GameDev Breakdown

Original Air Date: Apr. 21, 2019 - Joshua Davidson is a senior sound designer working at Gearbox Software in the Dallas, Texas area. After leaving Full Sail University in 2007, he Contributed to Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2 at Volition in northern Illinois before heading south to work on Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Battleborn, and Borderlands 3 after making the move to Gearbox.In addition to building a stellar career in AAA games, Joshua has done some great writing and speaking about his time in the industry. His https://medium.com/@joshuadavidson/how-i-made-it-into-games-plus-a-few-things-e41b0d189947 into how he went from high school hopeful to graduate to industry pro has bounced around the web some before landing at Medium--it's a must-read for anyone outside the industry looking to make their way in. He also returned to Full Sail years later to give a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkB0wJyKpis on his industry run that you can now watch at YouTube.In this week's show, Joshua provides some updates on the last few years of his career you won't hear about in his earlier presentations, we discuss some recent trending industry news, and Joshua provides some of the advice he would have liked to hear on his way to the top.This was an awesome discussion and I really appreciate Joshua's time. Go support him on Twitter and check out his killer work in Borderlands 3!Joshua's links: • https://twitter.com/JoshuaDav on Twitter • https://medium.com/@joshuadavidson on Medium • http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/

Original Air Date: Apr. 15, 2019 - If you don't think you've read or at least seen any of David L. Craddock's phenomenal books on the game industry and game development, check again, you probably have. Some of the greatest stories of the development space have been captured in David's phenomenal pages, including Blizzard's early history with Diablo, tales from the days of NetHack and other early Roguelikes, and more recently, Yacht Club Games' action-packed development of Shovel Knight for Boss Fight Books. He kindly agreed to Skype in as Humble Bundle closes out its Boss Fight book bundle promotion (you still have about two days!) and his insight was every bit as interesting as I expected.This is a must-listen for writers of any kind, and I'd also put it on the required show list for anyone running or connected with an indie studio. David has explored and documented not only the development of many games we know and love, but the culture, the energy, and the trials of the people creating them--and his knack for framing captivating tales from their accounts is second to none.David's links: • http://davidlcraddock.com • https://twitter.com/davidlcraddock on Twitter • The Humble Bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/books/classic-videogames-boss-fight-books, including Shovel Knight

Original Air Date: Apr. 8, 2019 - I'd have to do some detective work to figure out how long I've been Twitter pals with https://twitter.com/sayomgwtf and https://twitter.com/swgspork, but I'm sure it's been a couple of years now. One of the greatest benefits of doing this podcast is having the opportunity to go beyond tweets and capture the stories behind the work and the art that we enjoy seeing around the web, and this week's show with the Silverware Games team did not disappoint.Silverware (and Say and Michael make up the whole team, most of the time) is behind the Matchyverse games, including https://store.steampowered.com/app/772700/MatchyGotchy/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/888220/MatchyGotchy_Z/, both technically tie-in games for the upcoming https://store.steampowered.com/app/782430/Matchy_Star/. That may sound like a lot to take in, but it's as clever a strategy as it is ambitious. The team is spread thin with the parallel projects, but they have substantial momentum and they've achieved solid reach on Steam and social media.In this episode, we discuss Silverware's games, their interesting casual design philosophy, life on Steam, the Epic store, the great difficulty debate, and more. Thanks to Say and Michael for their time!Silverware's Links: • https://silverwaregames.com/* https://store.steampowered.com/app/888220/MatchyGotchy_Z/ • https://store.steampowered.com/app/888220/MatchyGotchy_Z/ (coming soon!)Our new intro voice-over is by none other than Tim Kitzrow, the voice of NBA Jam! Tim does custom recordings on demand at https://whosaidwhatnow.com/. Check him out!Our new theme, https://soundcloud.com/timeraps/8-bit-memories-ft-xiu-xiu (ft. Xiu Xiu / prod. Giuseppe) by https://soundcloud.com/timeraps is available to stream at SoundCloud along with a whole bunch of his great tracks. He reached out to recommend the track and it's incredible, thanks again. Show him some love!

Original Air Date: Mar. 31, 2019 - Glad to be back with another podcast and all kinds of news! In this show, I'll go over some development topics from Twitter, we'll talk a little bit about the recent hiatus, and we'll go over some of what's happening over at our shiny new http://Patreon.com/codewriteplay.Patrons helped pick the topics for this show, but it wasn't hard to come up with a list. https://store.google.com/us/magazine/stadia?hl=en-US has announced their forthcoming game streaming service, and damn near simultaneously, Apple announced the https://www.apple.com/apple-arcade/ service that will probably launch about the same time later this year. You'll see what I mean about people pre-emptively https://www.androidcentral.com/googles-stadia-brings-more-worry-about-just-technical-details and https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/03/30/apple-arcade-could-upend-the-gaming-industry.aspx over arcade. The whole thing is quite a spectacle.Finally, if you want to take a look at the Sega dev kit I mentioned before I take time to further write it up, you can do that at the https://github.com/Stephane-D/SGDK.

