Brain Arcade

We're taking a break this week and wanted to say THANK YOU for joining us on this podcast journey!

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Producer Janyl Lambee Tanoy shares insights on building strong partnerships with external development teams covering trust, documentation, communication styles, and how to set clear expectations across studios. A must-listen for anyone optimizing cross-team collaboration in game dev.

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Indie veteran Joe Mirabello (Terrible Posture Games) joins Brain Arcade to unpack how indie studios can survive these challenging times and how their new game "Battle Train" got made with spanning scrappy prototyping and a smart publishing partnerships. We dig into avoiding the “hamster wheel” deals, surviving today’s discoverability crunch, and lessons from scaling a studio without losing their heart. Joe talks through some practical, candid advice for anyone shipping games in 2025.

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Producer, Writer, Director Steve Hoffmann (The Toys That Made Us, Miami Ink) joins Brain Arcade to unpack what game development and rock bands have in common — and why so many studios lose their magic. We talk about the rise of indie teams, nostalgia-fueled arcades, broken business models and the future of creative freedom, this episode is a candid look at the soul of game making in 2025.

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Today we answer your questions and we had a great question come from Plexicraft! Narrative expert, Martin Montgomery, returns to Brain Arcade to dig into how player choices shape narrative. From Chrono Trigger’s hidden consequences to Telltale’s “everyone will remember that” prompts, we explore the pros and cons of explicit feedback vs. subtle systems and what it means for player agency.

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Sound Designer & Creative Director Jonathan Ontiveros (Know Buddy Games) joins Brain Arcade to explore how sound design can craft fear, tension, and immersion in games. We dig into the psychology of sound, silence, and sonic misdirection to shed light on how indie teams can use these tools to shape unforgettable player experiences.

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David Siddock and Chris Cross sit down this week to talk about their shared love for MMOs (especially WoW), why those memories stick, why they quit MMOs, and how we can use this information to focus on building a player-first game in the future. David talks about his person project and some innovative ideas that he's building in to create a game that he would be excited to play.

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Wills from Avalanche joins us to explore how blockchain can potentially empower small teams to build trust-first, community-driven games. We dig into ownership, transparency, and why the future of game development is all about creators and players building together.

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Chris talks about some big changes, he is stepping away from his full-time job and into something new. In this special episode, we flip the mic to talk about the shift, why the current industry isn't built to support sustainable indie dev, and what it would take to change that. From mentorship gaps to missing ecosystems, Chris shares the lessons he’s learned, the problems he wants to help solve, and the long game behind his next chapter.

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Ken from Tashi.gg is back with us again diving deeper into his goal of creating forever games. We talk about sustainable server solutions for live games and how smaller teams can benefit from these options.

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