Everybody's Talking At Once

Max Arocena (a.k.a. Colorfiction) hangs out on his porch, amid a rising squall of crickets, to discuss 0°N 0°W (a.k.a. Zero North Zero West), his carefully crafted new dream-'em-up. We discuss the rich possibilities of games without gameplay as such, the incomparable surreality of roadtrips, and the odd connections between working at an architecture firm—Max's old job—and creating spaces in video games. Max also talks through the process of making 0°N 0°W as a one-person team, the game's kitchen-sink approach to graphics techniques, and the emerging, divergent places of VR and the Switch in our game diets.

We also discuss the beauty of making one program you can run on your computer that won't phone your data home, game engines as philosophies of creation, and the inescapable woes of version compatibility.

And dreams. We talk a lot about dreams.

———

• Get your asses to national (and state!) parks, my fellow Americans.

• Singing dunes, man.

• The Kingkiller Chronicle, singular. Just the one.

Zach Barth is back to talk about EXAPUNKS, and the cyber-lanche (always create new hyphenate words, in accordance with the WIRED style guide) of questions that the game raises: Do we miss something by wringing our hands about privacy when what's really at stake in an increasingly computerized world is agency? Is our reality going weirder, or do we just think that because we're getting older (or are we gaslighting ourselves if we ascribe the increasing weirdness of the world to our getting older?) Am I not punk, and are you telling everyone?

We discuss the cultural position of hackers (and of the movie Hackers), the importance of doing primary research even (or especially) about historical periods that we ourselves lived through, and the uniquely cool uncoolness of punks (cyber and otherwise).

Plus, we speculate as to what manner of reprobate would open the Secret Envelope before it's time to do so. Speaking of which, heavy SPOILERS begin at 36:06.

Also! As I mention in the intro, we're now on a regular release schedule, once again, at last, as if for the first time. Look for new episodes every other Saturday, come rain or shine or singularity.

———

• Yeah, at one point I said TIS-100 when I meant SHENZHEN I/O. Shame. Shame.

• And talking about a game with punks in the name sure did show that my pop filter is less than perfectly effective. Noted.

• If you're interested in modern, real, aspirational hacker culture, do consider reading 2600 and/or following DEFCON.

• If you have some Steam friends playing EXAPUNKS, then the hacker battles in the game are in fact asymmetrical PVP (which all Zachtronics puzzles kind of are anyway, thanks to the heuristics, though this does take that a step or two further).

• Here's Marc Laidlaw's writing for WIRED.

• And here's Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.

• Here's a decent introduction to the history and legacy of phone phreaking.

• Ah! And here's Computer Lib.

• N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is good as hell, and just became the first book ever to win three Hugo Awards in a row.

• David Chang's Italian spot rather rules, in my humble opinion.

• Here's an interview with David J. Peterson, the dude who built out the Dothraki language.

• Tetris Attack has not been released on anything since the Super Nintendo and Game Boy days. Put that fact in your pipes and smoke it, anti-emulation hardliners.

• Zach's AMA was and is a good'n.

———

Kenny Lee is the less-frequently-interviewed half of the two-brother team that founded Cellar Door Games, the studio behind (most famously) Rogue Legacy and (most recently) Full Metal Furies. He's also a fan of Ganbare Goemon and Mischief Makers and therefore a megaconnoisseur and the greatest game—so people should really interview him more, happy as I am to get the scoop.

We discuss the remarkable design, rocky launch, and hopefully resurgent future of Full Metal Furies, the difficulty of marketing small-but-meaningful bits of game-feel, and the challenge of designing around (or against) players' compulsive tendencies to keep playing the same way even when they're not having a lick of fun.

———

• The specific Teddy Interview that Kenny mentions is here.

• The Fucking Champs started making music in the mid-90s, actually. I'm old.

• So it was actually in a series of Twitter DMs that Richard Terrell informed me I'd been playing Paper Mario: Color Splash wrong. I guess this was the first time I'd discussed it publicly, and that I owe Richard a podcasty mea culpa sometime.

• Mikey's thing on sequels comes highly recommended.

