Everybody's Talking At Once

Process is Matthew Seiji Burns' first novel, in some ways following directly from his work on Eliza (and the under-appreciated rest of his narratives for the Zachtronics/Coincidence catalog) but in other ways, exploring weird new territory in the realms of unreliable narration, meditations on technology, and reflections on/of Seattle. You can get Process via Tune & Fairweather, or at your local independent bookshop, with or without the help of Bookshop.org. And you can find lots more of Matthew's work on his website. ——— • Here's Matthew's episode of Origin Story about Eliza. • The header image is from this launch trailer for Process. • The digital edition of Process, to be totally clear, comes with both a more-or-less text-only ebook file and a PDF with digital versions of all the graphical and typographical skullduggery from the physical edition. • As I say in the outro, Matthew did bring me and Sam Kulchin in on the the soundtrack to Kaizen: A Factory Story. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Nobody's Business If I Do" by Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins, performed by Bob Geddins' Cavaliers. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

The one and only droqen puzzle-platforms on over to discuss his latest game The End of Gameplay, and how it responds to the stubbornly present, all-too-alive gameplay in his game Starseed Pilgrim. This requires a provisional definition of gameplay. Whether the conversation's other tributaries are required or not is a question for the listener. You can get The End of Gameplay on Steam and Itch.io. You can learn more about droqen's work on his website, and you can check out his Bluesky for the latest on the impending death of gameplay. ——— • Here's droqen's rant at Bonus Stage, on the subject of killing gameplay. • Here's Richard Terrell's A Defense of Gameplay, and his two-part appearance on the show. • And here's Richard's curation project about Starseed Pilgrim (his among others), the Starseed Observatory. The project's Wall of Quotes includes a piece Drew wrote about the game. • Drew misquoted William Blake, as one does. The actual line, from Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, is: "I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create." • Mutual Aid is available for free online. It's also probably in your local bookstore, and your local bookstore would even more probably order it for you, in the quite likely event that your local bookstore is cool. • David Graeber wrote about consensus a lot, but this is probably the single-best entry point. • We did get to have Arvi Teikari on to talk all about Baba Is You a few years back. • As droqen says, Brendan Keogh's The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist is a great way to reframe "the videogame industry" as one part (and probably not even the most important part) of the larger cultural field of videogames. • Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order is a tricky work track down (because not just any library or bookstore will have it on hand, and also because it exists in multiple volumes, each fairly voluminous). • droqen's notebook/forum has some notes on those Agnes Martin and Don Potts interviews (both of which are linked in full from said notes pages). • The morning this dropped, droqen posted this video, connecting The End of Gameplay with his series of #droqevers, which themselves refer to this unusually useful definition of games: What is a game? Professor M. Mouse?of Texas, America claims that the word game denotes "the historical process by which the term game has been characterised and understood". Easy for you to say, Professor!! Those of us with a more down-home approach to codifying the various aspects of a nebulous and unbearable human condition prefer to go by a simpler definition, thus. A game is some combination of the following indivisable elements: - skeleton - red key - score thing - magic door If you see something that looks like a videogame but isn't, you should notify the Police. • droqen also posted some notes on this episode in his "forum-shaped notebook." Infinite recursion. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "romantic," "gameplay (forever)," and "machine lover," from The End of Gameplay (new moon OST) by droqen. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Barney Oram gets into different patterns of sound design, in all sorts of different roles and at all sorts of different scales—plus his love of film in general and Billy Wilder in particular, the durable ethos that "if it sounds good, it is good," and his extensive experience recording loud sounds that go bang. You can learn more about Barney's work on his website. You can also follow Barney on LinkedIn. ——— • Drew hadn't played much of Enotria at the time of the interview?but now that he has, he can recommend it enthusiastically to fellow genre sickos. A sunny soulslike indeed, with lots of culturally-specific imagery and some clever twists on progression and buildcrafting. • Billy Wilder really is an all-timer, both as a writer and as a director, as this recent Every Frame a Painting beautifully explains. • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is on YouTube in its entirety, at least some places. • The talk that Barney did for Game Audio Boston doesn't seem to be online, but we'll add a link if it does show up in the future. • That said, here's Barney talking about recording loud sounds that go bang. And here too. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Rev Up Your Arithmetech!" (the menu music) from the Add Astra OST by Emerson Boatwright and Drew Messinger-Michaels. Some gameplay audio from Enotria: The Last Song, which has music and audio design by Aaram Shahbazians and additional audio by Barney Oram. As Drew says in the intro, Add Astra is on Steam, Chemistry Set is available directly from COINCIDENCE, and The Tower and the Circle is available through Alexander. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Rasheed Abueideh and Rami Ismail talk about Dreams on a Pillow. We talk about how the game combines layered, poetic audiovisuals and gameplay with history and folklore in order to create an account of the Nakba "that is so true to what happened that it is borderline-illegal to say it." You can help crowdfund Dreams on a Pillow on LaunchGood. You can download Liyla and the Shadows of War for free from Android, iOS, and Windows. And you can also follow Rasheed and Rami on Bluesky. ——— • Rami mentions "The Gender of Nakba Memory," a chapter from Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. • Here's the New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. Khalidi also semi-recently did a much more substantive, equally accessible interview with Adam Conover. • H.R.9495 didn't pass, but we should expect to see more bills like it once the second Trump Administration begins in earnest. • For the moment, Farha does seem to be back on Netflix in the US. • Here's Rasheed's #1ReasonToBe talk at GDC 2017, if you want to hear some more from him about being a Palestinian game developer (and being extremely funny). • This article is a great starting point on musical traditions in Palestine before the Nakba. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Sefnon bekalbi," performed by Hag Abdul Fattah El-Kabbani. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Lilith Walther aetherboosts her way on over to talk about Nightmare Kart, its previously life as Bloodborne KART, its demake predecessor Bloodborne PSX, and the relationship between retro aesthetics, open development practices, and a general attitude of... YOLO? Nightmare Kart will be out for free on May 31. You can see more of Lilith's work, including Bloodborne PSX, on Itch.io. You can also follow Lilith (or rather, Bunlith?) on Twitter, and see her stream on Twitch. She's also got a Patreon, a Ko-Fi, and a Discord. ——— • Here's the Noclip documentary about Bloodborne PSX. We'd also point highly recommend this Gayming interview, which is the source of that quip about intellectual property law being eldritch—"Capitalism is terrifying. That's our cosmic horror"—and also the occasion for Lilith saying that the original Bloodborne kind of talks shit about the people in power, and the protagonist is an outsider, and all your friends are disabled people and sex workers and other outsiders. Then a lot of the enemies are the upper-class people responsible for the plague who trapped all the lower-class people into central Yarnham and closed the gates — who then die horrible deaths anyway from their own creations. It?s a direct response to a lot of the problems with gothic horror as a genre. It's incredible, and it's probably why it's so transgender. • Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka from Analgesic have been on the show twice, first to talk about Anodyne 2 and then to talk about Sephonie. Both interviews get into the topic of older design tropes worth recovering (and new ones worth jettisoning, or at least bemoaning). • The Rock Paper Shotgun Electronic Wireless Show recently did an episode on free games. • Drew was drawing on David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, though he did misquote it. Graeber's phrase is not "basic communism" but "baseline communism," which he defines as the understanding that, unless people consider themselves enemies, if the need is considered great enough, or the cost considered reasonable enough, the principle of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" will be assumed to apply. He goes on to say that, "in fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability" (emphasis his). This is obviously true on the level of giving someone directions if you know the way, or (as Drew says in the episode) handing someone a tool they've asked for. Just as obviously, we sometimes operate on other principles, such as hierarchy, exchange, or (as Lilith says in the episode) reciprocity. As Graeber says: All of us act like communists a good deal of the time. None of us act like a communist consistently. "Communist society"?in the sense of a society organized exclusively on that single principle?could never exist. But all social systems, even economic systems like capitalism, have always been built on top of a bedrock of actually-existing communism. • Ah, and anyway, here's Add Astra. