Cafe Booleans: A Game Dev Podcast

We chat with local indie game developer, Joakim "Chef" Lundström, of Partum Artifex and previously horror hit 'Stairs', about:

🧟 Partum Artifex, a puzzle horror game that features creative and challenging puzzles while telling a gruesome story about a failed artist

🚀 Taking Partum Artifex from a game jam entry, to a full-fledged video game release

🎃 How to terrify people with storytelling in the horror genre

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Utilising asset packs, and other tips and tricks to excel in a small two-person team

📽 Partum Artifex reaching 200k+ views on YouTube

👀 Creating a thrilling and exciting teaser trailer for the game

🎉 Experiences working as creative lead on horror game Stairs with over 10M+ views on YouTube (including play through with Markiplier!)

GUEST LINKS:

Joakim "Chef" Lundström: Chef (Twitter) | Partum Artifex (Twitter) | Partum Artifex (Steam)

LIVE BOOLEANS LINKS

Hosts: @amferrabetta | @kcanatselis

Follow us on Twitter @LiveBooleans

Email us at [email protected]

⭐ Want to help support Live Booleans? Review us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen!

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about:

⚔️ Xbox and Sony battle it out in court over Activision Blizzard acquisition, PS4 sold twice as much as Xbox One

😰 Netflix Games not doing very well..... why isn't anyone trying it out?

👹 New Dungeons and Dragons coming in 2024, including an official virtual tabletop made in Unreal 5

💛 Pokemon Company International Pledges $25 million to philanthropic organisations over the next 5 years

🎶 A Janet Jackson song crashing computers in the 1990s

Alex Ferrabetta - @amferrabetta

Adelaide Game Developer Discord: https://bit.ly/AGDdiscord

Media:

- Netflix subscribers aren’t playing Netflix games

- The PS4 Sold ‘Twice As Many’ Units As The Xbox One, Court Papers Show

- Microsoft claims Sony is keeping games off Game Pass by paying developers 'blocking rights'

- One D&D: Everything We Know About the Next 'Edition' of Dungeons and Dragons

- Pokemon Company International Pledges $25 million to philantrhopic organisations over next 5 years

- Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers

We chat with Founder of Health VR company Add Life Technologies and UX/UI, Game Design Lecturer at SAE Australia, Daish Malani about:

👨‍🏫 Experience and journey teaching pre-school in Japan to working in VR

✏️ Teaching game design and UX/UI design at SAE

🧠 Designing cognitive, fine motor skill, and relaxation exercises for rehabilitation in the form of VR Games

🕶 Developing for The Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, and utilising hand-tracking for gameplay and menu interactions

🚀 The future of Add Life, Apple and Oculus VR - digital companions, digital homes, and much more

GUEST LINKS:

Daish Malani: Add Life | LinkedIn

LIVE BOOLEANS LINKS

Hosts: @amferrabetta | @kcanatselis

Follow us on Twitter @LiveBooleans

Email us at [email protected]

⭐ Want to help support Live Booleans? Review us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen!

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about:

😍 Tantalus Media is opening and hiring developers in Adelaide, South Australia

🤖 Technical artist using AI image generation tool, DALL E 2 as part of their workflow for texturing models

🎨 Exploring an AI image generation tool that creates images from textual descriptions similar to DALL E 2, called Mid Journey, to generate inspiration

🪧 Uncovering a divisive unfinished video game set in South Australia, called Escape from Woomera and it's use as a tool for protest

📚 Life is Strange won't be going back to the episodic model, and the impact episodic structure has on video game narrative

🏰 Mighty Kingdom to Recapitalise and Restructure with Strategic Investment and New Directors

Alex Ferrabetta - @amferrabetta

Media:

- Tested using #dalle for texture and filtering - Tweet

- Using Mid Journey to Generate Ideas - LinkedIn

- Mid Journey Official Website

- Escape from Woomera

- Escape from Woomera Game Walkthrough

- Mighty Kingdom Press Release

We chat with author and experienced games user researcher Steve Bromley, previously at Playstation, about:

🥼 What is Games User Research and what does it look like in real-life?

📚 Why Steve authored his books 'How to Be A Games User Researcher' and 'Building User Research Teams' and how they're useful

🎮 Steve's experience working as a researcher at Sony Playstation on a variety of games including Horizon, Sly Cooper, and more

✅ The pros and cons of working within larger and small teams, and how to communicate insights to teams

🥽 Challenges of conducting user research in VR

📝 What type of research to conduct and when

🔮 AI play testing? What will the future of games user research hold?

GUEST LINKS:

Steve Bromley: stevebromley.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

LIVE BOOLEANS LINKS

Hosts: @amferrabetta | @kcanatselis

Follow us on Twitter @LiveBooleans

Email us at [email protected]

⭐ Want to help support Live Booleans? Review us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen!

