods at the boundaries of various sci-fi and fantasy subgenres. Today, he releases his first non-fiction book, FIGHT, MAGIC, ITEMS: The History of Final … Continue reading "Root and Branch, with Aidan Moher"
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Sep 20, 2022
Democracy at Work, with Jessica Gonzalez
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 144. Jessica Gonzalez stops by to talk about the labor of making games—and specifically, the vitally important, structurally maligned discipline of Quality Assurance—in the context of her work with ABetterABK, Game Workers Unite, and CODE-CWA. Building on our previous conversation with Emma Kinema here on the show, we discuss where game development … Continue reading "Democracy at Work, with Jessica Gonzalez"
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Sep 6, 2022
Levels Are Good, Actually, with Aaron Nemoyten
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 143. Aaron Nemoyten stops by to talk about his work on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Heroes of Dragon Age, which gives us a chance to talk about live ops and monetization—two topics that are core to how players experience games, but that only semi-seldomly get talked about as game design. … Continue reading "Levels Are Good, Actually, with Aaron Nemoyten"
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Aug 23, 2022
Drome Sweet Drome, with Anisa Sanusi
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 142. Last time Anisa Sanusi was on the show, she talked about the Limit Break mentorship program, and her thoughtful, wide-ranging UI/UX work on Planet Coaster and Elite Dangerous. Now she’s back to talk about her work on Rollerdrome, how it dovetails with her own newfound love of skating, and how she … Continue reading "Drome Sweet Drome, with Anisa Sanusi"
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Aug 9, 2022
Things Worth Thirsting For, with Chandana Ekanayake
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 141. Chandana Ekanayake has more than two decades’ experience in the game industry, stretching from work on The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard and Enter the Matrix to his projects at Outerloop Games, the studio he co-founded. Here he talks about the studio’s anti-colonialist sci-fi falconry adventure Falcon Age, as well as their … Continue reading "Things Worth Thirsting For, with Chandana Ekanayake"
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Jul 26, 2022
The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 2
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 140. Franny, Lucio, and Drew check in on what they’ve been playing, including but by no means limited to Elden Ring. We talk Neon White, Tunic, Horizon: Forbidden West, and Stray, as well as some of the games we’re looking forward to later this year, from God of War Ragnarök and Splatoon … Continue reading "The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 2"
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Jul 12, 2022
Last Call, with Zach Barth
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 139. Zach Barth is back to talk about Last Call BBS, which is the last Zachtronics game, and also a collection of eight smaller—though not all especially small!—Zachtronics games, unified by the fictional hardware spec for which they were built and the fictional software pirate who distributed them. It’s a celebration of … Continue reading "Last Call, with Zach Barth"
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Jun 28, 2022
At the Academy with Mike Salyh and Wyatt Bushnell
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 138. Wyatt Bushnell and Mike Salyh both have a background in physically extant escape rooms—not to mention arcade games, and other “out-of-home entertainment” experiences. (Gallery nerds would call them site-specific). As the co-founders of Coin Crew Games, they’re now bringing that experience to a videogame for PC and consoles, in the form … Continue reading "At the Academy with Mike Salyh and Wyatt Bushnell"
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Jun 14, 2022
Neural Spike, with Heather Flowers and Aura Belle
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 137. Heather Flowers has expanded the world of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER into a TTRPG, in collaboration with Aura Belle. Here both of the authors talk about the rough-and-ready nature of the Powered by the Apocalypse system on which MEATPUNKS is based, and the thoroughly American nightmare that is Meatworld—plus, how to invite … Continue reading "Neural Spike, with Heather Flowers and Aura Belle"
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May 31, 2022
Unwieldy Delights, with Damien Crawford
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 136. Damien Crawford makes games that revel in experimentation, and in taking an idea arguably too far. Faer latest game Purgatory Dungeoneer isn’t not that, but it’s definitely something else, too: It’s a reflection on trauma, and on being a hero well past when you’re young and heedless. It’s a strategic RPG, … Continue reading "Unwieldy Delights, with Damien Crawford"
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May 17, 2022
After the End of Everything, with David Galindo
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 135. When David Galindo came by to reveal ChefSquad, he mentioned that his studio was working on its biggest game yet. We now know that the game in question is Cook Serve Forever, and game that isn’t a continuation of the Cook, Serve, Delicious! trilogy—but it also isn’t not a continuation of … Continue reading "After the End of Everything, with David Galindo"
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May 3, 2022
New New Content, with William Pugh
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 134. William Pugh’s studio Crows Crows Crows has just released The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. It’s a remake. It’s also a lot more than that. But like The Stanley Parable itself, what exactly it is can be slippery to explain, and slipperier still to talk around. Here William goes into that, as … Continue reading "New New Content, with William Pugh"
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Apr 19, 2022
Organic Growth, with Marina Kittaka and Melos Han-Tani
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 133. Marina Kittaka and Melos Han-Tani return to talk about their narrative-rich platformer-but-also-more-than-that, Sephonie. It’s quite a different game from Anodyne 2, and as such, this is a fairly different conversation than the one they had with Drew about Anodyne 2. It’s equal parts a conversation about oscillating between hope and not-hope, … Continue reading "Organic Growth, with Marina Kittaka and Melos Han-Tani"
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Apr 5, 2022
The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 1
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 132. Rather than try to cram all of what we’ve been playing into a single year-end round-up, this year we’ve decided to check in every three months or so. This time around, Drew, Lucio, and L talk mostly about Pokémon Legends: Arceus (with the two main Ni No Kuni games on the … Continue reading "The ETAO Quarterly, Vol. 1"
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Mar 22, 2022
Playing with Genre and Building a Scene, with Glen Henry
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 131. Glen Henry is something of a leading voice in the Jamaican game development scene, partly by accident (by virtue of simply being a “persistent” voice in the space) and partly on purpose (by virtue of his own podcast Build It and They Will Play, where he talks to other creative folks … Continue reading "Playing with Genre and Building a Scene, with Glen Henry"
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Mar 8, 2022
What Do You Want the Players to Feel? (with Spenser Starke)
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 130. Spenser Starke stops by to talk about his “silent role-playing game” Alice Is Missing, the importance of players’ emotional safety, tabletop systems as “subgenre generators,” and the undersung virtue of finely crafted vibes. You can get the digital version of Alice Is Missing on Roll20 and DriveThruRPG.You can get the physical … Continue reading "What Do You Want the Players to Feel? (with Spenser Starke)"
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Feb 22, 2022
Making Things Better, with Osama Dorias
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 129. Osama Dorias’ career stretches back to the pre-iPhone days of mobile gaming, and on through a great many shifts in the industry—including shift he’s been an instrumental part of, like improving Muslim repression in games and the teams that make them. (It’s often two steps forward, one step back, as he … Continue reading "Making Things Better, with Osama Dorias"
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Feb 8, 2022
An Indie for Indies, with Dean Razavi
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 128. Dean Razavi is an indie-developer-turned-indie-producer, currently working at Akupara Games. Here is talks about that studio’s newest release, Kardboard Kings, as well the “indies for indies” ethos that drives his work. Along the way, we talk about the importance of collaboration even on solo projects, the challenge of building and rebuilding … Continue reading "An Indie for Indies, with Dean Razavi"
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Jan 25, 2022
Reality-Adjacency, with Star St. Germain