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Pthumerian Cup" from the Bloodborne KART April Fool's joke, the Bloodborne PSX OST and the BBKART Soundtrack, by The Noble Demon. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Dragon's Dogma II is full of inventive, quirky flourishes, meaningful frictions, and... shameless micro-transactions that capitalize on those exact quirks and frictions. We can, of course, get meaning and joy out of art that comes to us compromised. Which is good news, since most art, if not all art, comes to us compromised. But the details matter. So let's dig into the details, and along the way let's talk about monetization, opera, high art, low art, and how Dragon's Dogma II is like a D&D campaign where all of the other players are dogs. This episode contains discussions of death, dying, and mourning. ——— • Dia Lacina has written a bit about Dragon's Dogma II, and a bit about Dark Arisen. • Podcasters helping podcasters, here's a good summary of the weird relationship of dogs to Octavia Butler's work. • Here's Alexis Ong's piece about pawns. • And here's Dan Olson's video about Fortnite. • You can hear the Met's Saturday Matinee Broadcasts on lots of still-extant terrestrial radio stations and their websites. My mom and I usually go with KUSC. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Messa da Requiem by Guiseppe Verdi, performed by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by Yannick N?zet-S?guin, featuring Leah Hawkins, Karen Cargill, Matthew Polenzani, and Dmitry Belosselskiy. Recorded September 27, 2023. Broadcast March 30, 2024. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Helldivers II is a wildly popular co-op shooter. It's also extremely funny. It's also very much about fascism, both in the sense that its satirical lens is aimed at fascist tendencies in moribund democracies, and in the sense that its core pleasures are... sort of fascist? The music makes you feel like a hero as you do your space violence on behalf of Super Earth, and let's be honest, the capes are rather dashing. Here's a game that wants to have its cake and eat it too, and we're inclined to say it pulls it off. So let's dig into how it's doing what it's doing, and the slipperiness of making art about fascism that isn't useful to fascists. ——— • The clip about Super Earth is from this Helldivers II ad. The in-game propaganda and advertising are fairly consistent in tone, and so far, in terms of world-building as well. • If you'd like to keep entirely Joel mysterious in your mind, then we can respect that—but if you'd like to know more (to coin a phrase), then Aftermath has you covered (kind of). • Here's my piece on moon, and one where I talked more about "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" in contrast to "Springtime for Hitler." • Here's Umberto Eco's essay on "Ur-Fascism" and Ruben Ferdinand and Elliot Trinidad's essay on Attack on Titan (a classic pairing). • We use bits of Lindsay Ellis' video on Mel Brooks, F.D Signifier's video about Hajime Isayama's New York Times interview, and Mark Brown's recent video on Spec Ops: The Line. • We don't think there's anywhere to (legally) hear the full Starship Troopers commentary other than the physical releases of the film, unfortunately. • The Freud quote is from The Ego and the Id, and the Truffaut quote is from this interview. • The intrusive thought at the end is from this clip. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Guren no Yumiya" by Linked Horizon, from the first season of Attack on Titan. "My Heart Leaps Up" from Mack and Mabel by Jerry Herman. The extraction and victory music from Helldivers II. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

While the show was taking a break, Drew started putting together some essays on the growing list of recent recent surprise hits—games that, for whatever reason, have been doing vastly better than their developers or publishers had expected. 2024 does, so far, seem to have a sort of serial monogamy to it, with the Sauron's Eye of game-liker attention focusing intensely on one thing before moving on to the next, abruptly and fickly, with equally frightening fervor. So at the risk of being eternally behind the viral content curve (as though we've ever feared that around here), we're going to take a little time to think through the breakout successes of this year, starting with Palworld. We'll also be talking about Last Epoch and Helldivers II (which got so popular that they ceased to function) in future installments. ——— • I mention the episode of Experience Points about Palworld, in the context of positing a possible public domain Pikachu. • Jack Saint's video brought the fan design issue to my attention, and also got me thinking about which pal designs work better than which other ones. (Those would be the more original, less chimeric pals). • Here's that much-discussed Hbomberguy video about YouTube plagiarism. • And here's OpenAI telling the UK's Parliament that they would have no business model if they had to respect anyone else's intellectual property rights. • Astra Taylor pointed out that full automation is still an aspiration and a threat, a pipe dream and a nightmare, rather than a reality, when she coined the terms "fauxtomation." I learned about this concept from Brian Merchant's thoroughly excellent Neo-Luddite book about the original Luddites, and about what we can learn from them, Blood in the Machine. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Pal of My Lonesome Hours" by Abe Lyman and Walter Hirsch, performed by Abe Lyman and His California Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Lucio and Drew talk about some of the games they've enjoyed gaming at this year, from KarmaZoo, Pizza Tower, Wobbly Life, and The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, to Remnant II, Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, Jedi: Survivor, Wo Long, and Tears of the Kingdom. Speaking of, spoilers for Remnant II from 40:53 to 44:21. ——— • We've talked before about playing games, including but not limited to Destiny 2, wrong. • Guilty Gear -STRIVE- does not, at time, of publishing, have a simplified input option for supers. • Here once again the Bartle taxonomy of player types. • The curling documentary in question is "Stone Cold," which is the fourth episode of the Netflix series Losers. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "If It Wasn't For You" by Buddy Rose, Gene Rose, Harold C. Berg, and Herb Wiedoeft, performed by the Crystal Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Glen Henry and Chase Bethea drop achor awhile and talk about Sunken Stones, why pirates mean freedom, and why the Golden Age of Piracy was a lot more Caribbean than Pirates of the Caribbean would have you believe. Also, inevitably, One Piece. You can play the Sunken Stones demo on Itch.io, and wishlist the full game on Steam. You can find Chase's work on his own website, as well as on Spotify and Bandcamp. And you can find Glen's work on the Spritewrench website. ——— • Here's Glen's previous appearance on the show. • And here's our conversation with Tanya X. Short, wherein we talked a bit about Five Strategies for Collaborating with a Machine and On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots. • For more about why Drew will take every opportunity to defend and ere's Blood in the Machine and a great recent interview about it. • And here's Chase talking a bit about his process, including the more technical side thereof. • LucasArts made some intensely impressive music tech for the Monkey Island series specifically, including iMuse. • In Pirate Enlightenment, David Graeber gives us this useful assessment of the centrality of freedom for the actual, historical pirates of the Golden Age: Perhaps the best that could be said of them is that their brutality was in no way unusual by the standards of the their time, but their democratic practices were almost completely unprecedented. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Luck Don't Live Out Here" and "Pugnacity in Port Royal" from the Sunken Stones Soundtrack by Chase Bethea. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Ezra Szanton painstakingly platforms his way over to talk about To The Flame, the first in his new studio's forthcoming kinda-trilogy of horror games. He also talks about how to effective horror, what makes a game interesting to watch as well as play, and some of the potentially-actually-pretty-intereting applications for so-called AI. You can find Ezra's games on his Itch.io page. You can also follow Ezra on Cohost, Mastadon, Twitter, and Bluesky. ——— • Ezra's Guide to Magic and Otherwise Significant Objects has Ezra's name on it in part because of Bennet Foddy and Zach Gage's 2019 GDC talk, "Put Your Name on Your Game, a Talk by Bennett Foddy and Zach Gage." • Here's my piece on the hypothetical No Berlin Roguelike, as well as my Babycastles talk about masocore platformers, and about how Celeste fits into that tradition and also my article about the history of asking machines to lie to us. • Be Honest is indeed featured in Tiny Mass Games, which you can hear more about in our talk with Matt Brelsford. We should note that Ezra also worked with recent guest Ryan Canuel, who himself is currently working with other recent guest Ichiro Lambe. • Here's the SCP Wiki (which is intensely creepy, as discussed), as well as a great video essay on why VHS is such a great format for horror. • And here's Ezra's appearance on Party of One. • Ezra's studio co-founder is Fergus Ferguson, with whom he also collaborated on Radio Tower. • Here's Edward Ongweso Jr. arguing for the outright abolition of venture capital. • And worst of all, here are Snolf and Snolf 0. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Prom" by The Spookfish. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Eric Peterson hops on over to talk about the joys of hobbyist game development, the things that need to change in professional game development (even when compared to other parts of tech), and the cultural importance of drawing little guys. You can play JOUNCER PX (as it's called now) on itch.io. You can find a bunch of Eric's work on his Linktree, and specifically on his Itch.io. You can also follow Eric on Twitter. ——— • Here's our conversation with Jerry Belich about, among other things, Alt.ctrl. • Drew has absolutely been referring Big Bad Beetleborgs as Bad Bad Beetleborgs, charmed by the misremembered repetition, for decades. • Eric says "this the season" for witchy vibes, which indeed it was when we spoke. And of course, in a very important sense, it always is. • Here's that scene from Jurassic Park, recreated in Dreams. And then there's this. • This recent episode of This Machine Kills has a good summary of the labor actions taking place throughout, specifically, the US. • If you have a few spare bucks, consider donating a few to Medical Aid for Palestinians, Palestine Legal, or If Not Now. There is also lots you can do, especially if you're in the US. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music that may or may not end up in Bounce Box, by Scott Lindeman. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Ryan Canuel of Petricore stops by for a mostly-not-especially-spooky conversation about augmented reality, what bootstrapping actually means, and?alright, some stuff about horror movies right at the end there. You can get the Mythic Realms demo in Quest App Lab. You can wishlist AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! Remastered and play its demo on Steam, where you can also play Operation DogFight for free. And you can find a whole bunch of Petricore Games' work on their website. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. The music from the Mind the Arrow trailer, by Aaron Lin. "After the Rain" by Francis Canaro, performed by Harry Fryer and His Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Jerry Belich talks about his wild work in the Alt.ctrl milieu, his boundary-redefining escape rooms (for lack of a better term), and his digital game work, from Recommendation Dog and Reel Steal on the Playdate, to High on Life and High on Knife. High on Knife is out now on Steam, Epic, Xbox, and Playstation. You can find Jerry's work on this pretty comprehensive page of his website. A Masterpiece in Disarray is available wherever you get books. You can also follow Jerry on Bluesky. ——— • Here are our past conversations with Megan Fox, Robin Baumgarten, Adriel Wallick, and the bit comedy devotee himself, William Pugh. • And here's the Experimental Gameplay Workshop where Jerry talks about Please Stand By. • Arvi Teikari was indeed a student at the University of Helsinki when he started working on Baba Is You—and he also made the initial prototype for Nordic Game Jam. So that's (at least) two villages that one might say it took. • Drew mentions at the end that his music is on Bandcamp, which it is, for now. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music from the Dune Swede that Jerry mentions. "Mack the Knife" by Kurt Weil, performed by Ted Ferrer with the Klaus Alzners Orkester. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Des Gayle ascends to the sky island of podcastery to discuss his storied career as a producer, the difficulty of enjoying art when you know how it's made?experiencing it with kids can help?and the joys of self-contained stories in the age of the mega-franchise. You can learn more about Altered Gene and Radical Forge on their websites. You also can wishlist Forever Lost and The Analyst, and preorder The Analyst: Redacted. ——— • This interview with Joe Russo contains the clearest explanation we've gotten of just how, and just how much, the direction of the MCU is pre-determined: Disney makes ambitious, semi-longterm plans about which projects they plan to make, but then they're intensely flexible and reactive about the business of actually making them. That interview is the main source for that one Screen Rant piece, and that one other Screen Rant piece, both of which hinge on this quote: The way it works at Marvel, and I'm sure at some point somebody will talk in detail about this, but part of Kevin [Feige]'s brilliance is that there isn't really a plan. There's an idea, but you can't have a plan if the movie you're making tanks. There's no plan after that, right? So, it's really about, as the movie succeeded, there was sort of an enthusiasm about well, what else could we do? [...]A lot of the stuff was made up in between the movies. And some of the best call forwards or callbacks were thought of after the fact. • Here's our talk with Anton Hand about simulationist tendencies, and the limits thereof. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Effugere" from the Forever Lost OST by Richard J Moir. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Matt Brelsford opens his hundred eyes and talks about the "loose collective" that is Tiny Mass Games, the spiritual dimension of game development, and (of course) Ophanim. You can find Tiny Mass Games on itch.io. You can also find Betty & Earl and Retro Wing Prime on Steam. ——— • Here are our interviews with Tijmen Tio from Sokpop, Arvi Teikari of Baba Is You fame, and Andrew from Indiepocalypse, as well as with Star St. Germain. • What the Internet calls Biblically Accurate Angels are indeed more properly called Ophanim. • The "David Foster Wallace piece" Drew was referring to is Infinite Jest. (He overcorrected, not wanting to assume that all notable David Foster Wallace quotes were from Infinite Jest). • And here's that Sasha Chapin piece about David Foster Wallace and "the gift of sight," which I've mentioned previously in the context of Death Stranding and Breath of the Wild. • This conversation does sort of conflate games that are small in scope or short in duration with games that are smaller works, in the sense of being less polished, or made more quickly. There are, of course, hyper-polished, commercially released, "real" games that are, nonetheless and purposefully, quite short. Venba is a recent example. Portal is a less recent, oft-cited one. • Here's a decent summary of what in the hell has been going on with Unity. • Dave the Diver was made by Mintrocket, which is a subsidiary of Nexon, which has somewhere between 6,500 and 7,100 employees. • As far as we can tell, the Supergiant team is 24 people. (They had "fewer than 20 people" when Hades launched into early access on the Epic store ). • Here's The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist. • And here's my piece on how weird it is that we want computers to lie to us. • We should also note that the infinite Seinfeld episode didn't, like, end super well. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Womb," from the Betty & Earl OST by Matt Brelsford. