GameDev Breakdown

This time on GameDev Breakdown, as promised, Todd runs through his prototyping process, start to finish. This episode makes heavy mention of this post. Todd's game design document template is available at Itch. If you enjoy GameDev Breakdown Sign up for our free game dev newsletter! Subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice Follow us on Twitter: @GameDevPod, @CodeWritePlay, @Mechatodzilla Check show notes and articles at CodeWritePlay.com Join us on Discord! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Are "small content creator" support communities really something we should want? In this episode of GameDev Breakdown I take a look at the latest in a trend of proposals (or actual initiatives) to connect small devs, artists, authors, content creators, etc. to support and promote one another. It sounds nice, but 1.) Is it good for us as creators, and 2.) Is it even likely to work? If you enjoy GameDev Breakdown Sign up for our free game dev newsletter! Subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice Follow us on Twitter: @GameDevPod, @CodeWritePlay, @Mechatodzilla Check show notes and articles at CodeWritePlay.com Join us on Discord! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Twitter reacts to a doomsday proclamation about indie development, but there are a few problems with the message. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Fresh off of his contributions to Borderlands 3, Gearbox senior VFX artist Ash Lyons calls in to talk about the post-release mood, parenting in the triple-A development space, and his long road to Borderlands. I first connected with Ash over Twitter around the time I put out my interview with Joshua Davidson and we got along immediately--he's a parent of young kids, he has a passion for connecting with newer devs and creators, and he is hilarious. I'm not saying I'm all those things, but he is. We wanted to do a recording pretty much right away, but decided to wait until Borderlands 3 hit shelves. After launch, and with Gearbox's blessing (thanks again) it was game on. In addition to career and background stories, Ash shared some favorite games, contributions he's most proud of in Borderlands 3, and even filled me in on the inspiration for some of the game's messier moments. Don't miss it. Ash's links @FXBl4ckout on Twitter Ash Lyons at Art Station Borderlands 3 Gearbox Software --- Send in a voice m

Game development and its specialties have a ton of potential for remote work, which is awesome, but has a unique set of challenges only you can solve for yourself. Do you have to agree to sit on calls with clients? How do you navigate project changes? How can you avoid conflicts? In this episode of GameDev Breakdown we'll drill down deep based on real world trial and error. I'm scheduling with new awesome guests all the time, be ready for more guest reveals very soon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Todd provides an update on the studio, the state of the podcast, and thoughts on managing gaming's impact on our attitude. This is a shorter episode while I finish reconstruction on the studio and set up the next set of interviews. More great stuff is on the way! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Richard Rouse III calls in to talk about his new indie title, The Church in the Darkness, and treats us to some stories from his fantastic career including the design of The Suffering, writing Game Design: Theory & Practice, and some interesting creative projects we never got to see. Richard is a really insightful guy. He has too much writing and too many talks to fully list here, but I encourage you to check out his wisdom around the web. I could have filled much more than a one-hour show while picking his brain--and I'd love to have him back for more--but I sure appreciate the time he took with us this time. I wanted to be sure to include the IGN article that was written after Richard and Midway lured game journalists into a defunct prison and locked them in overnight. Richard even seemed to get a kick out of revisiting the topic. It's a little piece of unique game PR history, don't miss it. https://ca.ign.com/articles/2003/10/24/west-virginia-ghost-hunt Richard’s links The Church in the Darkness @Ri

Todd puts in an appearance on the Nightfall Unlimited test show with fan favorite Ray Marek, but not before an extended rant about positivity. Okay, Todd here, this is a short show and then I'm headed out of the country for a little getaway with my wife--sorry, not sorry. I thought about skipping this week's Thursday show completely or cooking up some kind of "best of" episode, but instead I thought it would be fun to pull back the curtain a bit and share a little segment I did for our friend Ray as he works on the return of the Nightfall Unlimited podcast. This was a Google Hangouts call I connected to, so my end of the conversation sounds a lot different from their end. I did run through it in Audacity to tighten things up a bit. There will still be a Monday show and next Thursday's show is a good solid maybe, but things will definitely be on autopilot until I get back in town. Yeah, I ranted a bit on this one. I think it was for a good cause. I think we have a certain responsibility to look at what folks i