• The differences between what we sometimes call Spelunky and what we sometimes call Spelunky HD (both of which we sometimes just call Spelunky) are a bit more numerous than I'd realized.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/etao-podcast-351.mp3

Kenny Lee is the less-frequently-interviewed half of the two-brother team that founded Cellar Door Games, the studio behind (most famously) Rogue Legacy and (most recently) Full Metal Furies. He’s also a fan of Ganbare Goemon and Mischief Makers and therefore a megaconnoisseur and the greatest game scholar of our age—so people should really interview him more, happy as I am to get the scoop.

We discuss the remarkable design, rocky launch, and hopefully resurgent future of Full Metal Furies, the difficulty of marketing small-but-meaningful bits of game-feel, and the challenge of designing around (or against) players’ compulsive tendencies to keep playing the same way even when they’re not having a lick of fun.

———

• The specific Teddy Interview that Kenny mentions is here.

• The Fucking Champs started making music in the mid-90s, actually. I’m old.

• So it was actually in a series of Twitter DMs that Richard Terrell informed me I’d been playing Paper Mario: Color Splash wrong. I guess this was the first time I’d discussed it publicly, and that I owe Richard a podcasty mea culpa sometime.

• Mikey’s thing on sequels comes highly recommended.

• The differences between what we sometimes call Spelunky and what we sometimes call Spelunky HD (both of which we sometimes just call Spelunky) are a bit more numerous than I’d realized.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher, Podbay, RadioPublic, and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Zach Barth is back to talk about Opus Magnum and SHENZHEN I/O, the latest in each of Zachtronics' semi-distinct trademark genres: games where you make things that makes things, and games where you actually code or script, respectively. We talk about how these two parallel tracks came to be, where their audiences do and don't overlap, and what some yet-to-emerge third order of zachlikes might look like. (We also talk about maybe not using the word zachlike anymore).

We also discuss the good and bad of otaku storytelling, parents playing Zachtronics games with their kids, and Opus Magnum being studiously and emphatically not steampunk. And again, and always, whether Zach is a real game designer. That, too. And yes, William Gibson comes up. How could he not?

As I say in the into, if you haven't heard my triptych of interviews with Zach from 2015, then you might want to give those a listen too/first/simultaneously:

17. On the Art of the Anti-Puzzle

———

• Some notable non-Zachtronics zachlikes include MHRD and Silicon Zeroes, though Zach will be delighted to know that neither is tagged "zachlike" on Steam.

• I think that this is the University of Washington paper about tutorials that Zach was referring to.

• You can get You Died right here, if you're so inclined.

• Dick Dastardly is the villain on Wacky Races. Am I really going to tag this episode "Wacky Races?" Am I really going to make a tag for Wacky Races?

• Bear witness to the diamond ad grandeur of the Opus Magnum trailer.

• Griffin McElroy's Nuzlocke Run of Pokémon Y is a joyous thing.

• RIP (for now) Zachtronics Podcast. If you only listen to one episode, make it the Zoop episode.

• Truly, truly, no shade to Can I Pet Your Dog?

• The original version of Chron X does seem to be lost to time. Interestingly enough, a publisher by the name Darkened Sky Studios currently owns the rights, and they say they're planning a spiritual successor of some kind.

• Castle Infinity, however, straight up lives!

• I referred to sympathy in The Name of the Wind as magic. We at the Everybody's Talking At Once Podcast regret the error.

• Here's Hercules and Maui fighting, and also the Souls timeline thing.

• And right, right, Keynes:

"Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities."

• I have no idea what the original source is for the idea that "Humanity can endure anything but unfairness" aphorism is, if I'm honest. I stole it from Kieron Gillen forever ago.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/etao-podcast-34.mp3

Zach Barth is back to talk about Opus Magnum and SHENZHEN I/O, the latest in each of Zachtronics’ semi-distinct trademark genres: games where you make things that makes things, and games where you actually code or script, respectively. We talk about how these two parallel tracks came to be, where their audiences do and don’t overlap, and what some yet-to-emerge third order of zachlikes might look like. (We also talk about maybe not using the word zachlike anymore).