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 127. Star St. Germain has worked in an uncommonly wide variety of media, from music to comics to gallery art—all within a consistent and unified practice, which she talks us through here, and which she also brings to ArcaniteCo’s debut game HoloVista. In talking about that project, we also talk about the … Continue reading "Reality-Adjacency, with Star St. Germain"
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Jan 11, 2022
Being Real with Victor Burgos
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 126. Victor Burgos stops by to talk about his studio’s debut game, Neko Ghost, Jump! We get into the difficulty of figuring out who your game is for, the challenge of controlling scope and scale when working with a small, part-time team, and the perils of trying to live and work in … Continue reading "Being Real with Victor Burgos"
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Dec 28, 2021
What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2021
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 125. It’s the Year in Review ‘cast! Drew, Lucio, and Franny (along with her alter-ego Michelle) have gathered ’round to reflect on the games we played this year, the games we didn’t quite get to, and the games we’re definitely going to play once they’re available to be played. 2021 has truly … Continue reading "What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2021"
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Dec 14, 2021
What We Heard and What We Learned in 2021
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 124. Whether you’re a longtime listener or just tuning in—either way, thanks for that!—here’s a roundup of our conversations from 2021. These are of course just samples, especially insightful or funny or surprising moments from their respective episodes. If you want the full context, and a whole lot more good conversation, then … Continue reading "What We Heard and What We Learned in 2021"
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Nov 30, 2021
Behind the Cylinder, with Carlos Bordeu
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 123. Carlos Bordeu is the C in ACE Team, the studio behind Rock of Ages, Zeno Clash, The Deadly Tower of Monsters, SolSeraph, Abyss Odyssey, and most recently, The Eternal Cylinder. The studio’s projects are reliably-original-unto-earnestly-bizarre, going full-tilt at strange, wondrous ideas and preoccupations. They’re fascinating when they fail in places (Carlos’ … Continue reading "Behind the Cylinder, with Carlos Bordeu"
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Nov 16, 2021
What Else Game Devs Do, with Masao Kobayashi
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 122. Masao Kobayashi co-founded the indie studio Cut to Bits after about 15 years at Ubisoft, where he worked in a wide range of roles that often redounded to some form of project management and/or being a liaison between North American and Japanese teams and companies. That, and community management about as … Continue reading "What Else Game Devs Do, with Masao Kobayashi"
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Nov 2, 2021
A Changing World and How to Change It, with Mike Grieci
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 121. The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox is first and foremost an attempt to rethink educational games, and specifically to rethink them into something that kids would actually want and choose to play. This is of course far from the first time that a game developer has attempted that lofty, elusive goal—so … Continue reading "A Changing World and How to Change It, with Mike Grieci"
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Oct 21, 2021
(Chef)Squad Goals, with David Galindo
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 120. At midnight tonight, David Galindo and his team are surprise-releasing ChefSquad, a collaborative cooking game that can only be played on Twitch. “Wait, what?” you might reasonably ask—and by way of answering you there, David has kindly stopped by to give us the scoop on this weird, joyful, formally inventive, genuinely … Continue reading "(Chef)Squad Goals, with David Galindo"
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Oct 5, 2021
An Approachable Roguelike Full of Cats, with Aaron San Filippo
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 119. Aaron San Filippo is currently working on Whisker Squadron, a roguelike-alike riff on the arcadey corridor space-shooter genre (of which there are fewer examples than you might expect, given how large Star Fox looms). Before that, his studio Fippfly put out the similarly low-poly purist flight game Race the Sun, the … Continue reading "An Approachable Roguelike Full of Cats, with Aaron San Filippo"
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Sep 21, 2021
Trying Your Best and Helping Somehow, with Megan Fox
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 118. Megan Fox heads up Glass Bottom Games, the small-core-team-and-a-cloud-of-contractors behind SkateBIRD. (They were a larger core team for their first-person brawler/roguelike Spartan Fist, it should be noted). Here Megan talks about how SkateBIRD first came to be, and the nuts and bolts of bringing it to life—not only from a technical … Continue reading "Trying Your Best and Helping Somehow, with Megan Fox"
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Sep 7, 2021
Pop Culture Belongs to Everyone, with Laia Bee
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 117. Laia Bee is one of the three co-founders of Pincer Games, who’ve debuted with the card-based brawler Fighters of Fate. She’s also deeply involved in the project of fostering a sense of community in the Uruguayan game development scene, and among South American game developers more broadly, and even more broadly … Continue reading "Pop Culture Belongs to Everyone, with Laia Bee"
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Aug 24, 2021
A Better and Weirder World Than This One, with Don Bellenger
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 116. Don Bellenger stops by to talk about his upcoming “open-world gardenvania,” The Beauty Cult, as well as his cyberpunk roguelike-shooter-platformer (and nihilistic synthwave multi-media project) Black Future ’88. Along the way, we discuss the importance of game developers taking inspiration from things other than games, the joys of disengaging from monoculture, … Continue reading "A Better and Weirder World Than This One, with Don Bellenger"
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Aug 10, 2021
This Sense of Freedom, with Charles Bardin
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 115. A Musical Story takes place in the mind of a musician, and it also takes place in an era when rock as a wide-open experimental space, and the album was the thing, and every album was in some sense a concept album. The game is likewise an experiment in telling a … Continue reading "This Sense of Freedom, with Charles Bardin"
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Jul 27, 2021
Make Art, Do Crimes, with D-Cell Games
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 114. UNBEATABLE is a rhythm game, and an adventure game, and it’s serious about being fully both. More than that, it’s a game about the emotional truths of music, and of being in a band, and a piece of art about the connection between making art and doing crimes. In this episode, … Continue reading "Make Art, Do Crimes, with D-Cell Games"
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Jul 13, 2021
Hope Too Is Rad, with Lauren Mee
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 113. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a big heartfelt spectacle of a game—you’ve likely seen some of its dream-vibrant, mirror-polished visuals, and a bit of its cartoony gunplay—and as the game’s Lead Writer, Lauren Mee had a huge amount to do with the heartfelt part of that equation. Rift Apart is … Continue reading "Hope Too Is Rad, with Lauren Mee"
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Jun 29, 2021
How to See Everything Neoliberalism Ignores, with Tali Faulkner (a.k.a. Veselekov)
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 112. Tali Faulkner (better known in internet circles as Veselekov) knew he had something timely on his hands when he made Umurangi Generation, but he couldn’t have known how timely. The base game was inspired by the fires in Australia in 2019, not the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—but with its themes of … Continue reading "How to See Everything Neoliberalism Ignores, with Tali Faulkner (a.k.a. Veselekov)"
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Jun 15, 2021
On Replays, Remasters, and Remakes
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 111. Amid the E3 madness, this crush of new games and games yet to be, we thought we’d take a moment and think a bit about games that are, in one way or another, not new. Let’s talk about games that we replay, and especially the ones that we keep revisiting at … Continue reading "On Replays, Remasters, and Remakes"
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Jun 1, 2021
As Joyously and Explicitly as You Can, into the Fleshy Breach, with Xalavier Nelson Jr.
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 110. Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an absurdly prolific artist and an inveterate collaborator, having left his creative stamp on Hypnospace Outlaw, We Are The Caretakers, Can Androids Pray, Mr. Bucket Told Me To, and so, so much else, from tabletop RPG systems to comics to games journalism. Currently he’s working on SkateBIRD … Continue reading "As Joyously and Explicitly as You Can, into the Fleshy Breach, with Xalavier Nelson Jr."
