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Art from Naomi's new game, Consentacle[/caption]
Today I'm super-excited to have Naomi Clark on episode 45 of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast. Last year, Naomi ran a super-successful Kickstarter for her two-player social card game Consentacle, which in addition to having beautiful, memorable artwork, is also trying to use systems to explore human communication and connection in new ways.
Naomi is also the co-author of A Game Design Vocabulary (written with Anna Anthropy), which is easily one of the best design books of its kind, and she teaches game design at the NYU Game Center. She also has a thoroughly awesome Twitter account. Some of her activity on there feels too good for Twitter; it feels like it needs to be catalogued into
We had a pretty wide-ranging conversation that touched on meta-rationality, social responsibility in game design, providing off-ramps for players, addiction, and more. You should also go check out Naomi's GDC talk here (it's the last talk in the clip). Oh, and follow her on Twitter.
Enjoy!
If you thought this conversation was one worth having, please consider contributing to my Patreon!
Category: Interview
Interview with Greg Street, Lead Designer at Riot Games
This week, I have an interview with Riot Games lead designer, Greg Street.
A few months ago, the League of Legends YouTube channel posted a "Dev Diary" video. A few people who follow my work alerted me on social media about this video, telling me that it sounded a bit like theory I often advocate was being expressed in the video. I often watch Riot's dev-diary type stuff, but I had been a bit out of the loop at the time, so I missed it. But once I checked it out, it did feel kind of familiar!
And it's true that it does sound a lot like me. For reference, when you Google "input randomness" I'm pretty much all of the top results; the only other people talking about it are people referencing my work, with a couple people referencing the Ludology Podcast (which is where I originally got the terms from).
It turns out that Greg was aware of my stuff, so probably that is where he got the terminology, if not the theory. Anyway, I got a chance to chat with Greg about the theory and how it maybe should, or could apply to League. I think it went well! Let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for listening.
As always, you can support this podcast over at www.patreon.com/keithburgun.
Interview with James Lantz, designer of Invisible, Inc.
Today I interviewed James Lantz, game designer at Klei. Among numerous other games, he was for me most notably a designer on Invisible Inc., a really interesting X-Com-ish tactical strategy game, and Mercury, a small indie Rogue-like game that really boiled down how Rogue-likes really work in the smartest way I've ever seen.
(By the way: yes-relation! James is the son of Frank Lantz, who you can hear in my episodes 23 and 24.)
Some topics covered:
- How James came to work for Klei
- Our opinions on how to market strategy games
- A little discussion about League of Legends and last-hitting
- Game design writing
- A bit about what growing up as the son of a game designer was like
Interview with Tadhg Kelly
You probably already know Tadhg Kelly, as he's one of game design's most prolific writers. He writes for TechCrunch, as well as his own blog at www.whatgamesare.com. In this interview I ask him about why there has been a falling off of game design writing over the past few years, including an interesting point about the role #GamerGate may have played.
We also talk about his new book that he's been working on, as well as my concerns about VR/AR, both of which he writes about a lot. It was a great interview, and I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks for listening. Special shout-out to Aaron Oman for his support as a Patron. If you want to become a Patron and support podcast episodes like this one, as well as articles, videos and even games from me, please support my Patreon campaign over at www.patreon.com/keithburgun.
I also mentioned in the podcast that there is a Kickstarter running for Push the Lane. If you haven't checked that already, please do!
Game Grammar and Game Design Theory – Interview with Raph Koster
Today I had a conversation with the author of my favorite book on game design, as well as a designer on one of my favorite interactive experiences of my high school years, Raph Koster. The conversation goes for about 90 minutes, and like Raph said, we could have easily gone another four hours afterward. It was a great conversation that touched on a number of topics:
- How videogame history both has a lot to teach us, but at the same time hasn't changed much in some ways since the early days
- Raph's guideline for designing good abstract strategy games
- Game grammar, and the books Raph has been working on for a decade
- The state of game design theory discourse
Brett Lowey’s Game Design Commandments
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Grab Minos Strategos when you can.[/caption]
Today, in Episode 36* of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast, I had a great conversation with BrainGoodGames' Brett Lowey. If you don't already know BrainGoodGames, they make some of the best single-player strategy games out there. All four of Brett's games—Militia, Axes & Acres, Skyboats, as well as his latest, Minos Strategos—are available on Steam.
But making great games isn't necessarily enough for me to want to have a conversation with someone. What made me interested was "BrainGoodGames' Design Commandments" which he posted on his site recently.
The conversation was great and went to a bunch of interesting places. We covered his commandments, of course, but discussed his origins and what he considers to be the successes and failures of his games.
I should mention also that Brett is one of the editors over at gamedesigntheory.org, the new site I recently launched that highlights current game design bloggers and media producers.
Enjoy the episode!
*PS I think I said it's 35 in the episode itself - ignore me!