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about:

💰 GameStop launching an NFT marketplace, and $100M grant program for game developers with Immutable

🤔 Unity lets employees go and announces it's merging with a company known for malware delivery

🎬 Nintendo purchases Tokyo-based CG animation studio and renames it 'Nintendo Pictures'

🎉 Screen Australia announces over $4 million for 31 games through the 'Games: Expansion Fund'

🥇 World Video Game Hall of Fame inductees announced for 2022, what games are missing?

👷‍♀️ Game Workers Australia is hosting networking events all over Australia, including Adelaide

Alex Ferrabetta - @amferrabetta

Media:

- GameStop Launches NFT Marketplace

- $100M IMX Grant Program

- Unity merges with company known for malware delivery

- Nintendo purchases Tokyo-based CG Animation Studio Dynamo Pictures to rename it Nintendo Pictures

- FUNDING APPROVALS 2021-2022 GAMES PRODUCTION

- World Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees for 2022 Announced

- Game Workers Australia is hosting its first networking event in Adelaide

We chat with Alex's old game art lecturer from Flinders University, co-founder of Monkeystack and all around digital creative Shane Bevin about:

👀 A story about when Alex was Shane's student

🎨 Can you teach someone to be creative? How to exercise your creativity & what to do when the creativity "well" runs dry

📅 How to stay consistent as an artist

🔥 Coping with burnout and "bouncing back"

🙈 The origins of South Australian Studio Monkeystack

🎓 What does it mean to be an educator? What are the responsibilities?

📚 Ideation and the importance of narrative in design

🏫 The strengths of mentoring and teaching creative work within a University structure

🎮 Flinders University's new Bachelor of Creative Arts Game Production

👉 How to pivot into creative work

💻 The importance of sharing your work with others

GUEST LINKS:

Shane Bevin: Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | Tardigrades & Tentacles

LIVE BOOLEANS LINKS

Hosts: @amferrabetta | @kcanatselis

Follow us on Twitter @LiveBooleans

Email us at [email protected]

⭐ Want to help support Live Booleans? Review us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen!

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about:

🤿 A horrifying scientific study rom an Austrian university simulates suffocation with a special VR mask

🦆 Untitled Goose Game IP acquired by ACMI - what does this mean for the future of the games preservation?

🧠 EndeauvorRX - a video game for treating ADHD has been approved by the FDA

⚕️Games for Health, things to consider and the challenges that come with it

🙋‍♀️ The most wishlisted game of Steam is being made with 'volunteers', is this kind of practice okay?

📣 Community Poll: what aspects of your life would you like to see gamified

Alex Ferrabetta - @amferrabetta

Media:

- Horrifying scientific study simulates suffocation with a special VR mask

- Aussie Institutions Come Together To Preserve Untitled Goose Game

- The video game prescribed by doctors to treat ADHD

- ‘The Day Before’ developer defends use of unpaid “volunteers”

We chat with Simon Hanna aka Grand Prize Big Fuzz, award winning Music Artist & Composer for Video Games such as RITE and Immutable's Gods Unchained about:

🎼 Simon's process of creativity and composing music for games

👾 Working on the soundtrack for retro-inspired video game RITE

🎹 Composing for Immutable's trading card game, Gods Unchained

🎸 Finding and working with unique instruments and artists from all around the world

🥵 A 15-second rapid fire quiz testing Simon's ability to come up with soundtracks to strange game concepts on the spot

🤔 Key advice for aspiring game composers

Simon Hanna - Linkedin | Bandcamp

Follow us on Twitter @LiveBooleans

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about:

- Melbourne developer Lumi Interactive smashes records securing largest to date investment, for any women-led studio in Australia, of $AU9.76 million dollars in VC seed funding

- Lumi's gamified mindfulness planting game, and what else could gamification be applied to?

- Epic Games rolls out new cross-play tools for steam and the Epic Games Store breaking down barriers between games platforms on PC - win or bust?

- Microsoft signs labor neutrality agreement with workers union ahead of Activision Blizzard deal, finally assisting users

- Which platforms should you launch your video game on first? Exploring a variety of configs and seeing evidence on what works

- Game developers, publishers issue statements supporting abortion rights - what's the responsibility of a game developer and game companies and how does Roe v. Wade affect game developers?

Alex Ferrabetta - @amferrabetta

Media:

- Women-Led Melbourne Studio Secures Record Funding For Viral Wellness Game

- Epic Games rolls out new cross-play tools for Steam and the Epic Games Store

- Microsoft signs labor neutrality agreement with CWA ahead of Activision Blizzard deal

- Which platforms should you launch your video game on first?

- Game developers, publishers issue statements supporting abortion rights