As I say in the into, if you haven’t heard my triptych of interviews with Zach from 2015, then you might want to give those a listen too/first/simultaneously:

17. On the Art of the Anti-Puzzle

———

• Some notable non-Zachtronics zachlikes include MHRD and Silicon Zeroes, though Zach will be delighted to know that neither is tagged “zachlike” on Steam.

• I think that this is the University of Washington paper about tutorials that Zach was referring to.

• You can get You Died right here, if you’re so inclined.

• Dick Dastardly is the villain on Wacky Races. Am I really going to tag this episode “Wacky Races?” Am I really going to make a tag for Wacky Races?

• Bear witness to the diamond ad grandeur of the Opus Magnum trailer.

• Griffin McElroy’s Nuzlocke Run of Pokémon Y is a joyous thing.

• RIP (for now) Zachtronics Podcast. If you only listen to one episode, make it the Zoop episode.

• Truly, truly, no shade to Can I Pet Your Dog?

• The original version of Chron X does seem to be lost to time. Interestingly enough, a publisher by the name Darkened Sky Studios currently owns the rights, and they say they’re planning a spiritual successor of some kind.

• Castle Infinity, however, straight up lives!

• I referred to sympathy in The Name of the Wind as magic. We at the Everybody’s Talking At Once Podcast regret the error.

• Here’s Hercules and Maui fighting, and also the Souls timeline thing.

• And right, right, Keynes:

“Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”

• I have no idea what the original source is for the idea that “Humanity can endure anything but unfairness” aphorism is, if I’m honest. I stole it from Kieron Gillen forever ago.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher and Podbay and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Joel Corelitz drops in to discuss his work on GOROGOA, TumbleSeed, The Unfinished Swan, and Eastward, along with the broader design philosophies behind those games. Even more broadly than that, we talk about the layers of audience engagement in music, in games, and especially in music in games—not to mention the good, bad, and ugly of conservatory culture, the (excellent) reasons why TumbleSeed doesn't have motion controls, and the as-yet-unrealized dream of a truly procedural videogame score.

It keeps coming back to Dark Souls and the original Zelda, as these discussions are so often wont to do.

For the especially spoiler-cautious, there is a significant Demon's Souls SPOILER (albeit one that may not even be a spoiler anymore by the time you hear this) at 00:49:54.

———

• If you don't know Wendy Carlos' Switched-On Bach, then you might know her scores to A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.

• Here's Joel on the process of creating the GOROGOA soundtrack.

• Here's Joel talking about his score for The Unfinished Swan (and Wendy Carlos, and lots else, with a lovely collage of music from the game underneath).

• On Bloodborne's music, and the rules and techniques behind it.

• Small correction: In Demon's Souls, the Storm King is the boss; the Storm Ruler is the weapon that you use to kill the boss. And the stark, is-that-music-or-is-it-the-monsters scoring when you begin the fight does take my breath away.

• As mentioned, Joel did the music for two "art explainers" for The Art Institute of Chicago. Here's the first, and here's the second. They're exactly the kind of inclusive, playful introductions to museum-going that we need so much more of.

• At long last, an excuse to link you fine folks to John Berger's Ways of Seeing series for the BBC.

• What you (and I, and lots of people) think of as "the Star Wars theme" is more properly called "The Force Theme."

• If you've never heard Gustav Holst's The Planets, then please do so and enjoy its status as proto-Star Wars, as well as its own unique charms.

• GOROGOA's visuals echo a lot—from aniconic Muslim art, to Byzantine architecture, to Egyptian hieroglyphs, to Chinese dragons, to Aztec gods—without explicitly referencing much. It's a feast of allusion.

• Here's the video wherein Mikey of Movies with Mikey fame got me thinking about hitboxes and other forms of collision. And yes, hitboxes are necessarily square, which is pretty precisely why Dark Souls, for example, doesn't use them.

• Yep, it's a bummer to see and Ice Cold Beer machine but not be able to try it.