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Drew and L talk about their time so far with Baldur's Gate 3, which works beautifully as a sprawling computer RPG, and as a unique intersection of free play and complex game rules—but how does it work as an introduction to Larian's RPGs? How about to Dungeons & Dragons? This ends up being a conversation about expectations, about the actual moment-to-moment experience of playing games (especially strange and/or complicated ones), and about the push-and-pull of stepping outside our comfort zones, and then right back into them. • "We'll do Beholders another day" was Drew channeling "We'll do blood another day." • As ever, let us praise elegant design, but let us also praise messy design. • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is the one that L recently played. It's on Nintendo's Switch Online quasi-virtual console Game Boy thing. • L's new project is the Four Buds Floral Collective. • Remnant II and Baldur's Gate 3 both prominently feature multi-classing: As in, you can be a Bard and a Barbarian, a Summoner and an Archon. This wildly increases the sense of player agency, and of build diversity—counter-intuitively enhancing the sense of free play by piling on more and more rules and mechanics and systems. • Why do we say that's counter-intuitive? Well, in The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, David Graeber says: D&D, as its aficionados call it, is on one level the most free-form game imaginable, since the characters are allowed to do absolutely anything, within the confines of the world created by the Dungeon Master, with his books, maps, and tables and preset towns, castles, dungeons, wilderness. In many ways it’s actually quite anarchistic, since unlike classic war games where one commands armies, we have what anarchists would call an “affinity group,” a band of individuals cooperating with a common purpose (a quest, or simply the desire to accumulate treasure and experience), with complementary abilities (fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief …), but no explicit chain of command. So the social relations are the very opposite of impersonal bureaucratic hierarchies. However, in another sense, D&D represents the ultimate bureaucratization of antibureaucratic fantasy. There are catalogs for everything: types of monsters (stone giants, ice giants, fire giants …), each with carefully tabulated powers and average number of hit points (how hard it is to kill them); human abilities (strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution …); lists of spells available at different levels of capacity (magic missile, fireball, passwall …); types of gods or demons; effectiveness of different sorts of armor and weapons; even moral character (one can be lawful, neutral, or chaotic; good, neutral, or evil; combining these produces nine possible basic moral types …). The books are distantly evocative of Medieval bestiaries and grimoires. But they are largely composed of statistics. All important qualities can be reduced to number. It’s also true that in actual play, there are no rules; the books are just guidelines; the Dungeon Master can (indeed really ought to) play around with them, inventing new spells, monsters, and a thousand variations on existing ones. Every Dungeon Master’s universe is different. The numbers are in a sense a platform for crazy feats of the imagination, themselves a kind of poetic technology. Still, the introduction of numbers, the standardization of types of character, ability, monster, treasure, spell, the concept of ability scores and hit-points, had profound effects when one moved from the world of 6-, 8-, 12- and 20-sided dice to one of digital interfaces. Computer games could turn fantasy into an almost entirely bureaucratic procedure: accumulation of points, the raising of levels, and so on. There was a return to the command of armies. This in turn set off a move in the other direction, by introducing role-playing back into the computer games (Elfquest, World of Warcraft …), in a constant weaving back and forth of the imperatives of poetic and bureaucratic technology. But in doing so, these games ultimately reinforce the sense that we live in a universe where accounting procedures define the very fabric of reality, where even the most absolute negation of the administered world we’re currently trapped in can only end up being yet another version of the exact same thing. • Here's Xalavier Nelson Jr.'s important thread on Baldur's Gate 3 and our present, highly volatile era of "megagames". The thread has, unfortunately, been covered really badly and dishonestly, partially as a symptom of the closely-related phenomenon of "orbital decay" in mainstream games journalism. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "When the Fire Comes Down" by Wally Fowler, Tommy Harrell, and Curly Kinsey, performed by Milton Estes and His Musical Millers. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Bryant Cannon tunes into our frequency to talk a bit about OXENFREE II: Lost Signals (which it's too early to spoil), and a whole lot about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (which it's high time to start spoiling). We do in fact start spoiling the latest Zelda at 00:36:13. OXENFREE II: Lost Signals is out now on Steam, Switch, Playstation, and Netflix. You can follow Bryant (and Night School) on Twitter, remarkably. ——— • The Boss Fight Book about Majora's Mask goes deep into Zelda's production pipeline, and into Yoshiaki Koizumi injecting narrative verve into these gameplay-first designs, and also into the prickly, paranoid nature of fan theories. • Here's the interview in which Eiji Aonuma contrasts the (remarkably fast) development cycle of Majora's Mask with the (remarkably not-fast) development cycle of Tears of the Kingdom. • Here's Meg Jayanth's GDC talk about giving NPCs agency. • And here's one of Bryant's many ambitious TotK flying machines. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Arcadia Station" and "To The Island" from the OXENFREE II: Lost Signals OST by scntfc. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Jaku is a security expert, a speedrunner, and a longtime builder of tools that expand how we interact with games online—from Crowd Control, which empowers streamers' audiences to alter the state of the games being streamed, to Turnip Exchange, which vastly expanded the scope and functionality of the stalk market at the height of the Animal Crossing craze. Here Jaku tells the full story of Turnip Exchange for the first time. It's the story of a small project becoming enormously popular ridiculously quickly, and all the commercial, social, and technical implications that follow. More broadly, it's a story about attention, and what it means to be the next big thing here at the end of the end of history, in these waning days of "Web 2" social media, these halcyon days for grifts, rug-pulls, and jank-ass cloak-and-dagger. Here are links to CrowdControl and Turnip Exchange. You can also follow Jaku on Twitter, for now at least, and see his streams on Twitch. ——— • Here's Flash Boys, Michael Lewis' book about the demonry of flash trading. • The Nookazon folks are making a game called Galactic Getaway. • Drew became familiar with "the end of the end of history" thanks to Kohei Saito's Marx in the Anthropocene. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Turnip Greens," performed by Steve Gibson and the Red Caps, vocal by Romaine Brown. "Tulip or Turnip" by Don George and Duke Ellington, performed by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, vocal by Ray Nance. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Jessica Antenorcruz has a unique, and also uniquely appropriate role on the upcoming drag queen fighting game Drag Her! She's in charge of the game's writing, from spoken lines to character concepts to plot?and she's also in charge on posing and motion, using her own physical performances to drive the game's hand-animated, rotoscoped realness. Here she talks about why that works so well for a fighting game, with the genre's focus on over-the-top personae (and just as importantly, over-the-top performances of gender). We also talk about Mortal Kombat and ClayFighter, as one ought. You can follow the development of Drag Her! on Discord, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. You can also follow Jessica on Instagram and see some of her aerial work on YouTube. ——— • Here's a semi-recent roundup of LGBTQ-friendly touring and travel agencies, and here's another, slightly older, partially overlapping one. Drew was also thinking Gay Travel, which is more in the general advice and information lane, as are Autostraddle's travel posts. • And here's Ruben Ferdinand's piece about Yoko Taro and "weird feelings for weird people." ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music from the Drag Her! OST by Markaholic. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Harris Foster is the former Community Manager at Finji and the current Director of Communications at Good Trouble. Here he talks about where those roles overlap, how they differ, and what a purpose-built, welcoming community looks like in practice, online and off. You can follow Good Trouble on Discord, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky. And you can follow Harris on Twitter and Bluesky. ——— • Drew did edit the first part of this episode in the air, but then finished it up on a train from Dublin to Belfast (for those interested in the host's mild globe-trotting; it does add flavor). • The many-buttoned fighting game that Harris mentions is Centenntable. • As Harris says, we had Sarah and Colin Northway on recently and talked about I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. We also had Ricky Haggett on to discuss Wilmot's Warehouse. • Finji's new community manager is Aster. They're currently on Twitter, which currently exists. • And here's the the etymology of inspiration. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Memories of Memories" from the TUNIC OGST by Lifeformed ? Janice Kwan. