This week, Aaron chats with Des Gayle in the first of a two-part interview. Des is a Senior Partner Relations Manager at Unity (day job), Studio head at Altered Gene (his company), and does "production stuff" for a couple of indies. He describes himself as having "Produced one game that won a BAFTA (Life Is Strange) and plenty more that didn't."

In this episode, we talk about game publishing and funding, and answer questions about how and why games with narratives focused on diverse protagonists and situations are or aren't funded. We also briefly discuss Des' short film, "There's a Last Time for Everything," for which he's running a Kickstarter campaign.

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Square Enix and Life Is Strange

04:35 Publishing Indie Games At Fellow Traveller

08:37 Why Don't Publishers Publish More Diverse Games?

11:34 The Current Funding And Publishing Landscape For Indies

17:54 Funding Tips and Tricks

22:24 Des' Short Film Kickstarter

24:37 Wrapping Up

Links:

"There's a Last Time for Everything" Kickstarter campaign. (Ends Sunday 29th March)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alteredgene/taltfe?ref=9odmgb

Des Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/kid_desimo/

Des Bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/kiddesimo.bsky.social

Des Twitter
https://x.com/Kid_Desimo

"Kidd Copter" Playdate game

https://play.date/games/kidd-copter/

Altered Gene website

https://www.alteredgene.co.uk/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

Make Games, Drink Coffee is produced, edited, and just generally all-around made by me, Aaron Nemoyten. Please email the Make Games Drink Coffee email address, I'm tired of only getting podcast SEO spam at that address!

This week, Aaron chats with Monica Fan in the second of a two-part interview. Monica is a game designer currently working at Pipeworks on an unannounced AAA game, but they consider themselves an eccentric creative at heart, having worked in entertainment media including newspaper, radio, theater, and film.  

In this second half of our two-part interview, we went DEEP on just a few topics: The importance of consuming more media to broaden your knowledge (even if it means playing games you don't like), short vs. long-term thinking in life and in your career, and the value of unconventional protagonists in games and how they could contribute to helping people love themselves as they are.

00:00 Introduction

00:59 Hot Take: Consume More Media, Even If You Don't Like It

10:25 Short Vs Long-Term Thinking

17:24 Unconventional Protagonists And Loving Yourself

29:49 Outro

This week, Aaron chats with Monica Fan in the first of a two-part interview. Monica is a game designer currently working at Pipeworks on an unannounced AAA game, but they consider themselves an eccentric creative at heart, having worked in entertainment media including newspaper, radio, theater, and film.  

In this first half of our two-part interview, we talked about Monica's supervillain origin story (the world's worst Tinder date, I'm not kidding), who gets to create underdog narratives and why, the importance of creating games that fulfill fantasies other than typical male-driven power fantasies, how Roblox is driving a new generation of game design, and more!

00:00 Cold Open

00:30 Intro

03:05 Monica's Supervillain Origin Story (AKA The Worst Tinder Date Ever)

09:24 Dopamine Slinging As A Career

12:13 Slop And The Fantasy of Creating Art

18:03 Roblox And Game Design For A New Generation

20:59 The Elder Millennial Teenage Boy Power Fantasy

23:23 Diverse Fantasies For Diverse Audiences

25:38 White Men Can't Introspect(tm)

32:13 ...But The Video Game Industry Is Still (Relatively) Small

34:25 Outro

Links:

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

Make Games, Drink Coffee is produced, edited, and just generally all-around made by me, Aaron Nemoyten. Please email the Make Games Drink Coffee email address, I'm tired of only getting podcast SEO spam at that address!

In this short bonus episode, instead of interviewing a guest for 30 minutes, I talk politics, unions, GDC, and Doom: The Dark Ages... for about six minutes. Why no guest? You'll just have to listen to find out!

Links:

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, Aaron chats with Daniel McLaren. Daniel has been making games since 2005 and has worked on everything from MMOs to mobile games. While he has held a variety of roles over the years, from Game Designer, Producer, to even Product Manager, his primary focus is Design and Team Leadership. Daniel has a passion for reading books, laying on the ground, watching the San Diego Padres mismanage their team, and Path of Exile. Daniel and I worked together at EA on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, and that's how we know each other.

We spoke about Daniel's philosophy of humility in game design, what it was like briefly working in Finland, how we should take sports seriously as lessons in game design, and more.

00:00 Intro

01:39 Humility As A Game Design Philosophy

09:43 Finland's Game Development Culture

11:50 Learning Game Design From Popular Sports

19:19 Spending Time With Friends Is Its Own Hobby

21:50 What Games Are You Playing Right Now?

Links:

Daniel McLaren doesn't have much of an online presence, so here's a link to the game he's working on at Stoic, Towerborne:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458830/Towerborne/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, Aaron chats with Nat Loh, a game design and leadership consultant with nearly 20 years of experience, including character gameplay design on every Skylanders game, mobile free-to-play, VR, and more! We spoke about designing characters in Skylanders, the need for better leadership training in the game industry, how to run better meetings, and why game developers need a seat at the table when big companies discuss the use of AI. This might be the most simultaneously topical and timeless conversation I've had on the podcast!

