This week, Aaron chats with Sahil Bajaj, a narrative designer and game writer. Sahil has worked on the Blackwood Charter Escape Room with Sweet Baby Inc and with Veritable Joy on ValiDate: Struggling Singles in Your Area, as well as making his own Twine games for kids, and a bunch of other stuff still under NDA because that's just how the game industry rolls sometimes. In this conversation, we chat about growing up as an Indian immigrant in the USA vs. the UAE, humor in game writing and design, making interactive fiction for kids, and more!

00:00 Introduction

03:12 Cultural Influences and Identity

06:54 Experimentation and Humor in Game Design

15:37 State of the Discipline ("John doesn't know s$@%!")

21:34 Making Games For Kids

25:23 Wrapping Up

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 interviews legendary pixel artist Christina-Antoinette Neofotistou AKA castpixel. Christina has been in the industry for 20 years as an artist, illustrator, art director, and more. In this episode we talk about her experience growing up on obscure PC games in Greece in the 1980's, developing an individual style, aphantasia, demakes, having the same favorite game for nearly 40 years, and more!

00:00 Introduction

01:17 Art in College and Surrealism

05:59 Entering the Game Industry

08:29 Aphantasia

10:25 Developing an Individual Style

12:11 Growing Up with Unique Gaming Experiences

16:59 Demakes

18:56 The Same Favorite Game For Four Decades

22:26 What's Exciting? Not New Games!

Links:

Christina's ArtStation - https://castpixel.artstation.com/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]

This week, Aaron interviews Kay Purcell. 

Kay (she/they) is a community manager, marketing expert, project manager, and Jack-of-all-trades with experience at DeviantArt, Red Bull, Avalanche Studios Group, and games journalism. Kay is also a charity streamer, event organizer, and professional dungeon master!

This is Make Games, Drink Coffee, a podcast featuring conversations with game developers about their jobs, their hobbies, and whatever they're passionate about! No rambling two-hour interviews and no meandering monologues! It's short and sweet, thirty minutes or less, with bonus clips on the Make Games, Drink Coffee youtube channel, TikTok, etc.

Chapters:

00:00 Introductions and Texas Is Big

01:54 Community Management at DeviantArt and Red Bull

08:31 Games Journalism Is Hard (And Broken)

16:46 Being A Professional DM

20:07 The Fluidity of Game Lore

21:54 Understanding That Not All Media Is For Me (And That's Okay!)

25:47 Finding Your Audience

27:21 Kay's Favorite Game

28:53 Wrap-Up

29:10 Make Games Drink Coffee Outro Music.mp3

Links: 

Shout out to Rogue (independent games journalism!): https://www.rogue.site/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]