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Ichiro Lambe has been making games since the days of MUDs and Palm Pilots, and here he talks to Drew about what's new—from the possibilities of so-called AI (as exciting as they are fraught) to his strategic deck-builder of ramshackle autobattles, Million Monster Militia. You can wishlist Million Monster Militia, along with Monster Loves You Too! and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, on Steam. You can find Ichiro on Twitter, and see his work on his website and Dejobaan's. ——— • It's real, real hard to find reliable numbers on power consumption in LLMs other other "AI." Most existing research focuses on BLOOM, simply because its operations are so much less opaque than what's going on at OpenAI or Google. M?l Hogan, whose past work has focused on the environmental impact of data centers more generally, recently discussed the specifics of "AI" energy consumption with Sasha Luccioni, one of the authors of the paper linked above. (We should note, as they both do, that we're not just talking about energy here, but also water, "AI" being a driving factor behind the escalating demand for industrial-scale liquid cooling). • As Ichiro points out, these issues are specific to enormous, corporate run "AIs" such as GPT-4, Bard, DALL?E 2, and Midjourney—as distinct from models you can run on your own (beefy) PC. • Drew once again mentions Emily Short's Five Strategies for Collaborating with a Machine and Lily Alexandre's video essay on "post-human" content. • And here's Ichiro's Totally Human Rapper. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music from the Million Monster Militia OST by Job Bellini. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Andrew anthologizes on by to talk about Indiepocalypse, as well as the alleged indiepocolypse. We talk about genre, curation, how to bring people together without Community-Building (capital C, capital B), and how to publish games without acting like a publisher. You can buy or subscribe to Indiepocalypse on Itch.io and Patreon. You can also follow Andrew on Twitter, and find all things Indiepocalypse on its website. ——— • Here are our previous talks with Megan Fox, Tanya X. Short, and Sarah and Colin Northway, as well as with Indiepocalypse alums Esther Alter, Damien Crawford, and Glen Henry. • Here's "Deadgames and Alivegames," as well as our interview with Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka (and our other interview with them). • And here's Andrew's Local Scene Showcase. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Apple Blossoms" by Vernon Geyer. Some music from I'm Hungry! I'm Healthy! I'm Human! by lintilion, the commissioned game from Indiepocalypse #41. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 A Teenage Exocolonist from 24:30 to 30:10. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is out now on Steam, Itch.io, Switch, and Playstation. You can find the Northway Games catalog on their website, and the MoR on its own site. You can also follow Colin and Sarah on Twitter. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Exocolonist Theme Redux" by A Shell in the Pit, from the I Was A Teenage Exocolonist OST. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 the whole Kitfox Games catalog on their website. The deadline to apply for the Pixelles Prototype Fund is May 25. You can also follow Tanya, Kitfox, and Pixelles on Twitter. ——— • Here are our conversations of varyingly recent vintage with Santiago Zapata, Star St. Germain, Esther Alter, Chris Hanney, Anita Tung, and Emma Kinema. • And here's Emily Short's Five Strategies for Collaborating with a Machine. • We didn't get too deep into Emily M. Bender's work, but Tanya did make reference to a paper Bender co-authored, On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? And this recent interview contains some of Bender's thoughts on present-day so-called AI. • The video essay Drew referenced, about humans being neither the artist nor the audience for a lot of current content, is Lily Alexandre's Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era. • No one has really written a definitive history of Boyfriend Maker, unfortunately. For a related but largely distinct ethical nightmare, you could check out this other video essay, on Replika. • We will indeed be looking into One More Multiverse. • Regrettably, we didn't get a chance to talk about that Kitfox blog post about messy design?but it's something worth considering: elegance maybe being over. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Whipped Into Shape (feat. Madeleine McQueen)" from Boyfriend Dungeon: Secret Weapons, the DLC addendum to the Boyfriend Dungeon OST, by Marskye. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 aesthetics (and technical challenges) of clutter, and the persistent magics of VR. CONTENT WARNING for discussions of death and grieving from 41:10 to 46:54. The Last Clockwinder is out now on Steam, Quest, and PSVR2. You can see what positions Pontoco has available on their jobs page. You can also find lots of Anita's work on her website, and follow her on Twitter and Mastodon. ——— • Here's our conversation with Joel Corelitz. • Gathering Sky really is lovely, and it commits to the peculiarities of touch interfaces in about the same way that The Last Clockwinder commits to the peculiarities of VR. • Here's Matthew Blair's GDC talk about The Last Clockwinder, as well as John Austin's. • We've known about the role of seawater in Roman concrete since 2017 or so. • We'll also link this fairly recent piece about Roger Morash and Shard. • For more on studio sustainability, we'd recommend our episodes with Megan Fox, Glen Henry, Anya Combs, and William Pugh. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Gardeners: Bomb Berry Laboratory" from The Last Clockwinder OST by Joel Corelitz. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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, and then finds ways to walk right past them. In this interview, Chris talks about the past, present, and (in his view, extremely exciting) future of VR. Along the way we discuss the technology's many strange tributaries. For the first time in recorded history, two bearded white dudes talk on a podcast. Space Pirate Trainer DX is out now on Quest. Shredders is out now on Steam, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass. You can also follow Chris on Twitter, whatever that currently is. ——— • This review contains some really useful descriptions of what Space Pirate ARENA even is on a nuts-and-bolts, logistical level. • The Bigscreen Beyond really does look like swim goggles when compared to the Quest 2 (though not quite so much when compared to, say, swim goggles, if we're honest). • Here's the Twitterthreadization of Chris' GDC 2023 talk about Steam forums and reviews. • And here's our episode with Anton Hand. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Seventy-Four" from Nowhere, Now Here (music from the video game Shredders) by Jennifur. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 of Legends and Valorant at Riot Games. That experience, in turn—the experience of getting to collaborate across disciplines, to be a bit of a generalist despite having been hired with a specialized skillset in mind—is what he's now trying to recreate at his studio, New Avalon. You can also follow Paul on Twitter, and do likewise for New Avalon. Likewise with Odyssey Interactive and Omega Strikers. ——— • Here's that excellent Dan Olson video, which is something of a sequel to this one. Later in the conversation, his video on Fortnite becomes relevant as well. • And here's our conversation with Greg Haynes from AbleGamers. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Go Strike! (Karaoke Version)" by James Landino, the theme from Omega Strikers. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 often is the music of Funkrust. You can also find Anya's socials on her Linktree. ——— • Drew was referring to a premium (as in paywalled, and also as in excellent) episode of the 5-4 podcast, with that bit about having more culpability as one ascends a big company's hierarchy. • Here's Someone Has Died. • This talk is a great introduction to Anya's thoughts on the nuts and bolts of crowdfunding. We'd also highly recommend Anya's episode of What Else Do You Do? ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Riptide" from Dark City by Funkrust Brass Band. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 frothy moral panic) are increasingly a visible, present part of pop culture. Which means that the time is right for TTRPGs that parents can play with their kids?including very young kids, and including parents who didn't play D&D back in the day & day. Irwin Chen, Nathan Dummitt, and Ed Chung developed their Ampersand RPG system to fulfill precisely those needs. Int his conversation, they talk about how their approach emphasizes tactility, creativity, collaboration, "classroom management," and investment without self-seriousness. Snakes and Sarcophagi, the newest Ampersand RPG adventure, is now on Kickstarter. You can also follow the project on Twitter, and learn more on the Ampersand RPG website. ——— • The Satanic-panicky made-for-TV movie in which Tom Hanks joins a cult because of Dungeons & Dragons is indeed, somewhat pitiably, called Mazes and Monsters. (They didn't even use an ampersand. Amateurs). • The reason that Drew defaulted to videogames when when he started talking about instrumental play was that this Dan Olson video popped into his head. