Nice Games Club

As the podcast approaches its fifth anniversary, your hosts get a little (more) frivolous. Mark shares some industry news about hardware releases. Ellen prompts everyone to share their experiences of learning development tools and examine their process of learning through the lens of Maximum Whooo. Stephen explores the difference between cooperative and collaborative gameplay, and invents something called a Feedborm. Dang! Steamworks Virtual Conference: Steam Deck - Steam Steam Deck launch delayed by two months - Jay Peters, The Verge Indie handheld Playdate delayed to 2022 - Michael McWhertor, Polygon How Long to Beat: Metroid Dread - HowLongToBeat Learning to Use Tools 14:05 Ellen Burns-Joh

This week, your nice hosts discuss Star Trek, Star Trek, and Ghostbusters. Plus, Mark talks something out of existence, and Ellen is not even gonna not disagree with Stephen. NOTE: Early in the episode we promise a picture of Dale's Halloween costume for the show notes, but we did not have one as this episode went to press. Check this episode's page on our website, and/or our Twitter in the next few days... Mutant Giant Spider Dog - SA Wardega, YouTube The Inside Story of Mass Effect 3's Endings, Finally Told - People Make Games, YouTube The suspense! Power-ups 0:23:09 Mark LaCroix Game Design Franchises

This week the clubhouse is joined by our second favorite pair of game development brothers - Sami Sati and Erick Sati, developers of Astral Gunners. The Sati brothers talk about staying motivated, when to release early access, and saving some of your heart and soul for future projects. Early Access Marketing Production Cave Games - Cave Interactive Co., Ltd, Wikipedia Astral Gunners The Sati Bros. Present: Tips for Early Access Make sure you can finish your game if nobody buys it: Delaying release maybe is OK for your reputation. Cancelling a release will reflects badly on your reputation and will make it tougher to release your next game. Being open and honest with players (customers). Make sure your core game is

Mark goes over the theory and practice of debugging (in Unity, at least). Ellen gets the gist of it. Stephen considers when a game can benefit from having a silent protagonist, or at least a main character that doesn't say anything. Stay tuned after the outro music for bonus sound effects! Wordplay 2021: Celebrating Writing in Contemporary Games - Hand Eye Society Debugging 0:02:06 Mark LaCroix Programming Working in the Inspector: Toggling Debug Mode - Unity Silent Protagonists 0:43:58 Stephen McGregor Game Design Narrative

It's Stephen's turn at Nice Thinking, our new episode format where we brainstorm around a single concept someone brings into the clubhouse. Get ready for your first contact with the Sledgehammer Bride! Glom will be part of Wordplay 2021, November 13-14 - Hand Eye Society Sledgehammer Bride Stephen McGregor Game Design Narrative A Brief History of Beat ’em Up Video Games - Hero Concept Prospective Teachers Misperceive Black Children as Angry  - Bryan Goodman, American Psychological Association The Brute Caricature - History on the Net Ex

This week's episode has things getting a little crepuscular in the clubhouse! Mark possibly flubs the intro (jury is still out on this!), Stephen has prepared two rants and Ellen requests all of our best silly noises. Editors note: I (Stephen) did in fact edit this episode, but it's really early in the morning so I didn't find fun sounds to put in there. There is a fun sound in the episode though! What Is a Crepuscular Animal? - Jaymi Heimbuch, Treehugger Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a bummer - Patrick Gill, Polygon Relaxing Games 0:05:30 Ellen Burns-Johnson Game Design Gaming ‘Optica’ is the Mind-Bending Spiritual Successor to ‘Strata’ that’s Launching N… - Jared

Your nice hosts recorded this episode on an especially-timely Tuesday evening. It turns out that recording on an "off" day does goofy things to a podcaster's brain. Can you improve upon the game of "rock, paper, scissors"? How common are red stop signs across the globe? What noises does a wind serpent make? Do video games really give us choices? How many Kirby plushies does Stephen have? We're asking the tough questions here on Nice Games Club.  Wordplay: Celebrating Writing in Contemporary Games Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo.com Metroid: Dread - Nintendo.com Denver Botanical Gardens Rocky Mountain National Park Lucile's Creole Cafe (has a GREAT breakfast!) Del

In this episode Ellen points out the wisdom of Stephen and Mark makes up excuses to talk about his new favourite T.V. programme (and it's not even a Star Trek show!). Stephen talks about playing Deathloop Prototypes 5:15 Stephen McGregor Game Design Game Shows 0:33:38 Mark LaCroix Game Design

This week, it's the inaugural episode recorded from the brand new clubhouse inside the office of Noble Robot, the gamedev co-working space that Mark just opened up in northeast Minneapolis! Ellen lays out everyone's frustrations, Stephen sets the agenda, and Mark has words for Whirlpool. This way to the new clubhouse! Here's the office fridge, moments before it got really frustrating. The new clubhouse, in "conference room" mode. Your nice hosts each work with remote teams from all over the world, so Mark put together a "world clock" display as the visual centerpiece of the office.

