Social simulations and the storytelling potential of hardware-based games are the main topics in today's discussion with Mitu (Creator of Redshirt, PhD holder in Aesthetics of Interactivity in Video Games, and current Assistant Arts Professor at NYU's Game Center) and Jerry (Game designer and developer behind Robo Mama’s Cooking Kitchen, MysteryPhone, Discourse, The Choosatron, and Afterglow)! We talk about the importance of player choice, The Witness and the dialogue that happens between a creator and the player, why freedom in games isn't always a good thing, how controllers and interfaces affect the way we think about games, why Animal Crossing is an amazing social simulator, how fleshing out a game's world can influence the design, the problems with making a social simulation, what happens to our engagement with games as interfaces become more mimetic, slaying Chris Crawford's Dragon, and man, that's just the stuff that's off the top of our heads!

Our Guests on the Internet

Mitu's Twitter and The Tiniest Shark

Jerry's Twitter and Website

Stuff We Talked About

Mitu's GDC Talk - Thinking About People: Designing Games for Social Simulation

ELIZA and The ELIZA Effect

Loved by Alexander Ocias

The Immersive Fallacy (excerpted from Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals) by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman

Lygia Clark

Redshirt

Notary Bear by Lisa Brown

Chris Crawford's Dragon Speech

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.