grokludo

Bastiaan Olij leads XR development at the Godot engine, and is a member of the Godot foundation, which guides and works with its community of open source developers.

In this episode we talk about Godot's governance and how it charts a path forward with its community, how it's dealing with the challenges of AI pull requests, and the bad-faith decompilers which are scaring devs away from sharing their games publicly.

Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
01:53 - Bastiaan's start on Godot
14:30 - Godot governance
19:40 - Terrain systems
21:20 - Guiding self-governance
23:00 - Godot affecting the market
29:10 - Asset store challenges
32:30 - Why GDScript?
34:45 - Technically impressive projects in Godot
36:35 - Steam's sloppy Next Fest
40:00 - Pull request slop
1:01:05 - Decompilers and scrapers
1:22:30 - VR challenges

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Godot:
https://godotengine.org/

Godot's VR Gamejam games:
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-xr-update-oct2026/

Sydney Games Festival:
https://sydneygamesfestival.org/

Every Game Talk Possible:
https://everygametalkpossible.org/

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grokludo/id1736667050

Show me five gamers, and I'll show you five different definitions of the word "mechanic."

Benjamin Horn from the University of Hong Kong released a paper with four other academics, investigating the usefulness of a term with no agreed-upon meaning, and they point out that even the original MDA framework gives two vague definitions that are perhaps even contradictory.

We discuss how we got to this place, in which all sides of the industry rely so heavily on a word that means nothing, and whether the word can be salvaged, or whether it's time to abandon it altogether.

Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
02:00 - What is a mechanic?
08:30 - The MDA framework
09:50 - Categorical terms
15:55 - Banning terms
18:00 - Talking about games is hard
26:00 - Abandon "mechanics"?
28:10 - The worst use of "mechanics" Ben's seen
30:50 - "Mechanics" in the esports realm
33:40 - FPS games as a study case
35:20 - The Witcher 3's mechanics
36:20 - Passion can interfere with game studies
38:20 - Games criticism and toxic positivity
45:25 - Ben's paper on Baldur's Gate 3

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The Unbearable Vacuity of Game Mechanics:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3815598.3815641

The MDA framework:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228884866_MDA_A_Formal_Approach_to_Game_Design_and_Game_Research

Benjamin's paper on Baldur's Gate 3 and Goblins:
https://gamescriticism.org/2025/12/03/horn-6-1/

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

YouTube Playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3cxb6pzUE9Z7PXjIVbmr5qiohoq5wTdo

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Podcast:
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grokludo/id1736667050

Seán Dagher is one of the main singers of sea shanties in games like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, the indie hit Windrose, and more -- and is partly responsible for the wider modern resurgence in sea shanties. After curating and recording classic songs in some of the biggest pirate games, more recently he's composed original material for Black Flag Resynced, and started touring internationally, leading crowds in North America and Europe.

Escapism, irreverence towards authority, seeking community... These are things that the gaming community and sea shanty lovers already had in common. But once games with sailing like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag or Windrose started including shanties, developers discovered a great way to fill the time sailing from point A to point B -- and many gamers found themselves listening to the music outside the game as well.

Songs in this episode are used with Seán Dagher's permission.

Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
01:24 - Blow the Man Down by Seán Dagher
02:00 - Seán's history with sea shanties
13:29 - Bully in the Ally by Seán Dagher
14:50 - Working with Ubisoft and the shanty resurgence
23:55 - The Wellerman by Seán Dagher
24:33 - Working with the Windrose team
29:45 - Singing imperfectly on purpose
34:10 - Composing modern sea chanties
37:28 - Shallow Brown by Seán Dagher
38:22 - Curating and recreating old material
44:18 - Rolling Down to Old Maui by Seán Dagher
45:05 - A quiz on shanty terms

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Follow Seán Dagher:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uSR4KU19MLE_dpoZusPBQ

Trobairitz: Poems of Women Troubadours:
https://open.spotify.com/album/16lfH2He1pIByL88idXtIo

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

YouTube Playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3cxb6pzUE9Z7PXjIVbmr5qiohoq5wTdo

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Podcast:
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grokludo/id1736667050

Titanium Court is an intentionally bizarre, unique, and hard to describe game. It's best to go in not knowing anything -- but AP Thomson is here to talk about some of its themes, philosophy, and behind-the-scenes stories without getting into spoilers.


Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
02:00 - Describing Titanium Court
10:00 - okay
12:20 - Deciding what to explain
19:03 - The Reverse Punchline
23:17 - Is the day you run out of creativity the day you die?
23:43 - Fan theories
24:17 - Indirect storytelling and the desire to know
28:12 - The Potion of Liking Baseball
29:30 - Sports and War

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Books talked about in this episode:

Hour of the Star by Clarise Lispector
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
Selected Short Stories by Maxim Gorky

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

YouTube Playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3cxb6pzUE9Z7PXjIVbmr5qiohoq5wTdo

Follow on X:
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Podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6GMbpa2aTZi8dBa0VVbsU1
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grokludo/id1736667050

Over 20 years ago, CCP Games released EVE Online, a massively multiplayer space game, promising huge fleet battles, and an open, player-controlled economy. But within months, that economy was headed for disaster.