LucasArts Employee #3 himself, David Fox joins to talk about his fantastic career contributing to some of the most iconic graphic adventure games of our time, chasing the technology to create location-based interactive experiences, and his philosophy on positive change through design. Topics include VR, interpersonal issues in the modern game industry, politics, electric cars, and more. David was so kind to agree to this show, we were both fighting illness at the time of recording (I had to really work hard on my end of the discussion in post to make it listenable, apologies for any unusual tone quality) but I could not have been more pleased with the discussion itself. David has contributed to so many games we all know and love, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thimbleweed Park, and more. It was such a pleasure to spend some time learning about the rest of his awesome work and capture more details about the things he's done. Please keep an open mind; David's time at LucasArt

Our friend Ted drops by to talk about the history of martinis, what to look for at a Porta Potty in the woods, and the best way to combine Peeps, cola, and obstacle courses. We discuss game development here and there where it comes up. You have to meet Ted to understand him. He's the kind of teammate who divides his time between yelling at the other team, yelling at you, and then yelling at himself. In a fun way. Ted contributes to the OHCPlay channel on YouTube which we've discussed before, but also has a personal account, TrojanManSCP, full of just as many assorted gems as you might suspect from our chat in this episode. He's an authority on all matters Overwatch and he can drill down pretty deep into anything that has his attention. Anyway, here's Ted taking the bug salt shotgun to the face: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHfOMRkvU4s Ted's links OHCPlay (YouTube) TrojanManSCP (YouTube) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/g

Indie developer and author (and podcaster!) Mat Bradley-Tschirgi discusses his beginnings in journalism and indie development, his upcoming book, The Films of Uwe Boll Vol. 1: The Video Game Movies, and makes a surprising revelation about an upcoming video game to which both he and Boll are attached. You read that right: a game project from the mind of notorious (former?) filmmaker Uwe Boll is forthcoming, and this is a chat with the man making it happen. Let the intrigue and concern wash over you. Meet and/or greet Mat during his Ready Player One panel feature at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2019. Mat’s links The Films of Uwe Boll Vol. 1: The Video Game Movies Mat on Twitter Sequelcast 2 and Friends podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

YouTuber Matt Hill joins to talk about running the OHCPlay channel, highs and lows in the gaming community, and we give the public their first glimpse of a list of spectacular gamer tags over 7 years in the making. I hope listeners enjoy this show half as much as I did. This is the first installment of our second weekly show. Each week we'll feature a content creator who will share their perspective on process, community issues, and hopefully have some fun in the process. Have a community member in mind you'd love to hear from? Shout them out. Matt's links OHCPlay on YouTube Matt on Twitter --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/support

Will Traxler of Traxmaster Software discusses his new game, Exception, his first commercial release following years of solo development. Will shares insight into his unique post-launch mindset, his solution to investing in his development, and the dynamics of outsourcing PR responsibilities as a one-man studio. Will has accomplished a ton with this game release. Multiple platforms on day 1, stellar marketing in motion, and all without crunching or losing his cool. His attitude is exemplary and this is a must-listen for small indie teams or other soloists. We discuss surviving a flood early in the episode. Indeed I did have to push our Skype call back a day over flooding in the area as it resulted in a school cancellation for my kid. It would have been too ridiculous a lie to use, so I suppose I've got that going for me. Will's links  ExceptionGame.com Exception on Steam @TraxmasterSoft --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/

To help us close out Season 2, Blake J. Harris makes a surprise appearance to reflect on his early life and career, the success of Console Wars and the upcoming television adaptation from Legendary Entertainment with producers Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. We also discuss his new book, The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook and the Revolution that swept Virtual Reality published by HarperCollins in February. By necessity, this leads to a discussion of Palmer Luckey and the political whirlwind surrounding his departure from Oculus in early 2017. Finally, Blake teases what's coming up next in his incredible writing career. I'm so glad we finally caught up with Blake. Without question, he is gaming's leading modern historian and to spend an hour in a discussion with him is like an opportunity to help capture gaming's story in some small way and I was grateful for this chance to do so. As you'll hear later in the conversation, Blake's efforts to simply do the right thing in the circumstances in which he fo

