Ichiro Lambe has been making games since the days of MUDs and Palm Pilots, and here he talks to Drew about what’s new—from the possibilities of so-called AI (as exciting as they are fraught) to his strategic deck-builder of ramshackle autobattles, Million Monster Militia.

You can wishlist Million Monster Militia, along with Monster Loves You Too! and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, on Steam.
You can find Ichiro on Twitter, and see his work on his website and Dejobaan’s.
———
• It’s real, real hard to find reliable numbers on power consumption in LLMs other other “AI.” Most existing research focuses on BLOOM, simply because its operations are so much less opaque than what’s going on at OpenAI or Google. Mél Hogan, whose past work has focused on the environmental impact of data centers more generally, recently discussed the specifics of “AI” energy consumption with Sasha Luccioni, one of the authors of the paper linked above. (We should note, as they both do, that we’re not just talking about energy here, but also water, “AI” being a driving factor behind the escalating demand for industrial-scale liquid cooling).

• As Ichiro points out, these issues are specific to enormous, corporate run “AIs” such as GPT-4, Bard, DALL·E 2, and Midjourney—as distinct from models you can run on your own (beefy) PC.

• Drew once again mentions Emily Short’s Five Strategies for Collaborating with a Machine and Lily Alexandre’s video essay on “post-human” content.

• And here’s Ichiro’s Totally Human Rapper.

———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
Some music from the Million Monster Militia OST by Job Bellini.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Andrew anthologizes on by to talk about Indiepocalypse, as well as the alleged indiepocolypse. We talk about genre, curation, how to bring people together without Community-Building (capital C, capital B), and how to publish games without acting like a publisher.

You can buy or subscribe to Indiepocalypse on Itch.io and Patreon.
You can also follow Andrew on Twitter, and find all things Indiepocalypse on its website.
———
• Here are our previous talks with Megan Fox, Tanya X. Short, and Sarah and Colin Northway, as well as with Indiepocalypse alums Esther Alter, Damien Crawford, and Glen Henry.

• Here’s “Deadgames and Alivegames,” as well as our interview with Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka (and our other interview with them).

• And here’s Andrew’s Local Scene Showcase.

———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Apple Blossoms” by Vernon Geyer.
Some music from I’m Hungry! I’m Healthy! I’m Human! by lintilion, the commissioned game from Indiepocalypse #41.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Sarah and Colin Northway land on our own little art-loving exoplanet to wax philosophical about The Museum of Other Realities, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and Fantastic Contraption (as well as the spiritual successor to the latter, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom).

PRETTY BIG SPOILERS for I Was A Teenage Exocolonist from 24:30 to 30:10.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is out now on Steam, Itch.io, Switch, and Playstation.
You can find the Northway Games catalog on their website, and the MoR on its own site.
You can also follow Colin and Sarah on Twitter.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Exocolonist Theme Redux” by A Shell in the Pit, from the I Was A Teenage Exocolonist OST.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Tanya X. Short descends to our dunj to talk about her ten years as the Captain of Kitfox Games. We talk about about long-term studio survival, what so-called AI really is, and making systems-driven games with heart—as well as the necessity of a tea-witch in all functional partnerships.

You can find the whole Kitfox Games catalog on their website.
The deadline to apply for the Pixelles Prototype Fund is May 25.
You can also follow Tanya, Kitfox, and Pixelles on Twitter.

———

• Here are our conversations of varyingly recent vintage with Santiago Zapata, Star St. Germain, Esther Alter, Chris Hanney, Anita Tung, and Emma Kinema.

• And here’s Emily Short’s Five Strategies for Collaborating with a Machine.

• We didn’t get too deep into Emily M. Bender’s work, but Tanya did make reference to a paper Bender co-authored, On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? And this recent interview contains some of Bender’s thoughts on present-day so-called AI.

• The video essay Drew referenced, about humans being neither the artist nor the audience for a lot of current content, is Lily Alexandre’s Everything Is Sludge: Art in the Post-Human Era.

• No one has really written a definitive history of Boyfriend Maker, unfortunately. For a related but largely distinct ethical nightmare, you could check out this other video essay, on Replika.

• We will indeed be looking into One More Multiverse.

• Regrettably, we didn’t get a chance to talk about that Kitfox blog post about messy design—but it’s something worth considering: elegance maybe being over.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Whipped Into Shape (feat. Madeleine McQueen)” from Boyfriend Dungeon: Secret Weapons, the DLC addendum to the Boyfriend Dungeon OST, by Marskye.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Anita Tung wends her way to us to talk about The Last Clockwinder, one of those VR games that really and truly could only be done in VR. (For another example, see our recent episode with Chris Hanney). On this week’s show, we discuss the interdisciplinary joys of small teams, the aesthetics (and technical challenges) of clutter, and the persistent magics of VR.

CONTENT WARNING for discussions of death and grieving from 41:10 to 46:54.

The Last Clockwinder is out now on Steam, Quest, and PSVR2.
You can see what positions Pontoco has available on their jobs page.
You can also find lots of Anita’s work on her website, and follow her on Twitter and Mastodon.

———

• Here’s our conversation with Joel Corelitz.

• Gathering Sky really is lovely, and it commits to the peculiarities of touch interfaces in about the same way that The Last Clockwinder commits to the peculiarities of VR.

• Here’s Matthew Blair’s GDC talk about The Last Clockwinder, as well as John Austin’s.

• We’ve known about the role of seawater in Roman concrete since 2017 or so.

• We’ll also link this fairly recent piece about Roger Morash and Shard.