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May 18, 2021
Making Space to Make Games, with Yadu Rajiv
ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 109. Yadu Rajiv does a whole lot of different things, all of them to do with games and the people and technologies that make them possible. By day, he’s a Lead Game Designer at BYJU’S, working on educational games that toe the line between physical and digital, and the rest of the … Continue reading "Making Space to Make Games, with Yadu Rajiv"
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May 4, 2021
An Accidental Genre, with Santiago Zapata (a.k.a. Slashie)
ETAO Podcast, Episode 108. Santago Zapata stops by to talk about the history of roguelikes, his own expansive body of small works for the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, and his larger works, from Castlevania Roguelike, to Ananias, to his current project NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén. Is it a roguelike, this new game? The purists would say (and … Continue reading "An Accidental Genre, with Santiago Zapata (a.k.a. Slashie)"
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Apr 20, 2021
The Mayonnaise Allegory, with Jeremy Warmsley
ETAO Podcast, Episode 107. Jeremy Warmsley’s music has spanned pop (or more broadly, the whole touring band thing), film, television, radio, and recently, games. He’s an inventive, thoughtful, ever-expressive voice wherever he shows up (including on podcasts, as it happens). Here we mostly talk about his game soundtracking work on Russell’s Quinn’s Linda & Joan, … Continue reading "The Mayonnaise Allegory, with Jeremy Warmsley"
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Apr 6, 2021
The Futures of Stories, with Russell Quinn
ETAO Podcast, Episode 106. Russell Quinn has had a unique career as a technologist enabling stories, building the underlying systems for the ahead-of-its time McSweeney’s app, as well as for the equally-ahead-of-theirs, novel-adjacent multimedia projects The Silent History and The Pickle Index. He’s brought remarkably inventive and playful stories to the world, though not as … Continue reading "The Futures of Stories, with Russell Quinn"
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Mar 23, 2021
A Nuanced Critique of Subtlety, with Chevy Ray
ETAO Podcast, Episode 105. Chevy Ray has been making games for a long time now—though most of them are currently tough to play; RIP Flash—but is probably best known for Ikenfell, a tactical RPG about going to magic school, working through difficult relationships, and petting a great many cats. Here Chevy talks about what it … Continue reading "A Nuanced Critique of Subtlety, with Chevy Ray"
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Mar 9, 2021
Designing for Empathy, with Anisa Sanusi
ETAO Podcast, Episode 104. Anisa Sanusi is an accomplished UI/UX designer, probably best known for her work on Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster—two utterly different games that bring with them utterly different challenges in terms of usability, accessibility, tone, and scope. She’s also the founder of the Limit Break mentorship program, an organization dedicated to … Continue reading "Designing for Empathy, with Anisa Sanusi"
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Feb 23, 2021
Rogue Chunks, with Chris King
ETAO Podcast, Episode 103. Chris King of Batterystaple Games shares a chunk of his time to discuss 30XX, the reimagined, souped-up sequel to the Mega Man X-esque roguelike-alike 20XX. We get pretty far into the weeds as far as the differences between the two games, the double-edged beam-sword of encouraging player-created content from day one, … Continue reading "Rogue Chunks, with Chris King"
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Feb 9, 2021
Experiencing America, with Bryant Young
ETAO Podcast, Episode 102. Our America puts you in the shoes of a Black father driving his son to school—and if that doesn’t sound potentially harrowing to you, then you might be exactly the project’s intended audience. It’s a work that means to illuminate, instruct, challenge, and speak simple, difficult truths. In this interview, Bryant … Continue reading "Experiencing America, with Bryant Young"
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Jan 26, 2021
Communities and Modularities, with Chel Wong
ETAO Podcast, Episode 101. You might know Chel Wong from her rightly-celebrated, highly modular soundtrack to Kine, and some more people are about to know her from Watch This Space. But you definitely already know her if you’re even tangentially involved in the Boston-area indie scene (or for that matter, the New England Smash scene). … Continue reading "Communities and Modularities, with Chel Wong"
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Jan 5, 2021
What We Heard and What We Learned in 2020
ETAO Podcast, Episode 100. For our hundredth episode, we’re trying something a little different and editing together some of our favorite moments from the past year of the ‘cast. If you’ve been looking to catch up but haven’t had the time to dive into entire longform interviews, then this should provide a good place to … Continue reading "What We Heard and What We Learned in 2020"
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Dec 22, 2020
What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2020
ETAO Podcast, Episode 99. 2020, everybody. It was a weird year for lots of things, we think it’s fair to say—including but by no means limited to games. So in this episode, we take a moment to recap the games we played this year, the games currently glistening atop (or languishing deep within) our to-read … Continue reading "What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2020"
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Dec 8, 2020
The Work of War, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 98. Like Eliza before it, Möbius Front ’83 is a Zachtornics game that longtime Zachtronics fans probably didn’t expect—though also like Eliza, it has more than a few themes in common with the rest of the catalog, and beyond that, Möbius Front ’83 adheres to Zach-like conventions more closely than you might … Continue reading "The Work of War, with Zach Barth"
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Nov 24, 2020
The Latest Generation
ETAO Podcast, Episode 97. The PlayStation 5 is out, as is the Xbox Series X and Series S Series! That’s exciting, at least for those of us who can get our hands on them. Drew’s been PS5ing, and he and Lucio both built new PCs this year, so now seemed like a fairly ideal time … Continue reading "The Latest Generation"
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Nov 10, 2020
This Kindness unto Death, with Nick Guérin
ETAO Podcast, Episode 96. After a decade working on the Assassin’s Creed games, Nick Guérin joined Thunder Lotus Games as the Creative Director on Spiritfarer, a farming and management sim about death, kindness, labor, wants, needs, and all manner of other things that Assassin’s Creed (venerable though it is) rarely finds the space to explore. … Continue reading "This Kindness unto Death, with Nick Guérin"
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Oct 27, 2020
Art, Honestly, with Brian Handy
ETAO Podcast, Episode 95. Brian Handy stops by to discuss Wild Honesty, his game of, well, wild honesty. Just how do you design an experience of radical openness and ever-expanding intimacy? How do you then adapt that networked play, with all its extra layers of isolation and all the kinds of human connection it lack … Continue reading "Art, Honestly, with Brian Handy"
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Oct 13, 2020
Math and Art, with Oskar Stålberg
ETAO Podcast, Episode 94. Oskar Stålberg builds little town dioramas, as he puts it—or more exactly, he builds the procedural generation tools that allow him, and his algorithms, and you the player to build little town dioramas together. You could call this an extension of his work on the “megamap” in The Division, and certainly … Continue reading "Math and Art, with Oskar Stålberg"
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Sep 29, 2020
Utopia by Necessity, with Nils Deneken
ETAO Podcast, Episode 93. Nils Deneken has been working on Mutazione in one way or another since 2008. (You might have heard 2009, but in this interview, we set that particular misconception straight!) Through more than a decade of reinvention and revision, the game has retained its core of ensemble-cast intimacy and gorgeous mutated nature … Continue reading "Utopia by Necessity, with Nils Deneken"
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Sep 15, 2020
All Things Liminal and Bespoke, with Damon Reece
ETAO Podcast, Episode 92. Damon Reece is the lead writer on Necrobarista, a visual novel about death and coffee (and therefore the rest of life) rendered in a bespoke-unto-madness 3D anime style and set very definitively in Melbourne, Australia. It’s in most ways a visual novel, but there are key ways in which it couldn’t … Continue reading "All Things Liminal and Bespoke, with Damon Reece"
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Sep 1, 2020
Refusing to Compete, Choosing to Cooperate
ETAO Podcast, Episode 91. Drew and Lucio check in on the state of co-op games, especially online ones, in this strange isolated times. How has co-op changed over the past few decades, both in character and in quantity? Why are we so drawn to cooperative games, and why (for us) does team competition just not … Continue reading "Refusing to Compete, Choosing to Cooperate"
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Aug 18, 2020
