Everybody's Talking At Once

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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?"