Thanks to some gracious networking help from Patreon supporter Mark Feller and Indie Gamer Chick, this time we're hearing from LEGO games veteran and current Huey Games CEO/Creative Director Rob Hewson! As has become a beautiful show tradition, we open up by discussing what everyday game development is like in the guest's part of the world. Rob's team has won a grant from the UK Games Fund which is helping his team carry on the family business--his father and co-founder is UK game industry legend Andrew Hewson, whose game products in the 80s and early 90s are the inspiration for some of the very games they're publishing today. Rob has great insight into all aspects of funding and publicizing indie games, and specializes in wide cross-platform releases; this is must-hear for those of you in development on your next indie release. Also check out Andrew's book, Hints & Tips for Videogame Pioneers, which captures his journey through retro gaming history! Rob Hewson / Huey Games: Rob Hewson on Twitter

This show was a couple of firsts for the podcast: I think it was probably the first time we've had on an industry producer who wasn't also responsible for several other jobs (at least no more than any producer is) and it was also the first guest we've had phone in from Poland--I trust you'll excuse the occasional dip in audio quality. If you haven't tried Serial Cleaner, Draw Distance's last big project under the name iFun4All (yes, we talk about it), you're missing an entertaining stealth puzzle game with style to spare. If you picked it up recently in your Humble Monthly, take a few minutes to check it out before you jump into this episode, then you'll also be caught up for when the new game, Ritual: Crown of Horns, hits Steam Early Access later this week. Once you've tried both, you'll be struck by how this relatively small studio came up with two drastically different games and full-on nailed them both. In addition to digging into the game projects, I picked Kamil's brain about the life of a producer for

Previously on the podcast we've had opportunities to hear from highly specialized sound designers, musicians, and recording engineers, but we've had somewhat limited time to really dig into composition, and that happens to be one of Stephen Tanksley's areas of expertise. Stephen is a Chicago-area composer for both games and film. He has a wealth of formal music and audio training to talk about, he works on awesome projects as a freelancer (including original music for streamers and a Star Wars feature-length fan film), and he has a personal project to discuss that you're going to want access to the moment it's complete. In addition to shop talk, it was interesting to discuss issues surrounding professionalism and communication in our different focus areas and the value of participating in mentorship, both as a mentor and mentee within your community. It's always a pleasure to discuss continuous improvement with industry pros interested in making their field a better place. Go check out Stephen's work and drop

Jordan Lemos is a WGA award-nominated scriptwriter working at Ubisoft in Québec, with writing credit on Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the words of Socrates himself. He's been a Twitter pal for a while now, and for some reason, we have the conversational energy of the cousins you have to separate at Thanksgiving dinner. Jordan's path into the industry was far from easy. Pay close attention as he describes the roles and responsibilities piled on him while working with previous employers and the type of thanks he got when typical industry issues came along. It's no coincidence that he has such specific ideas on how the industry could improve life for the writers that help make games so compelling, and its relationships with them as career professionals. This show was a ton of fun to record, and I appreciate Jordan's time. Call us, Beat Saber team! Jordan's links: @CrypticJordan on Twitter Assassin's Creed Odyssey at Ubisoft --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevbreakdown/message Support thi

Joshua Davidson is a senior sound designer working at Gearbox Software in the Dallas, Texas area. After leaving Full Sail University in 2007, he Contributed to Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2 at Volition in northern Illinois before heading south to work on Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Battleborn, and Borderlands 3 after making the move to Gearbox. In addition to building a stellar career in AAA games, Joshua has done some great writing and speaking about his time in the industry. His deep-dive into how he went from high school hopeful to graduate to industry pro has bounced around the web some before landing at Medium--it's a must-read for anyone outside the industry looking to make their way in. He also returned to Full Sail years later to give a great talk on his industry run that you can now watch at YouTube. In this week's show, Joshua provides some updates on the last few years of his career you won't hear about in his earlier presentations, we discuss some recent trending industry news, and Joshua

If you don't think you've read or at least seen any of David L. Craddock's phenomenal books on the game industry and game development, check again, you probably have. Some of the greatest stories of the development space have been captured in David's phenomenal pages, including Blizzard's early history with Diablo, tales from the days of NetHack and other early Roguelikes, and more recently, Yacht Club Games' action-packed development of Shovel Knight for Boss Fight Books. He kindly agreed to Skype in as Humble Bundle closes out its Boss Fight book bundle promotion (you still have about two days!) and his insight was every bit as interesting as I expected. This is a must-listen for writers of any kind, and I'd also put it on the required show list for anyone running or connected with an indie studio. David has explored and documented not only the development of many games we know and love, but the culture, the energy, and the trials of the people creating them--and his knack for framing captivating tales from