We All Just Want Attention, with Warren Arnold
ETAO Podcast, Episode 90. Warren Arnold has been with Jackbox Games since they were Jellyvision, having worked first on the Facebook iteration of You Don’t Know Jack, and later on every Jackbox Party Pack, including the forthcoming seventh one. Here he talks about the peculiarities of Jackbox Games’ design process, the finer points of comedy … Continue reading "We All Just Want Attention, with Warren Arnold"
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Aug 4, 2020
How Conflict Sounds, with Ilan Eshkeri
ETAO Podcast, Episode 89. Ilan Eshkeri has had a storied career in film and television—from Layer Cake, 47 Ronin, and Ninja Assassin, to Black Sea, Still Alice, Austenland, and the Shaun the Sheep Movie—and has recently been working in video games as well. He’s now taken the playful reactive soundtracking tricks he honed on The … Continue reading "How Conflict Sounds, with Ilan Eshkeri"
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Jul 21, 2020
Workdays in Hell Dimension, with Laura Michet and Brendon Chung
ETAO Podcast, Episode 88. Brendon Chung is the main creative force behind Atom Zombie Smasher, Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving, Flotilla, Flotilla 2, Quadrilateral Cowboy, and the upcoming Skin Deep. Laura Michet is an accomplished writer, and a perhaps equally accomplished editor, having lent her talents to Industries of Titan, Frog Fractions 2, and … Continue reading "Workdays in Hell Dimension, with Laura Michet and Brendon Chung"
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Jul 7, 2020
Space Chasing Together, Apart, with Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux
ETAO Podcast, Episode 87. Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux outrun the Hunter to join us again and talk about Space Chase, their co-op tabletop map-’em-up and the delightful follow-up to their assiduously PvP card game Wicked Apples. This is, to put it mildly, a strange time to be making indie tabletop games—not only because tabletop … Continue reading "Space Chasing Together, Apart, with Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux"
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Jun 23, 2020
Talking about Way More than Coding, with Moo Yu
ETAO Podcast, Episode 86. Moo Yu stops by to talk about his work on Knights and Bikes, Subsurface Circular, LittleBigPlanet, and several of the Ratchet & Clank games—plus his advocacy, activism, and mentorship via POC in Play. Beyond that, he gets into a deep, generous discussion about the strange position of the code itself in … Continue reading "Talking about Way More than Coding, with Moo Yu"
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Jun 9, 2020
Access and Challenge, with Greg Haynes
ETAO Podcast, Episode 85. Greg Haynes is the Lead Games User Researcher at AbleGamers, an organization dedicated, simply but profoundly, to making sure that everyone can play video games, regardless of disability. That’s a huge mandate, serving a dauntingly large and diverse group of players. So in this interview, Greg talks us through AbleGamers’ philosophy … Continue reading "Access and Challenge, with Greg Haynes"
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May 26, 2020
Everything Animal Crossing, and Everything Else
ETAO Podcast, Episode 84. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been stealing hearts, blowing up timelines, and filling in blanks in our shared social fabric for about two surreally protracted months now. For once, the zeitgeist hasn’t outrun our goofy, research-heavy way of picking topics! So in this episode, Lauren Villegas joins in to talk about … Continue reading "Everything Animal Crossing, and Everything Else"
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May 12, 2020
Arcade Games in Isolation, with Nikita Mikros and Josh DeBonis
ETAO Podcast, Episode 83. Nikita Mikros and Josh DeBonis created the original field game Killer Queen, before adapting it into the venerable indie arcade esport institution that it is today. They were a bit less involved in the home game adaptation, Killer Queen Black, since to them, Killer Queen was a fundamentally face-to-face experience, communitarian … Continue reading "Arcade Games in Isolation, with Nikita Mikros and Josh DeBonis"
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May 5, 2020
When It’s Right to Fight, with Shawn Alexander Allen
ETAO Podcast, Episode 82. Treachery in Beatdown City is a beat-’em-up/turn-based RPG mashup that combines a vast array of Shawn Alexander Allen’s preoccupations, from a shifting and in some ways radicalizing political consciousness, to questions of hybrid identity, to frustrations with an ever-gentrifying New York. It’s a game about the world going strange, and about … Continue reading "When It’s Right to Fight, with Shawn Alexander Allen"
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Apr 28, 2020
In Sokpop We Trust, with Tijmen Tio
ETAO Podcast, Episode 81. Tijmen Tio is one quarter of the game dev collective/boyband Sokpop, who’ve been putting out a game every two weeks since 2018. It’s a way of working that requires a great deal of trust among the developers, and between them and their audience—which makes it unique, and beautiful, and especially worth … Continue reading "In Sokpop We Trust, with Tijmen Tio"
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Apr 14, 2020
What a Wunderlingful World, with Olof Karlsson
ETAO Podcast, Episode 80. Olof Karlsson autoruns on over to talk about Wunderling, the puzzle-platformer where you’re a not-a-goomba with some ambition (or maybe just some especially good-bad luck). We talk about the finer points of movement code (and the oft-subliminal nature of gamefeel), the art of building on what you like in other games … Continue reading "What a Wunderlingful World, with Olof Karlsson"
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Mar 31, 2020
Arvi Is Talk, with Arvi Teikari
ETAO Podcast, Episode 79. Arvi Teikari is here to talk about Baba Is You, as well as Environmental Station Alpha, its forthcoming sequel, and the bonny pile of other gamic delights that he’s made and is making. Along the way we also talk about the function of criticism and reviews, the ever-befuddling burlesque of spoiler … Continue reading "Arvi Is Talk, with Arvi Teikari"
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Mar 17, 2020
Getting Back on Track, with Adriel Wallick
ETAO Podcast, Episode 78. Adriel Wallick has been running Train Jam, a game-make-a-thon on a train traveling from Chicago to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, since 2014. The event has produced a truly staggering number of weird and wonderful creations, and just as importantly, it’s been creatively and socially reinvigorating foe a whole … Continue reading "Getting Back on Track, with Adriel Wallick"
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Mar 3, 2020
Relatively Manifold, with William Chyr
ETAO Podcast, Episode 77. William Chyr’s long-in-the-works puzzle-exploration art installation of a game, Manifold Garden, has been out in the world for a few months now—which means it’s the perfect time to talk through how the game came to be, how it changed over the past seven years, and how it fits into the tradition … Continue reading "Relatively Manifold, with William Chyr"
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Feb 18, 2020
That Real Genuine Connection, with Emma Kinema
ETAO Podcast, Episode 76. Game Workers Unite is at the forefront of the effort to unionize the games industry—and according to Emma Kinema, the best way to do that is to treat it as an industry, organized under a single union rather than broken up by role or discipline. Why is that the way to … Continue reading "That Real Genuine Connection, with Emma Kinema"
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Feb 4, 2020
Emotional Survival, with Paula Rogers and Vincent Perea
ETAO Podcast, Episode 75. Neo Cab is the debut game from Chance Agency, about the last human rideshare cabbie in an aggressively automated, vertically integrated, near-future California city. In this episode, Vincent Perea discusses the game’s visuals (a masterclass in scale, scope, and focus), and Paula Rogers discusses the game’s writing process (which, by design, … Continue reading "Emotional Survival, with Paula Rogers and Vincent Perea"
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Jan 21, 2020
Delicious to the (Mad) Max, with David Galindo
ETAO Podcast, Episode 74. David Galindo’s exacting, deadpan-absurdist Cook, Serve, Delicious! series is officially a trilogy, with Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! taking the at-the-margins dystopian elements from 2 (or 2!! actually) and running with them, full-tilt into a tale of human-robot partnership and combat-ready foodtrucks. In this episode, David talks about the difficulties of balancing … Continue reading "Delicious to the (Mad) Max, with David Galindo"
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Jan 7, 2020
What We Played and ‘Casted (and What We Didn’t) in 2019
ETAO Podcast, Episode 73. In this episode, we take stock of what we played this year, what we didn’t get to, and what we’re looking forward to playing next (just like we did last year). Our lists here aren’t comprehensive, because wow there are a lot of games worth playing, but we do try to … Continue reading "What We Played and ‘Casted (and What We Didn’t) in 2019"
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Dec 24, 2019
Making Beautiful Places, with Phoebe Watson