On this week's episode, your nice hosts explore two completely separate but fully compelling topics! Ellen learns a new engine, Mark discusses why shooting could be a more interesting mechanic than it is, and Stephen completely misses a pun. Astral Gunners Pillars of Creation Games shown at 2D Con 2021: Snow Day: The Cold War Emery Johnny Chainsaw Armed and Gelatinous Captain's Log: Crisis Detected Merchant of Windvale Far Away Magical Unicorn Quest Chronicles of the Wolf and Wallachia: Reign of Dracula Eterbal Exodus Widget Satchel They Stirred Astral Gunners Fitment Fingeance Ollie-Oop HyperDot CULTivate Pillars of Creation Learning a Game Engine 0:13:05 Ellen Burns-Johnson Programming Tools

After many months of recording over Discord (or together in Mark's and Dale's apartment), Nice Games Club is finding a new place to meet. Well, "finding" isn't really the right word. Mark and Dale are making it happen. The new clubhouse is being customized as a workspace and community hub, and this week on the show, Your Nice Hosts talk about how to start things up in the new spot. The New Clubhouse Mark LaCroix IRL Meta Ergonomic stools by Herman Miller The cover image for this episode's page is from The Treehouse, an educational game published in 1991. Ellen played this game a lot when she was a kid. Learn more here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-treehouse-1ag

Recently, Mark appeared on an episode of the Star Trek interview podcast (and fellow Minnesota production) Enterprising Individuals to talk about Star Trek video games. It was a lively discussion and we're pleased to re-broadcast it here. Thanks to host Aaron Coker and producer Diane Blum for arranging the interview and allowing your nice hosts to re-post it as an episode of Nice Games Club. Enterprising Individuals Happy Star Trek Day everyone! Wednesday of this week marked the 55th anniversary of the first airing of Star Trek on television, and Paramount's marketing department celebrated the event with a multi-hour livestream of upcoming announcements and touching tributes. Star Trek games (from Enterprising Individuals) Mark LaCroix Gaming IRL

It's your nice hosts second live episode for 2D Con, Minnesota's biggest video game event. Stephen asks the audience to boo at him, Ellen knows the lingo, and Mark isn't making sense. Prompt "Chess 2" "Four-dimensional" "Welcome to Night Vale" Game type Tabletop game Player count 2 Materials 4x4 board. 3 Pawn pieces per player. 1 "Mayor" (King) pieces per player. An unspecified number of Glow Cloud (Queen), Librarian (Bishop), and Reverse Pawn pieces. Setup Place or draw a 4x4 chess-style board. Arrange three Pawn pieces and one Mayor piece along the home row of each player, arranged left-to-right (from each player's point of view) in this pattern: Pawn-Pawn-Mayor-Pawn Rules The goal is to capture the opposing player's Mayor. Mayors move like Kings in Che

It's a packed clubhouse for this special episode! Your regular hosts are joined by two guests: Peter Yang and Dale LaCroix. Peter is a game designer, creative director, and tabletop games agent based out of Minnesota. Dale, as you know, is just plain evil. The adventure of the day—pitching games to tabletop publishers. And Peter is our guide! Pitching Tabletop Games Marketing Physical Games Tabletop Listen to the episode where GLOM first took shape (episode 210). Glom Protospiel MN (2020) Twin Cities Playtest with IGDA-TC GenCon Origins Game Fair

This week, your nice hosts welcome creative director and all-around "VR Specialist" Dana Ware to talk about location-based entertainment, the incredible potential of VR during a pandemic, and where VR will be in 5 years. Designing for VR Game Design IRL VR / AR / XR Dark Slope Studios The Void - Wikipedia Malls have a future: location-based entertainment - Kim Schaefer, Venture Beat Curtis Hickman - Speaker Biography - Future of Storytelling Facebook Horizon Dana Ware G

It's that time again! Time for another episode, that is. Mark tries to convince his fellow hosts that games should include more bonus content—developer commentary, concept art, and so forth. Stephen talks about giving talks, even though he doesn't like to give talks. And Ellen finished a game! What should Ellen play next? A poll for you! - Twitter My Boy! Emulator (Android app) - Google Play Store Is this the episode in which Martha and Stephen tried to teach Mark about Pokémon? "How would I know that?" Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze - Alina Tugend, The New York Times Header image: The fictional black hole, "Gargantua," from the film Interstellar (2014). Credit: Double Negative @ https://www.dneg.com/ The "postroll fu

Your nice hosts do their best to "attend" GDC 2021, and end up having a really good time. Mark imagines his business card, Ellen asks questions, and Stephen proves he's human. Game Developers Conference webpage GDC 2021 Sessions Mark LaCroix Stephen McGregor Ellen Burns-Johnson Events Indie SoapBox - GDC Glitch City LA Demystifying Indie Publishing Offers - August Brown, GDC August joined us in a previous episode: Developer/Publisher Relations Avoid an Identity Crisis as a Te

In this episode, Mark gets defensive about his fair city, Ellen declares her love of Big Buttons, and Stephen almost forgets Fingeance, the game he worked on for seven years. Gamepads 0:14:00 Stephen McGregor Hardware The Evolution of the Xbox Controller - Alessandro Fillari, Gamespot The Evolution of the PlayStation Controller - Adam Bankhurst, IGN List of Nintendo controllers - Wikipedia Nature in Games 0:54:54 Ellen Burns-Johnson Art

Your nice hosts come together for their first Nice Games Jam in person in a very long time! Did seeing each other together result in even wilder game jam shenanigans than you'd expect? Listen to the episode to find out! PlayThinker Deck - The Game Crafter Prompt We used Ellen's PlayThinker Deck to make this game! Goal card was "Efficiency", interaction cards were "Combination", "Approach", and "Exploration". Game type Card game Player count 2-4 Materials Basic 52 card deck (no jokers) 4 Meeples 12 Powerup tokens (3 different colors) Setup Shuffle deck and place cards in a 4 by 4 grid. Give each player one meeple to represent them. Rules Player can move onto any card on their side of the grid as their first turn. On