00:00 Intro and Industry Start

02:21 Character Gameplay Design in Skylanders

07:35 Leadership and Leadership Training In the Game Industry

12:41 More On Masking

15:02 Having A Seat at the AI Table

17:42 A War Story That's Not A War Story

19:10 The Importance of Asking Questions

25:00 Current Projects and Future Excitement

Links:

Nat's web site:

https://www.natlohdesign.com/

Toys for Bob's website from 2005 on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040224212701/http://toysforbob.com/

Dragon Sweeper on itch.io:

https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, we'll be listening to some bonus cut content from the first and third episodes of the podcast. These were answers that were both too long to include in their respective episodes, and too interesting to cut down into smaller pieces. First we'll hear from Kay Purcell, currently a Brand Manager at Konami and previously a community manager at DeviantArt and at Red Bull's gaming division, about TTRPG influence, scenarios, and subverting expectations. Then, we'll hear from Sahil Bajaj. Sahil is a writer and narrative designer on indie games he can talk about (such as ValiDate: Struggling Singles In Your Area), and AAA titles that he's still under NDA about. He's also an Indian living in Dubai who loves Western media, and I'm glad I finally have somewhere to put this interesting discussion about the history and current state of the movie industry in India. 

00:00 Intro

00:47 Kay Purcell on TTRPG Design, Influence, and Subversion

05:34 When Kevin Eastman Likes Your Hair

11:41 Silksong? No. Farming? Yes.

13:21 "Ad" Break

14:13 Sahil Bajaj: The State of Movies In India

22:58 Outro

Links:

Sahil's web site: 

https://sahilbajaj.dev/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, Aaron chats with Jonathan Jennings, a passionate VR developer with a decade of experience in the space. Jonathan is currently at Owlchemy Labs working on Dimensional Double Shift and is Director of Education at Black In Gaming. We had a wide-ranging discussion about VR development, its progress over the years, how it's different from non-VR game development, why the strengths of video games don't lie in cinematic experiences, Jonathan's labor of love VR game, Galactic Bar Fight, and more.

00:00 Introduction

01:23 The Evolution of VR Over the Last Decade

09:33 Good VR Game Design And Galactic Bar Fight

14:43 Learning From Volunteering With Black In Gaming

16:33 Technical Evolution of Unity VR Support

19:13 Finding VR's "Nintendo Moment"

22:46 VR Can Be Dangerous!

24:27 Loving Words and Simple Explanations

30:03 Wrapping Up

Links:

Jonathan's Personal Page:

http://jjenningsgames.weebly.com/

Galactic Bar Fight on itch.io:

https://weirdkidstudios.itch.io/galactic-bar-fight

Black In Gaming:

https://www.thebigfoundation.org/

Owlchemy Labs (yes, that's how it's spelled, not "Alchemy"!)

https://owlchemylabs.com/

Jonathan's LinkedIn, which has even more links to stuff he's done:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjennings3/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, we're doing something different. Instead of interviewing a guest, I (Aaron Nemoyten) am answering an email from someone who found the reel of my cutscene work on the Madagascar PS2/GameCube/XBox game (2005). So, in this episode, I'll be talking through the process of making cutscenes for a AAA licensed game in 2004/2005, a time when we didn't have timeline editors, motion capture studios, or even dedicated cutscenes tools. For a video version of this episode, check out the Make Games, Drink Coffee YouTube Channel.

00:00 Introduction

00:44 Working at Toys for Bob at 19

04:24 Getting Into It

05:50 Creating the New York Street Chase Ending Cutscene

13:41 All Timing Is Code

17:21 How Do Scenes Even Get Written?

20:18 Celebrity Impersonation VO

21:51 About Animations

24:39 A Look Book

25:45 Finalizing Animations and Music

27:06 Final Thoughts

29:05 Outro

Links:

The longplay I sourced the cutscenes from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPK7gYCGGHQ

My writeup of my time at Toys for Bob on my web site:

https://www.aaronnemoyten.com/madagascar-ps2-gamecube-xbox/

(This includes links to the YouTube reels I uploaded as well.)

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, Aaron chats with Jonathan Rucker, or just "Rucker," as he's known at work. Rucker is a Senior Game Engine Programmer who has worked on a ridiculous number of games, building tools and fixing bugs, doing some of the least glamorous stuff in game development and enjoying it anyway. This week's show is more of a "hang out" episode, with wide-ranging discussion from working on Nintendo DS game engines to 3D printing to restaurant horror stories, delicious smoked salmon, and even regional Mexican food in California! 

00:00 Intro

01:08 Getting Into Games Because of Your Mom

03:27 Getting Started In The Industry

05:31 Working On Nintendo DS Game Engines

07:35 A Few Minutes On Esoteric Hobbies

12:47 Mexican Cuisine

22:32 Digression: Salmon! Breakfast!

25:04 Restaurant Horror Stories

30:56 And Now: A Positive Restaurant Story

32:20 Wrapping Up

Links:

Rucker's Mobygames profile, because you just have to see all these games!

https://www.mobygames.com/person/300315/jonathan-rucker/credits/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]