ETAO Podcast, Episode 72. Phoebe Watson joined the team at DragonBear Studios for the expressed purpose of making sure that the indigenous cultural elements in Chaos Tavern are meaningful and on-point—and that’s meant everything from discussing aesthetics with the rest of the team, to shaping culturally syncretic (yet specific) lore, to soliciting the opinions of … Continue reading "Making Beautiful Places, with Phoebe Watson"
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Dec 10, 2019
Hyper-Focused Antifragile Games as Drugs as Puzzles, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 71. Another dose of Zach Barth, this time focused on MOLEK-SYNTEZ, a Zachtronics game that plays a bit like Opus Magnum but was made more in the spirit of TIS-100—which is to say quickly, with extreme focus, and driven by Zach’s primordial need to make games, games forever, games all the time. … Continue reading "Hyper-Focused Antifragile Games as Drugs as Puzzles, with Zach Barth"
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Nov 26, 2019
The Black Queen’s Tutorial, with cs wallace
ETAO Podcast, Episode 70. If you only know the arcade version Killer Queen by reputation, then you might assume Killer Queen Black is simply a home port of the same game—but in fact is Black another game entirely, albeit one that carries over many core mechanics from what is now officially called Killer Queen Arcade, … Continue reading "The Black Queen’s Tutorial, with cs wallace"
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Nov 12, 2019
Making Mysteries More Mysterious, with Joe Russ
ETAO Podcast, Episode 69. Joe Russ is deeply invested in narrative, and also in animation—so it makes all the sense in the world that he would co-create something like Jenny LeClue, a lovingly and distinctively animated, meta-meta-narrative detective adventure. (And yes, I do mean that it’s in large part a narrative about narratives about narratives). … Continue reading "Making Mysteries More Mysterious, with Joe Russ"
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Oct 29, 2019
Skating on Water and Swimming in Menus, with kalin
ETAO Podcast, Episode 68. kalin is the co-founder of Funktronic Labs, best known for their ambitious VR fare, from the consummately simulated garden-’em-up Fujii to the real-ass-RTS-but-in-VR Cosmic Trip. Here he stops by to talk about Wave Break, which began its life as a VR Wave Race-alike and gradually morphed into Tony Hawk on jet … Continue reading "Skating on Water and Swimming in Menus, with kalin"
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Oct 15, 2019
Where the Die Had Not Yet Been Cast, with Max Krieger
ETAO Podcast, Episode 67. We cross paths with Max Krieger and talk CROSSNIQ+ and the so-called, much-lately-in-vogue Y2K aesthetic. Come for the discussion of how aesthetics and attitudes toward technology are inextricable from history and politics, stay for a spirited endorsement of the indie game development scene in Cleveland (and of Cleveland in general). Let’s … Continue reading "Where the Die Had Not Yet Been Cast, with Max Krieger"
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Oct 1, 2019
Everything That Could Possibly Be More Complicated, with Sam Rosenthal
ETAO Podcast, Episode 66. Sam Rosenthal shuffles on over to talk about Where Cards Fall, a reflective, touch-native narrative puzzle game almost a decade in the making—as well as his previous work on the fiercely and rightly beloved What Remains of Edith Finch. Along the way, Sam talks about how Apple Arcade could offer new … Continue reading "Everything That Could Possibly Be More Complicated, with Sam Rosenthal"
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Sep 17, 2019
Just a Big Old Mess, with Ricky Haggett
ETAO Podcast, Episode 65. Ricky Haggett takes stock of his work on Wilmot’s Warehouse, Hohokum, Loot Rascals, Frobisher Says, Tenya Wanya Teens, and his other odd, wondrous work. We talk about the primacy of collaboration in his games, the importance of making game development rewarding (practically and financially as well as creatively), the “repetitive stress … Continue reading "Just a Big Old Mess, with Ricky Haggett"
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Sep 3, 2019
When You’re in It, with Matthew Seiji Burns
ETAO Podcast, Episode 64. Matthew Seiji Burns is responsible for some of the best and least-discussed narratives and soundtracks in games, namely those in the beloved-for-other-reasons Zachtronics works Infinifactory, TIS-100, SHENZHEN I/O, and Opus Magnum—not to mention the generally under-discussed Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, his Twine work, and his past-life AAA work on … Continue reading "When You’re in It, with Matthew Seiji Burns"
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Aug 20, 2019
Welcoming Surrealism, with Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka
ETAO Podcast, Episode 63. Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka worked together on the original Anodyne, its under-appreciated follow-up Even the Ocean, and now their latest Analgesic Productions joint, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust. It’s a game about getting to know the world in its infinite strangeness, acquiring and shedding preconceptions, and meeting new people who … Continue reading "Welcoming Surrealism, with Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka"
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Aug 6, 2019
A Consigliere’s Life for Me, with Alan Dang
ETAO Podcast, Episode 62. Alan Dang emerges from the shadows to talk about his work on the Skullgirls mobile game, the VR garden-’em-up Fujii, and the indie arcade esport stalwart Killer Queen. Plus, we talk about the broader possibilities for virtual reality, the criminally ignored potential of games for education, and the fact that a … Continue reading "A Consigliere’s Life for Me, with Alan Dang"
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Jul 23, 2019
Better Ways to Build Better Stories, with Bryant Cannon
ETAO Podcast, Episode 61. Bryant Cannon joins us to discuss Oxenfree, its follow-up Afterparty, and the licensed, now-delisted Night School games that came in between—not to mention his previous mobile work, much of it also now delisted. As such, we talk about the melancholy weirdness of games being delisted, and more broadly, of games being … Continue reading "Better Ways to Build Better Stories, with Bryant Cannon"
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Jul 9, 2019
Choices and Games and Stories, with Juan Vaca
ETAO Podcast, Episode 60. Juan Vaca chooses to adventure with us—into his work at Telltale Games, at Endless Entertainment, and now at the burgeoning interactive team at Netflix. We talk about Juan’s approach to narrative, the oft-ignored importance of theme, and his longstanding interest in using existing characters and worlds to tell original stories. We … Continue reading "Choices and Games and Stories, with Juan Vaca"
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Jun 25, 2019
The Art of Design(ing Art), with Greg Batha
ETAO Podcast, Episode 59. Greg Batha has done a remarkable variety of creative/technical work, from the interface of Dream Daddy, to live visualizations for touring musicians, to the hectic and adorable puzzle battler bit bit blocks. What brings it all together, he explains in this wide-ranging interview, is the desire to do things in a … Continue reading "The Art of Design(ing Art), with Greg Batha"
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Jun 11, 2019
Now Game Music Is Just Music, with Jim Guthrie
ETAO Podcast, Episode 58. Jim Guthrie joins us to reflect on his storied soundtracking career, from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and BELOW, to Indie Game: The Movie, to (implicitly, here) Reigns: Her Majesty and Planet Coaster—not to mention his auspicious and only-semi-separate indie rock career, the joys and sorrows of playing live, and Bandcamp’s … Continue reading "Now Game Music Is Just Music, with Jim Guthrie"
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May 28, 2019
Weird Mad Stuff, with Zachariah Chandler
ETAO Podcast, Episode 57. Zach Chandler catches the bus with us and talks about Nth Dimension[al] Hiking, his gently arcane spectral traverse-’em-up. We discuss Zach’s guiding principle, namely that if you’re going to make a game that isn’t obvious, then you’d better be sure that it’s nonetheless truthful. That’s easier said than done, of course, … Continue reading "Weird Mad Stuff, with Zachariah Chandler"
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May 14, 2019
Something Bigger Than We Are, with Jordan Thomas
ETAO Podcast, Episode 56. Jordan Thomas hides out with us to talk about The Blackout Club. It’s a game that is at once an “infinite meaning machine” and an authored narrative, a game about “extremely rewarding movement” but not “physical combat with a clear victor,” an early access experience that shares much of the appeal … Continue reading "Something Bigger Than We Are, with Jordan Thomas"
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Apr 30, 2019
This Living Online Thing, with Jay Tholen
ETAO Podcast, Episode 55. Jay Tholen remembers the internet of the ’90s, when things were a few shades dorkier, and whole lot less smoothed-over and centrally managed—and especially the internet of the late 90s, when an end-of-days urgency and paranoia hung over all of that. Hypnospace Outlaw is in some ways his attempt to capture … Continue reading "This Living Online Thing, with Jay Tholen"
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Apr 16, 2019
Accessibility and Joy (also Dogs), with Brian Fairbanks