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Buckin' the Dice" by "Fats" Waller, performed by "Fats" Waller and his Rhythm. "Snakes' Hips" by Spencer Williams, performed by the Original Memphis Five. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 Esther talks about PROĆEMON in terms of its inspirations, its tech, and how it fits into her broader artistic practice—which spans tabletop RPGs, non-game technical experiments and tools, and short-form fiction (much of it profoundly and unmistakably Jewish). PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them is out now on Itch.io and Steam. You can follow Esther on Twitter, and find a whole bunch of her work on her website. ——— • The secondary antagonists who want to liberate Pokémon (those jerks) are Team Plasma from Pokémon Black and White (on the DS). • It's true enough that you wouldn't have read about MissingNo. in Nintendo Power at the time?though a year later, the hundredth issue did cover the Minus World in Super Mario Bros (a glitch that was then about a decade old). • Here's Esther's talk about the life and death and slippery definiton of the indie game. • Here's the collectable card game version of Pro?emon. • And here are Other Covenants and "Cultureship." ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some (genuinely procedural!) music from PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them by Esther Alter. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 of making plot and backstory elements visceral, and how he makes music sound otherworldly (again, in multiple senses of the word). DEAD SPACE is out now on Steam, Epic, The EA App, Xbox Series X|S, and Playstation 5. Physical Collector's Editions are available at Limited Run Games. You can also follow Trevor on Twitter, and find a whole bunch of Trevor's work on his website. ——— • Here's the episode of Right on Cue where Trevor talks about his time working for Philip Glass. • The Crowded Room is due out on AppleTV+ sometime this year. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Make Us Whole" by Trevor Gureckis, from the score to DEAD SPACE. "Seracs" from CORT? by Trevor Gureckis. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 appearance). Here we talk about the utility of tropes, the evocative power of tonality, and the unique pleasures of emotionally engaging blockbuster spectacles. FORSPOKEN is out now for PC via Steam, Epic, and Xbox.com, and for Playstation 5. You can learn more about Garry's rather large body of work on his website. ——— • Viola d'amore is a rad instrument indeed, with an awfully evocative sound to it. • Here's a bit more from Garry and Mikolai on the Metamorphosis score. • When Drew refers to music "theory," do always hear it in scare quotes. To say that "all theory comes from Bach" is obviously wrong on its face, but just as obviously right if you understand "music theory" as a synonym for the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians. • Relevant videosmith Adam Neely would, by the way, probably refer to the triadic, sometimes jazz-adjacent dissonances we're discussing as "spicy" intonation. • As per Wikipedia, "the game's writing team includes Gary Whitta, Amy Hennig, Allison Rymer, and Todd Stashwick." • To be emphatically, pedantically clear, "nobody knows nothin" is a guiding principle for art, and even a wryly humble aphorism about reality generally?but when it comes to climate change, we actually know sort of a lot. "Nobody knows nothin" is about being suspicious of professed authority and received wisdom, but it shouldn't curdle into spitefully ignoring genuine expertise. • Here's the story of how a cancelled DLC for Final Fantasy XV became Project Athia, which eventually got retitled as (you guessed it) FORSPOKEN. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Junoon (Junoon World 1)" by Garry Schyman, from the score to FORSPOKEN. Le Sacre du printemps, I. "Adoration de la Terre," by Igor Stravinsky, performed by the Walther Straram Concerts Orchestra, conducted by Igor Stravinsky. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 once again as Drew plays some clips from the shows we've done this year, some lovely bits of music from the games we've talked about, and some scratchy old 78s besides. ——— • "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. • Some music from the Neko Ghost, Jump! OST by Alec Weesner. • "Apartment (Vodka Mix)" from the HoloVista Original Soundtrack by Mariode. • "Mid Morning" by Oscar Brittain, from the Kardboard Kings OST. • "Tea Time" by George Schwartz, performed by the Ray Linn Orchestra. • "You Are a Memory" by Message to Bears. • "Assault on Valor" the Questlike: Pocket OST by by Chase Bethea. • "Pulse of Sephonie Island" from the Sephonie Original Soundtrack by Melos Han-Tani. • "C?est la Chanson sur La M?mory Zone (en Fran?ais)" by Alina Johann, Titouan Millet, and William Pugh, from The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe OST by Tom Schley (a.k.a. Silkersoft). • "Found" from the forthcoming Cook Serve Forever OST by Jonathan Greer. • "SEALED ENVELOPE" from the Purgatory Dungeoneer OST by rj lake. • "Mountain Time" (ft. Sarah Hubbard) from the EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: BOUND BY ASH OST by Josie Brechner. • "Escape Gladiator" from the Escape Academy OST by Doseone. • The Sawayama Solitaire BGM, from the Last Call BBS OST by Matthew Seiiji Burns. • "Auntie Chandra?s Theme" from the Thirsty Suitors OST by Ramsey Kharroubi. • "Zugspitz Station" from the Rollerdrome OST by ELECTRIC DRAGON. • Some music from the Moustachevania OST (as it currently exists) by Aaron Nemoyten. • "Get Thee Behind Me" from Talking Union by The Almanac Singers. • "Crystal Paradise" by Joseph Sussman, performed by The Stardusters with Phil Napoleon and His Orchestra. • "Fairy Dance" performed by Teddy Edwards, Robert "Iggie" Shevak, Roy Porter, Hampton Hawkes, and Herb Harper, supervised by Morrie Rapoport. • "I Wish You Joy" from the This Way Madness Lies OST by Joshua Queen. • "Meat Hunter" by Joe Kataldo, from the Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades OST. • "The Lack of Color Out of Space" from the Shadows Over Loathing OGST by Ryan Ike. • "Talking Boogie" by Cliff Stone, performed by Tex Williams and His Western Caravan. Header image from The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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, and stuff that'll be out next year and beyond. (Soon, Tears of the Kingdom). SPOILERS for the ending of the first rebooted God of War from 25:22 to 26:28. Some structure-level SPOILERS for Pentiment from 50:33 to 52:18. ——— • The header image is from Pentiment. (Drew really likes Pentiment, if that wasn't clear). • Potion Craft is not yet on Switch, nor is it on Playstation, but it's coming to both. • Here are some details on the $520,000,000 Epic will have to pay for their various evil monetization shit (our verbiage, not the Federal Trade Commission's). • Here's Drew's piece of about Dad of Boy, and Mark Brown's video about Dadr?k. • L talked a bunch about Arceus in our first Quarterly of 2022. • Here's Josh Sawyer's thread about all the folks who worked on Pentiment. • Drew threw some money at a Digital Eclipse investment campaign earlier this year?and the day after we recorded this episode, Digital Eclipse revealed that Atari 50 was the first game they'd developed using the money from that campaign. Drew's praise for the game was sincere, but we did want to go ahead and be transparent, this being the golden age of shilling and all. • Additional to-reads for Drew include NORCO, Citizen Sleeper, Tinykin, Chained Echoes, Steelrising, 古剑奇谭三, Heavenly Bodies, and Butterfly Soup 2. Because we're continuing to do the quarterlies, we can give these the attention they deserve when the time is right. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "People Are Talking" by James Sheppard and William Miller, performed by The Heartbeats with Al Browne's Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 a serious matter mentioned on the first page of Google results about the person I was interviewing, and on his studio's Wikipedia page, is beyond dumb. The thing is, I don't usually start out by Googling the guest, in this fallen age of SEO-optimized hyperspam. Rather, I start by seeking out their other podcast appearances on ListenNotes, and then their conference talks on YouTube. I read as much of what they've written as I can (which can be a lot of material, especially for someone like Zack, who's been exorbitantly online for about two decades). Most importantly, I play through the game we're going to talk about?in this case, a pretty long game, which I squeezed in while visiting family over the holidays. None of this is an excuse for missing something that was and is both important and obvious. Nor is the fact that I'm a one-person production team, nor that I was working on the show during a busy time. All of that is, obviously, on me. The point is just to make it clear that I simply, genuinely, fucked up. I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable being associated with the show as a result of my doing so, and I've taken the episode down.