• For more on studio sustainability, we’d recommend our episodes with Megan Fox, Glen Henry, Anya Combs, and William Pugh.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Gardeners: Bomb Berry Laboratory” from The Last Clockwinder OST by Joel Corelitz.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Chris Hanney is probably best known for his work on Space Pirate Trainer—and particularly on its multiplayer modes, from the Tetris-Galaga–Max Payne melange of VERSUS to the ambitious, tennis-court-scale hide-and-seek-’em-up of ARENA. Here’s a project that walks right up to the edges of what has so far been possible in VR, and then finds ways to walk right past them.

In this interview, Chris talks about the past, present, and (in his view, extremely exciting) future of VR. Along the way we discuss the technology’s many strange tributaries. For the first time in recorded history, two bearded white dudes talk on a podcast.

Space Pirate Trainer DX is out now on Quest.
Shredders is out now on Steam, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Game Pass.
You can also follow Chris on Twitter, whatever that currently is.

———

• This review contains some really useful descriptions of what Space Pirate ARENA even is on a nuts-and-bolts, logistical level.

• The Bigscreen Beyond really does look like swim goggles when compared to the Quest 2 (though not quite so much when compared to, say, swim goggles, if we’re honest).

• Here’s the Twitterthreadization of Chris’ GDC 2023 talk about Steam forums and reviews.

• And here’s our episode with Anton Hand.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Seventy-Four” from Nowhere, Now Here (music from the video game Shredders) by Jennifur.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Paul Chamberlain originally wanted to be a hacker—which led him to work as a “technologist” (ooh) at the Signals Intelligence Agency and the Australian Federal Police, which led him to work in computer security and “information warfare” (ooh again) at Google, which led him to work on anti-cheat software for League of Legends and Valorant at Riot Games.

That experience, in turn—the experience of getting to collaborate across disciplines, to be a bit of a generalist despite having been hired with a specialized skillset in mind—is what he’s now trying to recreate at his studio, New Avalon.

You can also follow Paul on Twitter, and do likewise for New Avalon.
Likewise with Odyssey Interactive and Omega Strikers.

———

• Here’s that excellent Dan Olson video, which is something of a sequel to this one. Later in the conversation, his video on Fortnite becomes relevant as well.

• And here’s our conversation with Greg Haynes from AbleGamers.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Go Strike! (Karaoke Version)” by James Landino, the theme from Omega Strikers.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Anya Combs joins our crowd (of guests) to talk about her work at Backerkit (and previously at Kickstarter and Nickelodeon), her saxophoning for the Funkrust Brass Band (among a fair many other bands), her love of tabletop, and her blood-feud with meeting culture.

Backerkit’s new crowdfunding section is live, as so often is the music of Funkrust.
You can also find Anya’s socials on her Linktree.

———

• Drew was referring to a premium (as in paywalled, and also as in excellent) episode of the 5-4 podcast, with that bit about having more culpability as one ascends a big company’s hierarchy.

• Here’s Someone Has Died.

• This talk is a great introduction to Anya’s thoughts on the nuts and bolts of crowdfunding. We’d also highly recommend Anya’s episode of What Else Do You Do?
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Riptide” from Dark City by Funkrust Brass Band.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

A fair few of the kids who played Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s are now parents with kids old enough to play Dungeons & Dragons. At the same time, and beyond that: Tabletop Role Playing Games, which were once firmly esoteric and counter-cultural pursuits (not to mention the target of frothy moral panic) are increasingly a visible, present part of pop culture.

Which means that the time is right for TTRPGs that parents can play with their kids—including very young kids, and including parents who didn’t play D&D back in the day & day. Irwin Chen, Nathan Dummitt, and Ed Chung developed their Ampersand RPG system to fulfill precisely those needs. Int his conversation, they talk about how their approach emphasizes tactility, creativity, collaboration, “classroom management,” and investment without self-seriousness.

Snakes and Sarcophagi, the newest Ampersand RPG adventure, is now on Kickstarter.
You can also follow the project on Twitter, and learn more on the Ampersand RPG website.

———

• The Satanic-panicky made-for-TV movie in which Tom Hanks joins a cult because of Dungeons & Dragons is indeed, somewhat pitiably, called Mazes and Monsters. (They didn’t even use an ampersand. Amateurs).

• The reason that Drew defaulted to videogames when when he started talking about instrumental play was that this Dan Olson video popped into his head.
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
“Buckin’ the Dice” by “Fats” Waller, performed by “Fats” Waller and his Rhythm.
“Snakes’ Hips” by Spencer Williams, performed by the Original Memphis Five.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.

Esther Alter started out making games like Neocolonialism and No Pineapple Left Behind, which she now describes as “anti-fun.” But her newest game PROĆEMON is unashemedly fun, in addition to being a thoughtful experiment in how far we can push procedural generation, and in what human-machine collaborations can looks like.

Here Esther talks about PROĆEMON in terms of its inspirations, its tech, and how it fits into her broader artistic practice—which spans tabletop RPGs, non-game technical experiments and tools, and short-form fiction (much of it profoundly and unmistakably Jewish).

PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them is out now on Itch.io and Steam.
You can follow Esther on Twitter, and find a whole bunch of her work on her website.

———
• The secondary antagonists who want to liberate Pokémon (those jerks) are Team Plasma from Pokémon Black and White (on the DS).

• It’s true enough that you wouldn’t have read about MissingNo. in Nintendo Power at the time—though a year later, the hundredth issue did cover the Minus World in Super Mario Bros (a glitch that was then about a decade old).

• Here’s Esther’s talk about the life and death and slippery definiton of the indie game.

• Here’s the collectable card game version of Proćemon.

• And here are Other Covenants and “Cultureship.”
———

“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
Some (genuinely procedural!) music from PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them by Esther Alter.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Spotify, PocketCasts, and just about everywhere else. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.