This week's guest is Ramin Shokrizade, who later wrote about recommending an economic intervention that saved EVE Online. That story was later picked up by evangelists for Georgist economic theory, these are the writings of Henry George, who mainly talked about land tax, and held up as an example of proof that Georgist theory is correct.

This has become almost a piece of internet lore, where certain communities quote Ramin's recommendations as a success for Georgism. What I had never seen before, is Ramin's take on that. 

We'll get that take today, and talk the open economies games used to have, before they were controlled by publishers.

Ramin has also written about the benefits of oxytocin, and dangers of excessive dopamine targetting, and I've actually been looking for someone to speak on this, especially because of some recent research which we'll get into later.

Enjoy!

What do we talk about when we talk about 4X?

We think about abstract systems, resource management, efficiency, growth... But what about all the invisible things that go along with eXploitation, and eXtermination?

Mary Flanagan is a game designer, and academic, and the author of Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games.

The book looks at the history of board games and how they encoded the values of the time and place they were in. From ancient games, through to the explosion of complex strategy systems and 4X.

For those unfamiliar, 4X is a subgenre that typically involves large colonial empires. The 4 Xs are Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. In the fantasy of the game, we play the decider, not just moving resources around for efficiency, but also deciding the fate of those crushed under the boot of empire. 

To better understand the other side of the story part of Mary's research involved sitting down and playing these games with descendants of the people who've been exploited and exterminated. 

4X games are fun, I love them, they scratch that efficiency and optimisation part of my brain. This isn't about saying they're bad, or that players are incapable of separating games from life. It's just good to take a step back sometimes and analyse the underlying assumptions of things.

And, a large part of our Western civilisation, and indeed its values, are built on the flawed concepts of terra nullius, might makes right, and always being ashamed of the last colonial project, while denying the current one.

Mary joins us to talk about how these values are encoded in our games.

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Find Mary's book, Playing Oppression, here:
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5547/Playing-OppressionThe-Legacy-of-Conquest-and

Find Mary's games, including Monarch, here:
https://resonym.com/

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
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Ross Scott is the face of the Stop Killing Games movement, which seeks to ensure games don't completely die when a developer or publisher ends support, but rather, there's an end of life plan in place that makes it reasonably playable -- after which, a compliant gamemaker has no more liability. 

Following a massive petition campaign in the EU, Ross recently spoke at an EU parliament hearing, in which many in the room were positive about the movement. It's possible that policy around not killing games will be included in the EU's upcoming Digital Fairness Act, expected to be formally proposed later this year.

After that point, the EU parliament and Council can make amendments, and there's sure to be some industry lobbying.

Ross Scott joins us this week to talk about the strategies of navigating EU politics, the discourse around the movement, and some of the more technical concerns, such as games that rely on middleware and 3rd party services, each with their own distribution licences.

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
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YouTube Playlist:
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There's no doubt that the modern world is very different to the one we evolved to thrive in. But that mismatch might be more pronounced for the neurodivergent mind.

Dr Clinton White has an upcoming book, Fast Mind, Slow World, which expands on the theory that at the group level, it was evolutionarily advantageous to have a small proportion of the group as neurodivergent. Whether that be ADHD, level 1 autistic, or whatever.

But modern life has different demands. How do those with abnormal attention fare in the attention economy? That includes games and loot boxes, but also social media, and everything else.

Clinton joins us today to talk about the ADHD brain, dopamine seeking, and more.

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

YouTube:
youtube.com/@TheJunglist

YouTube Playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3cxb6pzUE9Z7PXjIVbmr5qiohoq5wTdo

Follow on X:
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Podcast:
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Nikita Mikros is an indie developer that decided to focus on arcade games. And I don't mean arcade-style games on PC and console -- I mean physical arcade cabinets.

His most famous game is undoubtedly Killer Queen, a 5-on-5 arcade cabinet with retro pixel art graphics, in which your bees have three win conditions to defeat the other team's bees. 

Killer Queen is a sensation, and it's been called the revival of arcade... It's only two dollars for all ten people to play at once, which has built a strong culture of people bringing in others. It's easy to shout a whole group. And it's spawned a dedicated esports scene as well.

Nikita joins grokludo to talk about Killer Queen, game design in general, and some of the new projects he's working on.

Jon Peterson is the author of Playing at the World, a deep dive into tabletop gaming leading up to Dungeons & Dragons, which just released its 2nd edition.

Jon is a fantastic source of knowledge on all things tabletop, and has personally traveled to several museums to see and translate wargaming publications dating as far back as the 1600s. I took the opportunity to quiz him about Kriegsspiel -- a wargame that Prussian officers used as a training tool in the 1800s.

As Jon illustrates, it's more than just interesting history; Kriegsspiel is a giant whose shoulders support many modern gaming staples.

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Get grokludo in your inbox at grokludo.com, or catch it on the big podcast platforms!

I always write a bit more on the grokludo website:
https://grokludo.com/

YouTube:
youtube.com/@TheJunglist

YouTube Playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3cxb6pzUE9Z7PXjIVbmr5qiohoq5wTdo

Follow on X:
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Follow on BlueSky:
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Podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6GMbpa2aTZi8dBa0VVbsU1
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grokludo/id1736667050