• As Joel points out, the absolutely wonderful score to Celeste was written and performed by Lena Raine. (Thanks much for not letting me off the hook on that one, Joel).

• And nope, Disasterpiece didn't do any of the excellent Celeste B-Sides. (So yeah, no I'm on the hook. The hook is my home).

• George Carlin did say that "there are too many fuckin' songs". I didn't remember the bit getting quite as dark as it does, but hey, I don't have much of a right to be surprised, really.

• Pixpil is the developer making Eastward. Here's their Twitter feed.

• Last but not least, ZHAIF 4 LAIF.

———

"All The People Say (Season 2)" by Carpe Demon.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/etao-podcast-33.mp3

Joel Corelitz drops in to discuss his work on GOROGOA, TumbleSeed, The Unfinished Swan, and Eastward, along with the broader design philosophies behind those games. Even more broadly than that, we talk about the layers of audience engagement in music, in games, and especially in music in games—not to mention the good, bad, and ugly of conservatory culture, the (excellent) reasons why TumbleSeed doesn’t have motion controls, and the as-yet-unrealized dream of a truly procedural videogame score.

It keeps coming back to Dark Souls and the original Zelda, as these discussions are so often wont to do.

For the especially spoiler-cautious, there is a significant Demon’s Souls SPOILER (albeit one that may not even be a spoiler anymore by the time you hear this) at 00:49:54.

———

• If you don’t know Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, then you might know her scores to A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.

• Here’s Joel on the process of creating the GOROGOA soundtrack.

• Here’s Joel talking about his score for The Unfinished Swan (and Wendy Carlos, and lots else, with a lovely collage of music from the game underneath).

• On Bloodborne’s music, and the rules and techniques behind it.

• Small correction: In Demon’s Souls, the Storm King is the boss; the Storm Ruler is the weapon that you use to kill the boss. And the stark, is-that-music-or-is-it-the-monsters scoring when you begin the fight does take my breath away.

• As mentioned, Joel did the music for two “art explainers” for The Art Institute of Chicago. Here’s the first, and here’s the second. They’re exactly the kind of inclusive, playful introductions to museum-going that we need so much more of.

• At long last, an excuse to link you fine folks to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing series for the BBC.

• What you (and I, and lots of people) think of as “the Star Wars theme” is more properly called “The Force Theme.”

• If you’ve never heard Gustav Holst’s The Planets, then please do so and enjoy its status as proto-Star Wars, as well as its own unique charms.

• GOROGOA’s visuals echo a lot—from aniconic Muslim art, to Byzantine architecture, to Egyptian hieroglyphs, to Chinese dragons, to Aztec gods—without explicitly referencing much. It’s a feast of allusion.

• Here’s the video wherein Mikey of Movies with Mikey fame got me thinking about hitboxes and other forms of collision. And yes, hitboxes are necessarily square, which is pretty precisely why Dark Souls, for example, doesn’t use them.

• Yep, it’s a bummer to see and Ice Cold Beer machine but not be able to try it.

• As Joel points out, the absolutely wonderful score to Celeste was written and performed by Lena Raine. (Thanks much for not letting me off the hook on that one, Joel).

• And nope, Disasterpiece didn’t do any of the excellent Celeste B-Sides. (So yeah, no I’m on the hook. The hook is my home).

• George Carlin did say that “there are too many fuckin’ songs”. I didn’t remember the bit getting quite as dark as it does, but hey, I don’t have much of a right to be surprised, really.

• Pixpil is the developer making Eastward. Here’s their Twitter feed.

• Last but not least, ZHAIF 4 LAIF.

———

“All The People Say (Season 2)” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher and Podbay and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Garry Schyman scored all three Bioshocks, all three Destroy All Humans games, Resistance: Retribution, Front Mission Evolved, and that oddly engrossing God of War clone based on Dante's Inferno—and that's just scratching the surface of his video game music, to say nothing of his enormous body of work for film and television. Peep the gentleman's IMDB page, if ye doubt the claim.

