This week, Aaron chats with Kyle Holmquist. Kyle is a generalist game designer, writer, developer, and narrative designer with a ridiculous variety of experience writing and designing for indie, mobile, and AAA games. He is also a hobbyist blacksmith and volunteers teaching blacksmithing in his spare time!
00:00 Intro
01:02 What Makes A Good Narrative Designer?
04:44 Horro Games, Horror Movies, And A Bit Of Comedy
11:49 Media Literacy and Subjective Experience (And Helldivers 2)
17:38 What We [Developers] Notice Isn't What Others Notice
20:08 What Developers Get Wrong About Narrative Design
24:59 Getting Into Blacksmithing in 2020
28:53 Wrap Up
Links:
Kyle's Portfolio site:
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
This week, Aaron chats with Don Bellenger, founder of the indie game studio The Beauty Cult. We spoke about games as subversive art, Don's experience working at a high-flying company at the height of Facebook games, and the Oakland nonprofit Gameheads, which teaches game development to underserved youth.
00:00 Intro
01:26 Subverting Hard By Drinking Water
02:30 Games as Subversive Art
07:07 In Which We Talk About Horror Films
09:43 Working At Kixeye (At the height of Facebook games)
15:08 Volunteering and Mentoring at Gameheads
20:46 Advice On Breaking In
23:36 "Kids These Days"
Links:
The Beauty Cult: https://teambeautycult.com/
Black Future '88 (Don's other indie game): https://store.steampowered.com/app/751820/Black_Future_88/
Highsidin: https://gameheads.itch.io/highsidin
This game was mentioned in part of the interview that was cut for time but I wanted to link it anyway: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3255890/Relooted/
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
This week, Aaron chats with Benjamin Lindsay, game designer with experience mostly in multiplayer action live service. Benjamin worked for Riot Games on League of Legends and in one of their illustrious R&D studios, then for a startup called Sprocket Games. In this episode, we talk about some of the most topical issues that have ever come up on this podcast, including Silksong's difficulty, what makes 'good' game design, how to design and balance for live service games, and what it's like working on a Riot R&D project!
00:00 Introduction
02:03 "Resource Management Under Pressure"
03:23 Playing Games In Time to Catch the Discourse
04:14 The Silksong Discourse ("Good" vs "Bad" Difficulty, Audience Expectations, etc.)
16:33 Systems Design For Live Service Games ("Give Everybody a Cookie")
25:23 What Even Is "Good Game Design"?
28:36 The Riot R&D Process - Pros and Cons
32:08 Wrapping Up
Links:
Benjamin's person site:
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
This week, Aaron chats with Sahil Bajaj, a narrative designer and game writer. Sahil has worked on the Blackwood Charter Escape Room with Sweet Baby Inc and with Veritable Joy on ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area, as well as making his own Twine games for kids, and a bunch of other stuff still under NDA because that's just how the game industry rolls sometimes. In this conversation, we chat about growing up as an Indian immigrant in the USA vs. the UAE, humor in game writing and design, making interactive fiction for kids, and more!
00:00 Introduction
03:12 Cultural Influences and Identity
06:54 Experimentation and Humor in Game Design
15:37 State of the Discipline ("John doesn't know s$@%!")
21:34 Making Games For Kids
25:23 Wrapping Up
Links:
Sahil's web site: https://sahilbajaj.dev/
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
This week, Aaron interviews legendary pixel artist Christina-Antoinette Neofotistou AKA castpixel. Christina has been in the industry for 20 years as an artist, illustrator, art director, and more. In this episode we talk about her experience growing up on obscure PC games in Greece in the 1980's, developing an individual style, aphantasia, demakes, having the same favorite game for nearly 40 years, and more!
00:00 Introduction
01:17 Art in College and Surrealism
05:59 Entering the Game Industry
08:29 Aphantasia
10:25 Developing an Individual Style
12:11 Growing Up with Unique Gaming Experiences
16:59 Demakes
18:56 The Same Favorite Game For Four Decades
22:26 What's Exciting? Not New Games!
Links:
Christina's ArtStation - https://castpixel.artstation.com/
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
This week, Aaron interviews Kay Purcell.
Kay (she/they) is a community manager, marketing expert, project manager, and Jack-of-all-trades with experience at DeviantArt, Red Bull, Avalanche Studios Group, and games journalism. Kay is also a charity streamer, event organizer, and professional dungeon master!
This is Make Games, Drink Coffee, a podcast featuring conversations with game developers about their jobs, their hobbies, and whatever they're passionate about! No rambling two-hour interviews and no meandering monologues! It's short and sweet, thirty minutes or less, with bonus clips on the Make Games, Drink Coffee youtube channel, TikTok, etc.
Chapters:
00:00 Introductions and Texas Is Big
01:54 Community Management at DeviantArt and Red Bull
08:31 Games Journalism Is Hard (And Broken)
16:46 Being A Professional DM
20:07 The Fluidity of Game Lore
21:54 Understanding That Not All Media Is For Me (And That's Okay!)
25:47 Finding Your Audience
27:21 Kay's Favorite Game
28:53 Wrap-Up
29:10 Make Games Drink Coffee Outro Music.mp3
Links:
Shout out to Rogue (independent games journalism!): https://www.rogue.site/
You can find the podcast at:
http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com
Questions? Comments?
makegamesdrinkcoffee@gmail.com