ETAO Podcast, Episode 54. Brian Fairbanks’ game Lost and Hound brings together a whole lot of his passions—from meaningful soundscapes, to accessibility, to dogs. In this episode, we start by talking about Host and Hound and end up talking about mainstream games that are (often, accidentally) accessible, audiogames that are build from the ground up … Continue reading "Accessibility and Joy (also Dogs), with Brian Fairbanks"
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Apr 2, 2019
How to Play Games Wrong
ETAO Podcast, Episode 53. In lieu of a guest this week, we humbly present a conversation that Drew and Lucio recorded just before GDC, all about what it means to play a game wrong—from misunderstanding mechanics, to knowingly ignoring objectives and incentives, to adding one’s own layer of rules for tournament play or speedruning. Playing … Continue reading "How to Play Games Wrong"
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Mar 19, 2019
What Level Designers Design, with Evan Hill
ETAO Podcast, Episode 52. Evan Hill drops in to talk a little about Solar Ash Kingdom and Torment: Tides of Numenera, and a whole lot about his current work at Naughty Dog—though don’t expect any new details on The Last of Us Part II itself. Evan keeps that close, and fair enough. What he does … Continue reading "What Level Designers Design, with Evan Hill"
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Mar 5, 2019
The Thing Is the Thing It Is, with C. Andrew Rohrmann (a.k.a. scntfc)
ETAO Podcast, Episode 51. C. Andrew Rohrmann (also known as scntfc, previously known as Scientific American, and alternately known by some pseudonyms that we’re not at liberty to disclose) stops by to talk about reactive soundtracks, “the mutability of music,” his notion of “anonymous ubiquity,” and his work on games like Oxenfree, Afterparty, Old Man’s … Continue reading "The Thing Is the Thing It Is, with C. Andrew Rohrmann (a.k.a. scntfc)"
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Feb 23, 2019
A Quantum of Wobble, with Robin Baumgarten
ETAO Podcast, Episode 50. Robin Baumgarten’s work doesn’t fit neatly into any single category or tradition. He makes games that are also toys, and also art installations, and also unusually beguiling lamps, and also—most straightforward to experience, most difficult to describe—simply objects that make the world a little stranger a little more beautiful whenever and … Continue reading "A Quantum of Wobble, with Robin Baumgarten"
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Feb 9, 2019
There Is Co-Op on Mars, with Philip Buchanan
ETAO Podcast, Episode 49. Philip Buchanan went indie so that he could finish 39 Days to Mars, a consummately silly co-op-as-comedy physics-and-gadgets puzzle-’em-up rendered in florid trichromatic line drawings and bone-dry Britishisms. The result is as delightful as any cuppa could hope to be be. In this episode, Philip stops by to talk about the … Continue reading "There Is Co-Op on Mars, with Philip Buchanan"
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Jan 26, 2019
Literally Anybody Anywhere, with Rami Ismail
ETAO Podcast, Episode 48. Rami Ismail wants everyone to be able to make games. “Literally anybody anywhere” should be able to work in this medium that has the potential to transcend not only cultural and national boundaries, but language. The work of including everyone is, of course, not trivial—but Rami is attempting to do the … Continue reading "Literally Anybody Anywhere, with Rami Ismail"
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Jan 12, 2019
Food, Death, and Everything Else Worth Talking About, with Gabby DaRienzo
ETAO Podcast, Episode 47. Gabby DaRienzo stops by to talk about her work as one half of the core Laundry Bear Games team, from A Mortician’s Tale (and Tracktoons) to their still-in-its-early-days next project—as well as her excellent, now-concluded podcast Play Dead, and her extensive and varied freelance work on Celeste, Parkitect, Graceful Explosion Machine, … Continue reading "Food, Death, and Everything Else Worth Talking About, with Gabby DaRienzo"
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Dec 29, 2018
One Hell of a Not-Hell, with Greg Kasavin
ETAO Podcast, Episode 46. Greg Kasavin descends and/or ascends to our realm to talk about Hades, Supergiant’s roguelike recently surprise-released into Early Access on Epic Games’ brand new storefront. We talk about how Hades both builds on and departs from Supergiant’s previous games (Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre), and then we talk a great deal about … Continue reading "One Hell of a Not-Hell, with Greg Kasavin"
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Dec 15, 2018
What We Played and ‘Casted (and What We Didn’t) in 2018
ETAO Podcast, Episode 45. As 2018 winds down, esteemed ETAO Podcast producer Frances Michelle Lopez sits down to talk about what we played in 2018, what we’re looking forward to playing in 2019, and what’s currently sitting in our to-read piles. We couldn’t get to everything, during this conversation or throughout this year. We never … Continue reading "What We Played and ‘Casted (and What We Didn’t) in 2018"
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Dec 1, 2018
The Perfidy of THE SUN, with Heather Flowers
ETAO Podcast, Episode 44. Heather Flowers talks EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: Powered by Blood (and the MEATPUNKS material beyond). We talk about body horror, episodic storytelling and serialization, the anger and clarity of punk, the multiplicity and illegibility of punk, and the process of creating EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER on a schedule that’s more MODERATE MEATPUNKS SOME … Continue reading "The Perfidy of THE SUN, with Heather Flowers"
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Nov 17, 2018
This Is a Call (Back) to ARMS
ETAO Podcast, Episode 43. ARMS got announced with the Switch, and it launched with the Switch, and it’s been both passionately loved and broadly ignored. Lucio was late to the Switch party, and thus late to the ARMS party, but he’s been pretty taken with the game. We’ve played together a bunch, and had about … Continue reading "This Is a Call (Back) to ARMS"
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Nov 3, 2018
Be a Part of the World You’re Changing, with Jakub Kasztalski
ETAO Podcast, Episode 42. Headliner: NoviNews puts you in the shoes of he/she/xe who curates the news in a country that is rapidly going strange, and just as rapidly becoming politically unstable. It’s a game about information as a tool, news as a product, and ideology as a career. We talk about the process of … Continue reading "Be a Part of the World You’re Changing, with Jakub Kasztalski"
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Oct 31, 2018
Something Wicked This Way Apples, with Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux
ETAO Podcast, Episode 41. Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux (collectively known as Almost A Game) stop by for a Halloween-as-hell chat about their whimsical tabletop skulduggery simulator, Wicked Apples. We talk about the unique joys of tabletop games—and of digital game, for that matter, and about translating each to the other. We also discuss the … Continue reading "Something Wicked This Way Apples, with Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux"
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Oct 20, 2018
The Persistence of (Stories about) Memory, with Henrik Pettersson
ETAO Podcast, Episode 40. Henrik Pettersson introduces us to The Gardens Between, a wordless narrative puzzle game in which you play as time itself. We talk about themes surrounding memory, the quest to make complicated games simple (and vice-versa), the seemingly-ever-in-progress indiepocolypse, and a few untranslatable Swedish words. Oh, and SPOILERS for Persona 5 from … Continue reading "The Persistence of (Stories about) Memory, with Henrik Pettersson"
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Oct 6, 2018
Let’s Be Bards, with Greg Lobanov
ETAO Podcast, Episode 39. Greg Lobanov swings by to walk about Wandersong, with its happy-go-lucky approach to world-in-the-balance storytelling, its massive 110-tune soundtrack, and its uncommonly rich soundscapes. We talk about the collaborate process that brought the game to life, the thinking behind a music-driven game, and how our emotional connections to games—both in the … Continue reading "Let’s Be Bards, with Greg Lobanov"
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Sep 22, 2018
This Is MEATPUNK and I’m Telling Everyone, with Josie Brechner (a.k.a. Visager)
ETAO Podcast, Episode 38. Josie Brechner (a.k.a. Visager) talks about her OST work in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, Blossom Tales, Spice of Life, Gay Monster Kiss Club, and my electric heart, not to mention her other music, including the Songs for Unmade Worlds series. She makes wonderful music, for games both real and imagined (as well … Continue reading "This Is MEATPUNK and I’m Telling Everyone, with Josie Brechner (a.k.a. Visager)"
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Sep 8, 2018
Singing Dunes and Wandering Creatures, with Max Arocena
ETAO Podcast, Episode 37. Max Arocena (a.k.a. Colorfiction) hangs out on his porch, amid a rising squall of crickets, to discuss 0°N 0°W (a.k.a. Zero North Zero West), his carefully crafted new dream-’em-up. We discuss the rich possibilities of games without gameplay as such, the incomparable surreality of roadtrips, and the odd connections between working … Continue reading "Singing Dunes and Wandering Creatures, with Max Arocena"
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Aug 25, 2018