In this episode, Garry stops by to discuss his work on Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. He composed both games scores' alongside Monolith Productions' in-house soundtracksmith Nathan Grigg, and here he talks about expanding on the the first game's tone and style, giving the music new dimensions—Aztec Death Whistles are certainly new to the series, and perhaps to games overall—without reinventing the wheel.

[UPDATE: Jason Graves' score for Far Cry Primal did in fact do the Death Whistle thing before Shadow of War. Thanks for the fact-check, anonymous listener.]

We talk about John Williams (because it's all but impossible not to). We talk about P.D.Q. Bach (both in and out of his Bruce Banner form, as Peter Schickele). We talk about Garry's probable status as the first composer ever to write and record an orchestral score for a game (that game being the Phillips CD-i video tree oddity Voyeur). And beyond that, we discuss what it's like to be an outside contractor for a creative venture in flux, the importance of scoring for a given scene even within a sprawling franchise, and genre fiction's underused opportunities for cross-cultural admixing.

———

• The way I ended up having a Phillips CD-i, by the by, was that the friend in question found my fascination with the thing so bemusing (and/or annoying) that he eventually just gave the thing to me.

• To my mind, there's still no single definitive text on the saga of the "Nintendo Playstation," more officially known as the SUPER NES CD-ROM. If you know of a source that tells the story uncommonly well, please do send it my way!

• There are, however, some definitive playthroughs of Link: The Faces of Evil, Link: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure.

• Garry mentions his time "at USC" because he now teaches at USC, in the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.

• Here's one of the best introductions ever to Aaron Copland and the idea of making music "sound American," and the fraught politics thereof.

• Here's that GDC talk on the music from Bloodborne.

• And here's that other interview Garry did recently. The one after which the interviewer sent him a bunch of soundtracks from the myriad masterpieces of 2017.

———

"All The People Say (Season 2)" by Carpe Demon.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/etao-podcast-32.mp3

Garry Schyman scored all three Bioshocks, all three Destroy All Humans games, Resistance: Retribution, Front Mission Evolved, and that oddly engrossing God of War clone based on Dante’s Inferno— and that’s just scratching the surface of his video game music, to say nothing of his enormous body of work for film and television. Peep the gentleman’s IMDB page, if ye doubt the claim.

In this episode, Garry stops by to discuss his work on Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. He composed both games scores’ alongside Monolith Productions’ in-house soundtracksmith Nathan Grigg, and here he talks about expanding on the the first game’s tone and style, giving the music new dimensions—Aztec Death Whistles are certainly new to the series, and perhaps to games overall—without reinventing the wheel.

[UPDATE: Jason Graves’ score for Far Cry Primal did in fact do the Death Whistle thing before Shadow of War. Thanks for the fact-check, anonymous listener.]

We talk about John Williams (because it’s all but impossible not to). We talk about P.D.Q. Bach (both in and out of his Bruce Banner form, as Peter Schickele). We talk about Garry’s probable status as the first composer ever to write and record an orchestral score for a game (that game being the Phillips CD-i video tree oddity Voyeur). And beyond that, we discuss what it’s like to be an outside contractor for a creative venture in flux, the importance of scoring for a given scene even within a sprawling franchise, and genre fiction’s underused opportunities for cross-cultural admixing.

———

• The way I ended up having a Phillips CD-i, by the by, was that the friend in question found my fascination with the thing so bemusing (and/or annoying) that he eventually just gave the thing to me.

• To my mind, there’s still no single definitive text on the saga of the “Nintendo Playstation,” more officially known as the SUPER NES CD-ROM. If you know of a source that tells the story uncommonly well, please do send it my way!

• There are, however, some definitive playthroughs of Link: The Faces of Evil, Link: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda’s Adventure.

• Garry mentions his time “at USC” because he now teaches at USC, in the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.

• Here’s one of the best introductions ever to Aaron Copland and the idea of making music “sound American,” and the fraught politics thereof.

• Here’s that GDC talk on the music from Bloodborne.

• And here’s that other interview Garry did recently. The one after which the interviewer sent him a bunch of soundtracks from the myriad masterpieces of 2017.

———

“All The People Say (Season 2)” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher and Podbay and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.