Nice Games Club

Your nice hosts interview Ryan Sumo, Art Director and CEO of Squeaky Wheel Studio, an independent developer and publisher based in the Philippines. Topics include community building, conferences, becoming a publisher through serendipity, and the benefits of being transparent with your development practices. Plus jokes! Gamedev in the Philippines Category Misc. The Top 50 mobile games of 2006 - Stuart Dredge , Pocket Gamer Spacechem on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/92800/SpaceChem/ GDAP (Game Developers Association of the Philippines): https://www.gdap.org.ph/ IGDA Philippines (Manila): https://igda.org/cha

Your nice hosts talk big picture and get deep into the weeds this week. Mark runs Flash at 60fps on the Switch, Ellen makes a Star Trek reference, and Stephen wants more games that aren't fun. Hey you! If you're porting a project, whether it's just to a new Unity build target, or to a whole new codebase, we want to hear about it! contact@noblerobot.com or @NiceGamesClub. GDC’s summer event will be digital only - Megan Farokhmanesh , The Verge Neat things that Star Trek Online did with Star Trek lore - Eliot Lefebvre , Messively Overpowered Fun in Games 0:11:09 Ellen Burns-Johnson Category Game Design

Mark gets back to Metro, Stephen explores the strange land where in-game and real-world economics overlap, and Ellen makes sure we have good posture. Metro Nexus is running on the Switch! Global Games Pitch IGDATC Widget Satchel Postmortem - igdatc Economies 0:11:20 Stephen McGregor Category Game Design Currencies in Star Trek Online - Gamepedia "How Warframe built an ethical free-to-play economy" - Ben Kuchera ,

Mark interviews Sébastien Deguy and Jérémie Noguer, the Vice President and Principal Product Manager of 3D & Immersive at Adobe, about developing Substance, the leading suite of tools for 3D texturing and material creation. In a wide-ranging discussion, your nice guests reveal what it's like joining a big ol’ company like Adobe, how to design a tool for multiple audiences, the difference between "black magic" and "white magic," and how COVID-19 is impacting their teams. They also share a peek into the future of licensing and subscriptions for Substance and Adobe's other 3D tools, and the reason they haven't been able to release a Blender plugin yet. Building Substance Art Production Tools Substance & 3D News Livestream (GDC 2020 Keynote) - GDC, YouTube

This week, it's Ellen's first rodeo as your permanent nice host, Stephen looks forward to watching someone else play The Last of Us Part II, and Mark is a bad VR person. Bulletin topic (Recent releases) Timecode 0:14:55 Remakes: FFVII Remake Persona 5 Royal Saints Row: IV - Re-Elected Doom 64 Delays: Last of Us Part II Iron Man VR Marvel’s Avengers Half-Life: Alyx Switch Lite (Coral) Bulletin topic (News) Timecode 0:31:59 Events Confirming your nice hosts' suspicions, just after this episode was published, GDC announced that GDC Summer will be an online-only event.

Martha has a big announcement, Mark tells the story of Babylon 5, and Stephen owes everyone a hug. Also, Ellen is back in the (distributed) clubhouse with her own big news! Stephen didn’t know what the word "Emeritus" means, so he put it in the notes: "Holding, after retirement, an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service." In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, NPCs can be seen breaking character after you walk away from them. Ending Projects 0:13:13 Martha Megarry Category IRL Production "Definition of Done" - Agile Alliance "A Work

Ellen Burns-Johnson joins us once again in the virtual club house to discuss Redundancy and Arcades! Ellen teaches us about how we learn, Mark balances the game, Martha only plays the best character and Stephen has a revelation. Photo Credit: Michelle Bruch, from this Southwest Journal Article about the Donutron Redundancy 0:13:01 Mark LaCroix Category Game Design UI / UX The Forgetting Curve hypothesis by Hermann Ebbinghous - Wikipedia The Distributed Practice learning strategy - Wikipedia Arcades 0:50:39

This week, your nice hosts put together a design document for a co-op game of corporate espionage. Martha wants to crawl through vents, Mark wants low stakes moral choices, and Stephen wants everyone to yell at everyone.   On Wednesday this week, Mark presented a in-depth postmortem on the production of Widget Satchel for the April IGDATC monthly community meeting, held remotely on Twitch. You can "attend" the meeting ex post facto on the IGDATC Twitch channel! Rules Premise Two players who are a team of freelance infiltrators. One player is out in the field doing their thing (1st-person perspective). One player is a hacker at home base, providing assistance to the field player (in VR). Spy theme, corporate espionage. Field player observes the scene, gathering information for the hacker so they can do the hacking. Field player does some deduction, but they are playing an action game, while the hacker player is playing a puzzl

Your Nice Hosts are still recording remotely while we physically distance ourselves! We talk about our new normal and give each other advice on Working From Home and Games to Play while we stay inside. Stay safe out there Nice Listeners! We are all in this together. Cover Photo credit: Nintendo How did Animal Crossing’s Isabelle and the Doomguy become best friends? - Julia Lee , Polygon Working From Home 0:09:00 Stephen McGregor Category IRL Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch Visual Studio Code live coding option Games to Play While Social Distancing 0:34:14