REPL PUNK, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 36. Zach Barth is back to talk about EXAPUNKS, and the cyber-lanche (always create new hyphenate words, in accordance with the WIRED style guide) of questions that the game raises: Do we miss something by wringing our hands about privacy when what’s really at stake in an increasingly computerized world is agency? … Continue reading "REPL PUNK, with Zach Barth"
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Apr 18, 2018
Co-Op Hath Four Furies, with Kenny Lee
ETAO Podcast, Episode 35. Kenny Lee is the less-frequently-interviewed half of the two-brother team that founded Cellar Door Games, the studio behind (most famously) Rogue Legacy and (most recently) Full Metal Furies. He’s also a fan of Ganbare Goemon and Mischief Makers and therefore a megaconnoisseur and the greatest game scholar of our age—so people … Continue reading "Co-Op Hath Four Furies, with Kenny Lee"
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Mar 21, 2018
You Can Feel Great All The Time Solving Problems, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 34. Zach Barth is back to talk about Opus Magnum and SHENZHEN I/O, the latest in each of Zachtronics’ semi-distinct trademark genres: games where you make things that makes things, and games where you actually code or script, respectively. We talk about how these two parallel tracks came to be, where their … Continue reading "You Can Feel Great All The Time Solving Problems, with Zach Barth"
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Feb 15, 2018
Thumbprints and Thunder, with Joel Corelitz
ETAO Podcast, Episode 33. Joel Corelitz drops in to discuss his work on GOROGOA, TumbleSeed, The Unfinished Swan, and Eastward, along with the broader design philosophies behind those games. Even more broadly than that, we talk about the layers of audience engagement in music, in games, and especially in music in games—not to mention the … Continue reading "Thumbprints and Thunder, with Joel Corelitz"
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Oct 10, 2017
On Orcs and Orchestras, with Garry Schyman
ETAO Podcast, Episode 32. Garry Schyman scored all three Bioshocks, all three Destroy All Humans games, Resistance: Retribution, Front Mission Evolved, and that oddly engrossing God of War clone based on Dante’s Inferno— and that’s just scratching the surface of his video game music, to say nothing of his enormous body of work for film … Continue reading "On Orcs and Orchestras, with Garry Schyman"
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Jul 24, 2017
Pyre, Purgatories, Prison Dramas, and Talking Dogs, with Greg Kasavin
ETAO Podcast, Episode 31. Greg Kasavin stops by to discuss Supergiant’s latest, the party-based purgatory-escape-’em-up Pyre. We also find some time to discuss Bastion and Transistor, not to mention the limits of “naked allegory,” the largely untapped potential of diegetic Game Over states—and more generally, of game designs that allow for and accommodate failure—and the … Continue reading "Pyre, Purgatories, Prison Dramas, and Talking Dogs, with Greg Kasavin"
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Jun 9, 2017
Persona 5 and the Punk of Pope Joan, with Adam Osborn
ETAO Podcast, Episode 30. Medievalist, archnerd, and outspoken Persona-enjoyer Adam Osborn returns to discuss Persona 5—as well as visual novels, waifus, and Pope Joan, though not always at the same time and not necessarily in that order. Thrill as we trip over each other trying to remark on everything remarkable about this mad JRPG opus. … Continue reading "Persona 5 and the Punk of Pope Joan, with Adam Osborn"
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Mar 28, 2017
A Seminar (Just Bearly) on Persona 3 and 4, with Adam Osborn
ETAO Podcast, Episode 29. Drew’s good buddy Adam Osborn, PhD-pursuer and self-described archnerd, stops by the discuss the Persona games in anticipation of Persona 5 finally coming out next week (but no, really for real this time). Starting at the 01:08:24 mark, I should mention, this one does get a TRIGGER WARNING for suicide ideation, … Continue reading "A Seminar (Just Bearly) on Persona 3 and 4, with Adam Osborn"
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Nov 22, 2016
Criticizing Videogame Critique, Part 2, with Richard Terrell
ETAO Podcast, Episode 28. Last week, Richard Terrell outlined his framework for taxonomizing and evaluating game criticism, and we spent some time using that framework to disagree vociferously about whether Arin Hanson is any damn good at talking about Zelda. This week we get into the weeds about the Zeldas themselves, and here’s the crux … Continue reading "Criticizing Videogame Critique, Part 2, with Richard Terrell"
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Nov 15, 2016
Criticizing Videogame Critique, Part 1, with Richard Terrell
ETAO Podcast, Episode 27. Richard Terrell returns to talk about Design Oriented, his attempt to categorize, catalog, and (here’s where things get interesting) rate game critique. What’s being measured there, and how is he measuring it, and to what end? Last time, we talked about what games are, what art is, and why he considers … Continue reading "Criticizing Videogame Critique, Part 1, with Richard Terrell"
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Nov 8, 2016
The Dark Souls of Increasingly Unhelpful Analogies
ETAO Podcast, Episode 26. Following on our bummer of a conversation about the most joyful show on television, this week we have an exuberant and hopeful conversation about a series of games focused on violence, failure, and ends of days. Go figure. Yes, it’s time to discuss Dark Souls, and the fandoms attendant thereto. This … Continue reading "The Dark Souls of Increasingly Unhelpful Analogies"
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Nov 1, 2016
Gem Fusions and Fandom Fissions in the Universe of Steven Universe
ETAO Podcast, Episode 25. Lucio and I are both fans of Steven Universe, but we’re not exactly members of the Steven Universe fandom—or fandoms, plural, each with its own social norms, its own orthodoxies about what the series means, and its own articles of faith about where the story is headed. The people most conspicuously … Continue reading "Gem Fusions and Fandom Fissions in the Universe of Steven Universe"
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Oct 25, 2016
Virtual Realities and Pretend Robots, with Dan Teasdale (and Cassie)
ETAO Podcast, Episode 24. Dan Teasdale returns to discuss No Goblin’s sophomore effort, 100ft Robot Golf, a game about (wait for it) hundred-foot-high robots playing golf. This being a No Goblin game, of course, there’s more to it than that. It’s a deeply personal and proudly goofy admixture of influences that maybe shouldn’t even be … Continue reading "Virtual Realities and Pretend Robots, with Dan Teasdale (and Cassie)"
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Oct 20, 2016
Node-Crawling and Puzzle-Fighting, with Chris McQuinn
ETAO Podcast, Episode 23. Chris McQuinn stops by to discuss DrinkBox Studios’ latest, the touch-based first-person dungeon-crawling amputate-’em-up Severed. You’re a warrior named Sasha, seeking out your lost family in an ever-threatening and arrestingly otherworldly environment. Monstrosities stand in your way (of course) and monster parts get sliced off (as the title suggests) and things … Continue reading "Node-Crawling and Puzzle-Fighting, with Chris McQuinn"
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Aug 3, 2015
Squaring The Magic Circle, with Jordan Thomas, Kain Shin, and Stephen Alexander
ETAO Podcast, Episode 22. The whole Question Games team stops by to discuss (and to discuss the discussion surrounding) their debut project, The Magic Circle. Their debut project as a team, that is. It’s not the kind of game that anybody would or could make without some experience in the world of making games, and … Continue reading "Squaring The Magic Circle, with Jordan Thomas, Kain Shin, and Stephen Alexander"
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Jul 14, 2015
A Pseudo-Instruction That Has No Effect, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 21. Zach Barth sits down to complete our interview triptych. Having already covered the art of the anti-puzzle and the question of whether it’s even possible to spoil Infinifactory, we focus this time on the softer launch that Steam Early Access provides, the conversation alchemy of developers discussing development with developers on … Continue reading "A Pseudo-Instruction That Has No Effect, with Zach Barth"
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May 11, 2015
Toys in Games, Games as Toys, and Action Henk as Both, with Roel Ezendam
ETAO Podcast, Episode 20. Action Henk is out (of Steam Early Access) today, and to celebrate, here’s my conversation with Roel Ezendam of RageSquid Games. Action Henk is a game about momentum, perfectionism, and making things that actually are as amazing as we remember things being in our childhoods—not just recapturing former glory, but surpassing … Continue reading "Toys in Games, Games as Toys, and Action Henk as Both, with Roel Ezendam"
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May 4, 2015
On the Semi-Unspoilability of Infinifactory, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 19. Zach Barth returns for a spoiler-centric look at a game where spoilers arguably don’t even matter, his absolutely delightful engineer-’em-up Infinifactory. Mechanically, the game is in one sense unspoilable. Sure, seeing a solution to a given puzzle takes an open-ended head-scratcher and turns it into a set of IKEA furniture, but … Continue reading "On the Semi-Unspoilability of Infinifactory, with Zach Barth"