Original Air Date: Feb. 7, 2019 - I first interacted with Reyan Ali over Twitter just about a year ago. I'd just partnered with Microsoft to do a series of podcasts at GDC which was a total blast, but it caused me to miss the Classic Game Postmortem on the legendary NBA Jam. I tweeted out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3Os2kk6V4 with great entusiasm once it hit YouTube, and Reyan and I became fast friends, vowing to do a podcast segment together before the launch of his book. Since that time, I've followed with great interest as we inch ever closer to the release of his definitive telling of the game's incredible story, which will be published by https://bossfightbooks.com/.Reyan's promotional Twitter account (linked below) is full of incredible memorabilia and history, and that's no coincidence--in the process of writing NBA Jam, he's amassed nearly 70 interviews with the developers, motion capture actors, celebrities appearing in the game, and a woman with a less-than-timely (though damn respectable) tattoo. If you grew up playing NBA Jam, Reyan Ali and his book are the closest things you have to a time machine.Reyan's career has included fantastic writing and interviews across a wide variety of topics, and you can read his coverage in many great publications. The history of one of the greatest video games of all time is in highly capable hands.Follow Reyan and the upcoming NBA Jam book: • https://twitter.com/nbajambook • An https://kotaku.com/the-night-they-turned-on-the-first-nba-jam-machine-1797917964 at Kotaku • https://bossfightbooks.com/products/nba-jam-by-reyan-ali at Boss Fight Books

Original Air Date: Jan. 28, 2019 - Update: We've had a slow start on giveaway entries, so we're opening it up to everyone!Man, we've had some great guests lately, and you won't believe some of the folks we're going to be talking to in the coming months! With all this action, it was nice to get back on Skype with John for a night, check in, talk a little news, and hang out. We're also dialing in some new recording equipment in the studio, and although my mic was a little hot for this one, the overall show quality is moving steadily in a positive direction.If you haven't checked out the GDC State of the Game Industry survey results for the year, we've got you covered. It's made up of some surprising insights, as well as others that were more interesting in their presentation. If you want to follow along as we discuss the report, you can register to download it for free at http://reg.gdconf.com/GDC-State-of-Game-Industry-2019.I'm also telling the tale of the rarest, most mysterious piece of gaming memorabilia I've come across in my life. It was a blast getting to the bottom of this thing, and I think the story is pretty good. I'm including one of the official photos here, and you can expect a more in-depth write-up with photos of my scope here on the site soon.Finally, we're doing our first podcast giveaway, thanks to bestselling author, Morgan Ramsay! Morgan has very generously signed and mailed us a copy of his recent book, https://www.amazon.com/Online-Game-Pioneers-at-Work-ebook/dp/B01J9LK0OQ/, and we're passing it on to a listener! We're not explicitly mentioning this on Twitter because we want a real show listener to get it! For a chance to win, simply retweet one of the tweets linking to this week's show (It will either come from @CodeWritePlay or @Mechatodzilla), then reply to the original tweet telling us which founder you're most excited to read about. Here's a list of the great interviews in the book for your convenience!Pioneers featured in Online Game Pioneers at Work: • David Perry, Gaikai • Doug Whatley, BreakAway Games • Victor Kislyi, Wargaming • Gaute Godager, Funcom • Jason Kapalka, PopCap Games • Ray Muzyka, BioWare • Raph Koster, Metaplace • Riccardo Zacconi, King • Emily Greer, Kongregate • Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games • Richard Garriott, Origin Systems • Ilkka Paananen, Supercell • John Romero, Id Software • Greg Zeschuk, BioWare • Reynir Harðarson, CCP Games • Neil Young, Ngmoco:)

Original Air Date: Jan. 20, 2019 - Michael Hicks has released more creative projects since his late teens than some folks get to throughout an entire career. His top two game releases, Pillar and The Path of Motus, have been downloaded half a million times across a wide variety of platforms. When Polygon investigated https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/19/17959138/steam-valve-developer-support-pricing-reviews in supporting Steam developers, Michael's sharp criticism for Valve's practices took center stage in the debate.We discuss how I first crossed paths with Michael in this week's episode, but we've been friendly for several years. He's become a prominent indie voice here in the Midwest, and it's been a pleasure to discuss industry happenings with him and follow his career throughout that time. Not only has he developed keen insight into independent console development and learned how to navigate the PC space, but he's also dabbled in sharing his experience with others in the form of his own development-focused https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsiPXCHman-xRFQ3jwvFj1A.Michael's one of the nicest guy's in the game right now and this was a fun episode to put together, his time is greatly appreciated.Keep up with Michael: • https://twitter.com/michaelartsgame • http://michaelarts.net/ • http://pathofmotus.com/, coming to Nintendo Switch!