Yes, yes, we know GDC was "cancelled," but your nice hosts still had plenty of stuff to talk about, including how GDC itself adapted itself into a non-event, how some business still got done, and next-gen hardware news from Microsoft and Sony that was too big to be rescheduled. As part of an industry-wide effort to give people something to do while they're stuck inside, Mark gathered a few Twin Cities indiedevs to sell a bundle of their recent titles at a deep discount. It's the Twin Cities Indies Say Stay Inside Bundle! It includes 5 full games (Adjacency, Joggernauts, Newt One, Verdant Skies, and Widget Satchel), and it's available on Itch for the next two weeks at 84% off the normal price. Stay home and enjoy! Mark joked that the Summer Olympics would be the next thing to be posponed, and sure enough, a day after we recorded this episode, they were. The GDC that wasn't

This week on Nice Games Club we talk about Naming Things and Rhythm Games! Stephen lays down a beat, Martha brings up fuzzy math and Mark uses every excuse to talk about Star Trek. Editor’s note: We found out recently that my co-hosts didn’t realize that when I edit episodes I don’t always pull an actual quote from the episode as its title? I’m a rebel and my humor cannot be constrained by such formalities. This week’s title is a great Irish music joke. Gan ainm in Irish means ‘no name’. Whenever someone asks you the name of a tune but you can’t remember, you just say with a cheeky grin- “oh, it’s called Gan Ainm” and they are none the wiser until they look up what it means. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everyone! -Martha We mentioned the previous Train Jam episode: GDC 2017 Special (Part 1) Naming Things 0:17:47 Mark LaCroix

Your nice hosts finally get around to some classic topics in this week's episode. Mark explains why Widget Satchel takes longer to download than he'd have liked, Stephen is worried that you might learn the wrong lessons, and Martha disagrees. It took some sleuthing, but Mark found proof that Crunch, the mascot for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was named for the Nestle candy bar. Day-One Patches 0:02:48 Mark LaCroix Category Production Programming Why 'Day-One Patches' Are So Common - Rami Ismail , Kotaku The Switch patch for Widget Satchel that Mark mentioned working on just passed though Nintendo's lotcheck s

Ellen Burns-Johnson joins us in the club house to discuss the latest in game dev news! We talk about the latest releases, GDC getting "postponed", Kickstarter unionizing and more. Be nice and have a listen! Photo credit HyperDot/Tribe Games Bulletin Bulletin topic (Recent releases) Bulletin topic (News)

This week, Stephen is crowned the new king of transitions, Martha gets around to playing two games she'd been meaning to for awhile, and Mark briefly impersonates a saxophone. Unlocks 0:06:19 Stephen McGregor Category Game Design Stephen's unlock taxonomy: Achievement based: Do a thing, get unlock related to thing. Experience-based: Play the game, get a thing based on how much you’ve played. Loot-based: Play the game, get random thing. Currency-based: Earn in-game currency, pick an unlock to purchase. New Game+: Complete the game, get new content on second playthrough. Case Study (Mutazione/Later Alligator) 0:39:26 Martha Megarry

We're back! This week, your nice hosts talk about what they did over their winter break, from taking up residence in a new clubhouse to developing a new logo and website, and more... but in the end, not much has really changed. Everything is still nice. Highlights of this extra-long special episode: Martha proposes a Nice Games Club IDE color theme, Dale joins the show to point out that making a logo for a podcast is harder than making a logo for a game, and after all the redesign work Stephen makes a late pitch to rename the show "Hot Takes Games Club." And the entire clubhouse goes back and forth making promises but also setting expectations on the new website - it's an iterative process, people! What We Did On Our Winter Break Category IRL Nice Games Club Logo Development

Buttons and Triggers and Sticks, Oh My! Nice Games Jam It's another Nice Games Jam! This time, our boyfriend Dylan sent in a particularly interesting challenge, asking your nice hosts to design a game where the player's load-out impacts the game's controls. #149 Nice Games Jam Your browser does not support the audio element. https://api.podcache.net/episodes/ddc055c5-4bdf-4f7a-909c-02ea51d7286b/stream.mp3

  "It's Black History Month, y'all!" Audio BasicsRepresentation in Games In this episode, your nice hosts make sure you know that Treasure Stack, the game Stephen "is paid to work on," is coming out Friday, March 1st! #118 Roundtable Your browser does not support the audio element. https://api.podcache.net/episodes/97b16364-a239-4457-9e16-766261c9f86d/stream.mp3

Nice Games Club is on break until February 2020, so your nice hosts can take the time to work on a relaunch of the show, including new branding, updated production, and a brand new website! In the meantime, we picked out a few of our favorite episodes from the last year in the clubhouse. Original show notes can be found below: https://nicegames.club/2019/08/nice-games-jam-ants-of-destiny-morsels-of-the-queen/

Nice Games Club is on break until February 2020, so your nice hosts can take the time to work on a relaunch of the show, including new branding, updated production, and a brand new website! In the meantime, we picked out a few of our favorite episodes from the last year in the clubhouse. Original show notes can be found here: https://nicegames.club/2019/03/developer-publisher-relations-with-kongregates-august-brown/

Nice Games Club is on break until February 2020, so your nice hosts can take the time to work on a relaunch of the show, including new branding, updated production, and a brand new website! In the meantime, we picked out a few of our favorite episodes from the last year in the clubhouse. NOTE: We talked about 2019's Global Game Jam in this episode, and hey, the 2020 Global Game Jam is coming up, Jan 31st - Feb 2nd! This year, the IGDA Twin Cities chapter is hosting our community's local site. Tickets are free, but limited. Sign up now! Original show notes can be found here: https://nicegames.club/2019/02/steal-this-episode-writing-for-games-intellectual-property-and-the-public-domain/