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Mar 2, 2015
Games That Don’t Exclude and Foxes That Don’t Talk, with Erin Robinson
ETAO Podcast, Episode 18. Erin Robinson of Ivy Games stops by to discuss Gravity Ghost, her work teaching game design at Columbia College Chicago, talking animals, not-talking animals, and the previously untapped power fantasy of terraforming planets with one’s long, beautiful hair. I was really taken with Gravity Ghost from the first time I played … Continue reading "Games That Don’t Exclude and Foxes That Don’t Talk, with Erin Robinson"
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Jan 29, 2015
On the Art of the Anti-Puzzle, with Zach Barth
ETAO Podcast, Episode 17. Infinifactory feels like SpaceChem for the world that Minecraft hath wrought—which makes sense, given that it’s the latest from Zach Barth, who both masterminded SpaceChem and ushered in the Blocks ‘n Voxels Age with his seminal “infinifranchise” (Zach’s competitive mine-’em-up Infiniminer was the direct inspiration for Minecraft, and well, after Minecraft … Continue reading "On the Art of the Anti-Puzzle, with Zach Barth"
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Jan 27, 2015
All That Glitters Is Not Goblin, with Dan Teasdale
ETAO Podcast, Episode 16. Dan Teasdale stops by to talk about Roundabout, the debut game from his newly-founded two-person indie studio No Goblin. We discuss the game (which is awfully good), his previous work on Destroy All Humans! and the Rock Band series, and why we both love The Jackbox Party Pack. And yes, he … Continue reading "All That Glitters Is Not Goblin, with Dan Teasdale"
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Oct 3, 2014
Work-of-Art-as-Gateway-Drug (and How the Internet Will Hopefully Solve Everything), with Jack Lawrence Mayer
ETAO Podcast, Episode 15. When I interviewed Jack Lawrence Mayer for UChicago Arts back in 2102, he was about to launch Single Long, his seven-episode digital series for HBO. His latest project, LA Famous, follows the same basic format—but he’s produced it without the backing of HBO or, for that matter, any other network or … Continue reading "Work-of-Art-as-Gateway-Drug (and How the Internet Will Hopefully Solve Everything), with Jack Lawrence Mayer"
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Aug 19, 2014
Making a Sequel to Chess and Making Sense of IP Law, with Zac Burns
ETAO Podcast, Episode 14. Zac Burns of Ludeme Games joins me to discuss his studio’s digital adaptation of Chess 2, which is out on OUYA, and as of today, on Steam as well. Along the way, we talk about the challenges of translating tabletop games into videogames, the (many) problems with modern intellectual property and … Continue reading "Making a Sequel to Chess and Making Sense of IP Law, with Zac Burns"
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Jul 15, 2014
Lizardry, Technology, and What to Call Roguelikes, with Geoff Blair and Matt Hackett
ETAO Podcast, Episode 13. At first glance, A Wizard’s Lizard doesn’t seem like a roguelike-alike, but more specifically like a Binding of Isaac-alike, what with its distinctive combination of Zelda and Smash TV. But on closer inspection, A Wizard’s Lizard is a fairly different beast, owing more to A Link to the Past than to the … Continue reading "Lizardry, Technology, and What to Call Roguelikes, with Geoff Blair and Matt Hackett"
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Jul 8, 2014
The Oddness of Art and the Forgotten History of Sound, with Lila Newman
ETAO Podcast, Episode 12. Self-described Actor/Writer/Comedian/Musician/Plant-Owner Lila Newman stops by to discuss her piece-in-progress about Ora B. Nichols—one of the most influential artists of early radio, and specifically of early radio sound effects. You’ve heard Nichols’ work if you’ve ever heard the the 1938 version of The War of the Worlds. You know, the one … Continue reading "The Oddness of Art and the Forgotten History of Sound, with Lila Newman"
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Jun 27, 2014
Evaluating Transistor
ETAO Podcast, Episode 11. Transistor is Supergiant Games’ follow-up to Bastion—not a sequel, and definitely not a rehash, but just as definitely an iteration, a more refined approach to the same set of themes and gameplay ideas. This time, the the skill system is a dizzyingly intricate mutation of Materia, rather than a more standard … Continue reading "Evaluating Transistor"
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Mar 11, 2014
It’s a Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad World, with Phil Tibitoski
ETAO Podcast, Episode 10. Phil Tibitoski stops by to talk about Octodad: Dadliest Catch, the upcoming update and PS4 release thereof, and what’s next for the Young Horses team. We also discuss the dissonance and melancholy of review scores, the perils of balancing games without letting outsiders play them, and Twitch Plays Pokémon (which may … Continue reading "It’s a Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad World, with Phil Tibitoski"
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Feb 11, 2014
Making Sense of the Macklemore Backlash, Part 2
ETAO Podcast, Episode 09. Unproductively hating Macklemore: It’s not just for Kendrick Lamar fans anymore! Last week, we talked about the backlash against Macklemore in the hip-hop community—which meant we also talked about cultural appropriation, race, and the surprisingly slippery issue of who’s more mainstream than whom. This week, we talk about the backlash against … Continue reading "Making Sense of the Macklemore Backlash, Part 2"
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Feb 4, 2014
Making Sense of the Macklemore Backlash, Part 1
ETAO Podcast, Episode 08. The Heist is a really good album. good kid, m.A.A.d. city is a really good album. How did we get to the point where those two statements sound contradictory? In these next two episodes, Lucio and I will dig deep into the current, Internet-wide backlash against Macklemore, by which we’re more … Continue reading "Making Sense of the Macklemore Backlash, Part 1"
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Jan 14, 2014
Defining Games (But Not Art) with Richard Terrell
ETAO Podcast, Episode 07. Richard Terrell of Critical-Gaming stops by to discuss something I wrote in response to something he wrote in response to something Ed Key wrote about whether Proteus is a game. (Still with me?) Just how much work should we be doing to decide what is and isn’t a game, and why? … Continue reading "Defining Games (But Not Art) with Richard Terrell"
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Dec 26, 2013
Enthusing and Kvetching with Alx Preston
ETAO Podcast, Episode 06. Alx Preston, Lead Designer of Hyper Light Drifter, stops by to discuss how limitations foster and enable creativity, how videogames could learn a thing or two from Ernest Hemingway, and how growing up with a treatable-but-undiagnosable illness has left him with zero patience for glib, oversimplified views of life, the universe, … Continue reading "Enthusing and Kvetching with Alx Preston"
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Dec 10, 2013
How Steam Became the Most/Only Acceptable DRM
ETAO Podcast, Episode 05. When last we left the saga of SteamOS, Lucio and I were envisioning a future owned and operated by Valve, and for the most part, we were comfortable with that idea to a degree that made us, well, uncomfortable. So this time around, we dig deep into the topic of DRM. … Continue reading "How Steam Became the Most/Only Acceptable DRM"
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Dec 3, 2013
Will SteamOS Kill Consoles and/or Save Christmas?
ETAO Podcast, Episode 04. Steam wants into your living room, in the guise of a gadget that’s not quite a PC and not quite a console. That could have a moderately apocalyptic effect on the console market, not to mention the long-taken-for-granted dominance of Windows as PC gaming platform. In this moment between big announcements … Continue reading "Will SteamOS Kill Consoles and/or Save Christmas?"
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Nov 26, 2013
Unpacking the Indie Custom Cube
ETAO Podcast, Episode 03. Some independent game developers made a set of jokey, rollickingly broken Magic cards. An awful lot of people found the jokes therein sexist, racist, and generally objectionable. Which is where it gets complicated. Can we separate what black means in Magic from what blackness means in everyday life? Should we? Can … Continue reading "Unpacking the Indie Custom Cube"
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Nov 9, 2013
What Happens After Success, with Davey Wreden
ETAO Podcast, Episode 02. Davey Wreden discusses life after the release of his vividly realized, genuinely unique first game, The Stanley Parable—the problems that come with success, the guilt that comes with admitting that success comes with problems, endlessly recurring impostor syndromes, oscillating egomania, all that. We also discuss the ongoing process of becoming an … Continue reading "What Happens After Success, with Davey Wreden"
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Aug 26, 2013
On Weirdness and Geek Culture, with Jake Kazdal
ETAO Podcast, Episode 01. Game developer and graphic artist Jake Kazdal, who you might know from his work on Rez and Space Channel 5 Part 2, joins us for our inaugural podcast. He discusses the finer points of his studio’s first release, Skulls of the Shogun, and shares the (crazily ambitious) plan for their next … Continue reading "On Weirdness and Geek Culture, with Jake Kazdal"
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