Game Breaking Feature

Special Guest: Meagan Byrne is the founder of Achimostawinan Games and Digital Interactive Coordinator with ImagineNATIVE. She gives us the backstory on Exposition in Games. Can games tell stories in their own unique way? How can mechanics drive exposition? And: what’s that audio tape over there?

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Guest: Meagan Byrne | @byrne_meagan | https://achimogames.ca/

Special Guest: Mike Bithell is the Director of John Wick Hex and in this episode he guides us through designing escort missions in games. What makes escort missions bearable? Are there games that get away with it more than others and what if I was the escort mission all along?

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Guest: Mike Bithell | @mikeBithell | http://www.mikebithellgames.com/

Special Guest: Jeff Larkin is a VFX Artist at Gunfire Games, the studio behind Remnant: From the Ashes. He spontaneously rolls his way into a discussion about random number generation in games. Why do we use so much RNG in game design? How fair to the player is RNG? What does randomness mean and is anything in the Universe truly random?

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Guest: Jeff Larkin | @talking_animal | http://gunfiregames.com/

Special Guest: Nina Freeman is a designer behind games like Cibele and Tacoma and she chose to talk with us about her philosophies on Dialogue Options in games. What sense of agency does this give the player? What are our expectations of consequences from our choices and how long before we start having full conversations with AI?

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Guest: Nina Freeman | @hentaiphd | http://ninasays.so/

Special Guest: Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an IGF-nominated developer here to run with the topic of climbing and free-running in games. Is this mechanic a product of popular culture or is it here to stay forever? How does this dynamic traversal affect game design? And has Mario, in fact, been doing parkour this whole time?

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Guest: Xalavier Nelson Jr. | @WritNelson | https://xalaviermakeswords.itch.io/

Steve and Jarrod tackle issues with some of video games’ minor mechanics such as, Ladders: How do they work? Metroidvania: Guess who’s back and Closets: What lives in yours? We also discuss the state of the show and exciting new possibilities for Gbfeature moving forward.

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Special Guest: Carolyn Petit is the Managing Editor at Feminist Frequency and on this episode we’re on the case of Detective Vision in games. Why have we seen so many recent games use this mechanic? Does it change the way a player perceives the world that they’re in? And how many episodes in a row can we talk about Metal Gear?

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Guest: Carolyn Petit | @CarolynMichelle | https://feministfrequency.com/

Special Guest: Chandana Ekanayake is the creative director with Outerloop Games, the team behind the VR game Falcon Age. He soars his way over a discussion about Crafting systems in games. How does crafting tie into the rest of a game’s mechanics, what does it mean to create in order to destroy and why did video games peak back with the MMO Star Wars Galaxies?

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Guest: Chandana Ekanayake | @Ekanaut | https://outerloopgames.com/

Special Guest: Daanish Syed is a developer at NetherRealm Studios and host of the podcast Someone Should Make This. He stops for a quick interlude on the subject of Cutscenes in games. What makes narrative delivery in games unique to other art forms? Are cutscenes the most effective way of quickly providing story, and who at NRS gets to decide which C’s get replaced with K’s?

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Guest: Daanish Syed | @_DaanishSyed | http://www.daanishsyed.com/

Special Guest: Doc Burford is a game developer on Paratopic and is the author of the blog, Stomp. We discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of Karma and Morality systems in games. Why do we see these systems so often in games? What does a karma meter actually represent and what emotions is that supposed to solicit in the player?

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Guest: Doc Burford | @docsquiddy | http://thesto.mp/