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 enthusiasts have carved out fascinating niches. VRChat is one. PC VR gaming is another, replete with wild little subcultures and big, ambitious experiments. In this episode, Anton physics-flops on by to talk about how his studio RUST LTD. came to be, what they're saying with their expansive, lushly simulationist VR opus about guns and hot dogs, and why they're not working with Facebook (like, ever). Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades is currently in Early Access on Steam. You can also follow Anton on Twitter, which still exists, and see his devlogs on YouTube. ——— • It's sort of correct to say that you can get Overwatch 2 skins faster by playing World of Warcraft instead, as Polygon reported. • The most recent Science Vs about gun violence has a good summary (with sources) of what objectively works, gun control-wise, and why the U.S. almost certainly won't do any of it. • The John Brown Gun Club is worth knowing about. • Here's the absolutely fucking ridiculous cover of Time Magazine featuring Oculus founder Palmer Luckey posing on a pretend beach with faux-balletic physical implausibly. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Meat Hunter" by Joe Kataldo, from the Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades OST. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 and curiosity over reverence any old day. Here Robert talks about his long history in the indie JRPG space, and his longer history with the JRPG genre—he once endeavored to play them all, back when that felt possible—as well as comedy in games, and the the unique all-ages appeal of what he calls "wholesome horror." This Way Madness Lies is out now on Steam. You can also follow Robert, and Zeboyd Games, on Twitter. (Twitter exists at time of posting). ——— • Here's Let's Mosey: A Slow Translation of Final Fantasy VII. • There is indeed a fan translation of Bish?jo Senshi Sailor Moon: Another Story for the SNES. • Steam Coupons? Totally still a thing, technically. • It was indeed Erick Wolpaw who said, So I'd really like to make a really credible comedy game. People seem to be skipping straight to the pure art, and yet nobody's made the Caddyshack in games yet, right? So I'm like, woah woah woah, let's put on the brakes — let's make Caddyshack, and then we can make Anna Karenina or whatever. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "I Wish You Joy" from the This Way Madness Lies OST by Joshua Queen. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 fact serves as a great jumping-off point to talk about translation, cultural specificity, cultural exchange, and a whole games canon that has remained largely invisible outside of the Sinosphere, even after the immense success of Genshin Impact. Path of Wuxia is currently in Early Access on Steam. Marvel Puzzle Quest is out now on PC, Playstation, Xbox, iOS, and Android. Sword & Fairy 7 is out now on Steam and Playstation, and coming soon to Xbox. You can get the original 1995 release of 仙劍奇俠傳 as freeware, with a fan translation. You can also follow Johnny on Twitter, and see his archived Twitch streams on YouTube. ——— • Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is indeed a trip. • Here's that piece that Drew mentions, about the history of Chinese RPGs. • Between the Internet Archive and ROMHacking.net (two of the finest sites to ever exist), you should be able to get the original Sword & Fairy running in English with minimal effort and Johnny's Let's Play videos do indeed make for great supplement, filling in the nuances that the (nonetheless commendable!) fan translation will tend to elide. • Here are our referred-to talks with Jessica Gonzalez, Aaron Nemoyten, and Aidan Moher. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Fairy Dance" performed by Teddy Edwards, Robert "Iggie" Shevak, Roy Porter, Hampton Hawkes, and Herb Harper, supervised by Morrie Rapoport. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 Capybara Spa, and (whisper it) about exploring older games via emulation. (The Steam Deck is excellent for that, even unto Valve themselves occasionally forgetting to pretend otherwise). Ah, but the main event just might be the Drew and Lucio losing their minds (all over again) at the ill-advisedly twist-centric narrative of A Way Out—so MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF A WAY OUT FROM 0:55:55 to 1:02:21, and a callback thereto from 1:13:54 to 01:14:26. ——— • The latest Tim Rogers mega-review (of Boku no Natsuyasumi, which we mentioned in the show notes last time as well) does include an aside about the Animal Crossing series, and a (surreal, nightmarish) foray into the original game particularly. • At time of posting, you can in fact just go ahead and order a Steam Deck. The Playdate still involves a waitlist, however. • You can hear L eating babka at a few points in this episode. In her defense, Drew makes truly superlative babka. (Here's what she was referencing at the end, by the way). • Here's our streaming series with Lucio and Drew playing It Takes Two. • Dr. Holmes, the kinky, unwieldable lategame paramour-armament in Boyfriend Dungeon (designed by Ikumi "It's Spooky" Nakamura) is in fact a whip. Drew was conflating them with Rowan (who is a Scythe, and a bit spooky besides). The ETAO Podcast regrets the error. • Also! Drew wrote a bit about camp-adjacent appreciation of games a while back. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Way Out There" by Bob Nolan, performed by Sons of the Pioneers. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West?and he stops by to attune to our aetheryte and have a chat. You can get FIGHT, MAGIC, ITEMS, both physically and digitally, all the places listed here. You can also follow Aidan on Twitter, one of the places you can subscribe to Astrolabe. ——— • Here's Aidan's Astrolabe post about "pre-release jitters". • FIGHT, MAGIC, ITEMS tells the full story of The Portopia Serial Murder Case, but in short: It was one of Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii's earliest games, and it was first released for the NEC PC-6001 was a visual novel controlled with a text parser. That wasn't going to work on the Famicom, both for storage reasons and for interface reasons—and in reworking the game for button-based menus, Horii laid the groundwork for the menu-based JRPG interfaces to come. • Here's Legend of Etad, which was built for the Playdate. • The remastermeisters at M2 were involved in Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana (Square Millennium Collection), so at the risk of being reductive, that's probably why it's a good'n. • For a look at why the Dragon Quest games didn't come West for a while there, here's a lovely Paste piece looking back at Dragon Quest V these 30 years on. • Here's the Action Button review of Boku no Natsuyasumi that discusses, among a great many other things, the radically combat-free opening hours of Dragon Quest VII. • And here's Aidan's first piece on "weaponized nostalgia" in Final Fantasy VII Remake. He talks about the game's remarkable highs and equally remarkable lows, and about the oddness of trying to write about or think about or even just engage with a work that's so ever-incomplete. • Yoshi-P recently said that he "decided to position FFXIV as a fan service title, and because it belonged to the MMORPG genre, I was able to run with an idea nobody had ever tried before and create a sort of Final Fantasy theme park." That's one half of Final Fantasy's relationship to its own past. The other half, Drew has written about in the context of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Drew and Lucio have also talked about remake culture generally, and Drew has thought a bit about remakes seeming simultaneously pious toward, and embarrassed by, their originals. • Here's that Digital Foundry video on DOOM for SNES. • And here's Aidan's article for Wired about using CRTs to play games here in the modern era. • Atlus' deeply anti-preservationist lawsuit against a "gray" Shin Megami Tenei Imagine Online server is a pretty good example of why preservation often has to be, you know, extralegal. • If these ideas of genre (and sharing, and anti-gatekeeping) are intriguing to you, then do check out our conversation with Santiago Zapata. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Crystal Paradise" by Joseph Sussman, performed by The Stardusters with Phil Napoleon and His Orchestra. "Draggin' the Dragon" by (W.C.?) Handy, performed by the Cotton Blossom Orchestra. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Jessica Rizzo 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 fits into broader conversations about making work (and everything else) more democratic. The Weekly Standup Podcast is on Twitter, and the show itself is on Twitch and YouTube. For Jessica's activist work and sundry social media mabobs, check out her Linktree. You can also follow Jessica on Twitter, along with ABetterABK, GWA, and CODE-CWA. ——— • Jessica was going by Jessica Gonzalez at the time of this interview. • For those unfamiliar with Grandma's Boy. • When we talk about in-fighting on the left, we have to acknowledge that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism all occur in leftist spaces, and that such spaces need a way of dealing with them. The issue comes when we focus more on dunking than on resolving the issue at hand?and Twitter is particularly good at making the former feel like the latter. • Here's Fight Like Hell. • Here's the report Drew was referring to about Nintendo, though as Jessica pointed out, the issue of contractors being treated abysmally is by no means unique to Nintendo of America. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Get Thee Behind Me" and "Union Maid" from Talking Union by The Almanac Singers. "Boom Went the Boom" (lyrics by Joe Glazer, to the melody of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay") performed by Joe Glazer and Bill Friedland, from Songs of the Wobblies. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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. We then dive into his newer, smaller, more experimental games. Also Brazil, MDK, and naturally, DOOM. You can see a while bunch of Aaron's work on his website. You can also follow Aaron on Twitter. ——— • City Wave (probably more properly called City Pop) rules. "Plastic Love" is probably the one that YouTube most famously surfaced to people algorithmically. Personally, Drew is partial to "Someday." That bassline! Mariya Takeuchi and Tatsuro Yamashita are sort of the first couple of of the genre. And like a lot of people, Drew likely wouldn't have known much about any of the above if not for algorithmic curation. • Sandwiches of History is also on YouTube, for us olds. Roll for Sandwich, not so much. • The Art of Game Design (also known as The Book of Lenses) is a foundational text to the way game design is currently taught in academia, and one that's weirdly unknown outside of it. • Here's Aaron's talk on game design, and his essay on Mafia Wars and Team Fortress 2. • And here are his postmortems on Heroes of Dragon Age, and on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Oh, and let's not forget his Doom 2 level (or for that matter his Portal 2 levels). • Since we talked, Aaron did release Idle Overlord, and also published a bunch more write-ups, including on Superhero City, Starbeard, that one Madagascar game, and the unreleased Dungeon Keeper Social. • The Action Button review of DOOM clocks in at three hours, thirty minutes, and twenty-two seconds, for the record. (Svelte, by what turned out to be Action Button standards). • Why did Drew say As You Like It? He clearly should have said Hamlet: Citizen Kane didn't get to be Citizen Kane by trying to be the Hamlet of movies. • The eternal problem of shiny new tech making games less flexible, less open, and perhaps even less uniquely games—that came up in a wonderfully weird way in the recent episode of The Video Games History Hour about Toonstruck and Siliwood. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music from the Moustachevania OST (as it currently exists) by Aaron Nemoyten. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 collaborated with the rest of the team to convey loads of timely information to the player without giving the game too gamey an aesthetic. You can get Rollerdrome on Steam and PlayStation. You can learn more about Limit Break on their Twitter, their Instagram, and their website. And you can follow Anisa on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. ——— • We cite our sources around here, so here's where I got that pull quote. • "The Dice Punks go Meatpunk!" is here, and everywhere else you want podcasts to be. • Here's Anisa's episode of What Else Do You Do? wherein she talks about her skate crew and their specializations and such. • Neo Cab is another game with a comic-booky visual style, albeit one with some more shading, and therefore distinct from Rollerdrome or Sable. • Here's that joyful video of Anisa watching the Rollerdrome reveal. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Zugspitz Station" and "Kara's Theme" from the Rollerdrome OST by ELECTRIC DRAGON. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 upcoming game Thirsty Suitors, an RPG about romance, family, cooking, skating, mutual understanding, and lots else besides. MINOR SPOILERS for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, of all things, at 1:12:55. You can wishlist Thirsty Suitors on Steam. You can get Falcon Age on Steam, Epic, Oculus, Playstation, and Switch. You can also follow Eka (and Outerloop Games, and Take This) on Twitter. ——— • Here's the example Drew mentions of AZO using himself as a reference for the animation in Thirsty Suitors. • Here's our conversation with Megan Fox about SkateBIRD, as well as our conversation with Shawn Alexander Allen about Treachery in Beatdown City, and while we're at it, our conversation with Greg Kasavin about Hades. • For those who haven't seen Venba. • And for those who'd like to check out Eka's keynote at GCAP, replete with a cutlet recipe. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Auntie Chandra's Theme" from the Thirsty Suitors OST by Ramsey Kharroubi. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 3 to Venba and We Are OFK. Also: What have Lucio's kids been playing? What are the kids into these days, we ask, sounding as old as we've ever sounded, and embracing it. (The kids are into mods, hearteningly!) ——— • The game Drew and Lucio couldn't think of was Bendy and the Ink Machine, and the mod Drew mentions puts Bendy into Poppy Playtime. • Here once again is the People Make Games investigation into Roblox, and their follow-up about the Roblox folks trying to get them to take the original video down. • Kirby Your Enthusiasm, basically as Drew described it? Totally a thing. • Zach Barth's most recent appearance on the show was in fact his eighth. • For those who don't know, the Bryant in question is the Director of OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, so we do not claim that our excitement for that game is entirely objective. • We didn't really get to in it on the show, but the doubling of identities in Elden Ring isn't just about being confusing. It's thematic. It's about people playing different roles over long lives, to say nothing of eternal lives. (That said, it is also tremendously confusing). • The Teddy in question was Teddy Dief. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Pluckin' the Bass" by Roy Eldridge and Joe Eldridge, performed by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, featuring Milton Hinton. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 pursuing weird ideas, messing with old computers, and various kinds of inevitable endings. Here Zach talks about why the studio is closing up shop, why they're choosing to end things on this particular note, and what might be next. You can get Last Call BBS on Steam and on Game Pass for PC. You can see the whole Zachtronics catalog on their website. You can also follow Zach(tronics) on Twitter. ——— • When Zach came on the podcast previously, he talked primarily about Möbius Front ?83, about MOLEK-SYNTEZ, about EXAPUNKS, and about Opus Magnum?and before that, we had a trio of conversations about Infinifactory, focusing on puzzle design (and whether it's right to call Zach's "anti-puzzles" puzzles), then the narratives that people tend to ignore in non-Eliza Zachtronics games, and then how Zachtornics came to make TIS-100. • As Drew mentions in the in intro, there's also this live interview from GDC 2019. (The crowd was there to learn how to be Zach, which was not what Zach was there to teach, but hey). • Drew refers to flatgames generally and Hypnospace Outlaw specifically, so for more on that, check out our conversation with Jay Tholen. • Episode 7 of The Zachtronics Podcast is the one where Zach and company play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and for which Zach originally made Dungeons and Diagrams. • Here's the interview where Zach first talked about Last Call BBS being the last Zachtronics game, and also about teaching (if it's still there; Twitch is very weird and kind of bad that way). • And here's the Kotaku piece (which presumably is sticking around) where Zach goes into more detail about the decision to close the studio. • Zach mentions Logic, which rules. • Zach also mentions Seeing Like A State and The Case Against Education. • Here's the mook about expensive Japanese PCs from back in the day. • And here's the stop-motion animated Last Call BBS trailer. • The artist whose name we couldn't remember is Zdzisław Beksińsk. • And the podcast Zach mentioned is Louder Than A Riot (not really a pun), which uses the catchphrase "Rhyme and Punishment" (an excellent pun). You can hear about the drama here. • Thanks to The Mysterious Ian K. for the header gif (and the good conversation about the Japanese-style model-making in Last Call BBS). ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. The ending music from the original arcade version of HACK*MATCH and the sole BGM from Sawayama Solitaire, both from the Last Call BBS OST by Matthew Seiiji Burns. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 of Escape Academy. Here they talk about making the switch to at-home digital games, the importance of social play, and the tricky balance between exploring novel ideas on the one hand, and on the other, having your idea make instant, gut-level sense to players (including distracted and/or drunk ones). You can get Escape Academy on Steam, Epic, Playstation, and Xbox (including Game Pass). You can see more of Coin Crew Games' work on their website. You can also follow Mike, Wyatt, and Coin Crew Games on Twitter. ——— • Here's Mike's really excellent talk on the process of building, and installing arcade games. • And here's Two Bit Circus! • For more on arcade games (in and out of the time of COVID) check out our interview with Nik Mikros and Josh DeBonis of Killer Queen fame. • Yes, Chuck E. Cheese (the character) is properly named Charles Entertainment Cheese, and yes, Drew will bring this fact up at any opportunity. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "Top Floor Feeling" and "Escape Academy" from the Escape Academy OST by Doseone. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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 true improvisation for GMs and players alike, and "how to depict harm without causing it." Brief spoilers about a major villain in the MEATPUNKS sourcebook from 0:28:45 to 0:29:28. You can get the free quickstart edition of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER right now, and the full game soon, over at Sinister Beard Games. You can get the MEATPUNKS videogames, Powered by Blood and BOUND BY ASH, on Itch.io. You can also follow Heather and Aura (as well as Oli from Sinister Beard) on Twitter. ——— • The header image is from Paulina Ganucheau's rather excellent cover art for the TTRPG of EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER. • Here's Quietus, and here's Singularity. • Here's our conversation with Spenser Starke about Alice Is Missing. • And here's what the hell Drew meant by "the Mormor thing on Sherlock." ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. "CRASH QUEEN" (ft. M Gewehr) from the EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: Powered by Blood OST and "Mountain Time" (ft. Sarah Hubbard) from the EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: BOUND BY ASH OST by Josie Brechner. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

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, a roguelike-like, and a townbuilder. It sees Damien staking out some new territory, both mechanically and narratively, while also building on the classes fae started exploring in It's Six Random Characters and a Single Floor Dungeon, That's the Whole Game. Here Damien talks about the game in detail for the first time, and also reflects on more than half a decade of making RPG Maker do things it almost certainly shouldn't be able to do. You can wishlist Purgatory Dungeoneer on Steam. A bunch of faer other games are on Steam and Itch. You can also follow Damien on Twitter. ——— "All The People Say (Season 5)" by Carpe Demon. Some music from the forthcoming Purgatory Dungeoneer OST by rj lake. Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.