This week in the club house Adrian Sandoval describes how video games are speed running art history. Your nice hosts have their minds blown many times and Steven discovers he might actually like history!? Stay tuned to find out where the 90 day return policy came from.

• Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends - Team Nemo
• Chris Totten, co-author of Adrian's book, has been on the showTeaching Gamedev to Young People, Again!

Adrian SandovalGame DesignHardwareMarketingSpacewar! - WikipediaAdventure (Atari 2600) and its designer's easter egg - Atari OnlineAlex Smith, They Create Worlds - They Create WorldsEp. 22: Remembering Atari with Howard Scott Warshaw - Robin Kunimune, Video Game History HourTeach Me Something in 5 Minutes 2 - What Games Can Learn from Theatre w/ Adrian… - Adrian Sandoval, YouTubeConsole Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation - Blake J. Harris, GoodreadsAdrian SandovalGuestAdrian Sandoval is a professional game designer, historian, and educator with 15+ years of industry experience. He currently teaches game design, production and history at Drexel University. His book, "World Design for 2D Action-Adventures", co-authored with Christopher W. Totten, is available on the Routledge store.External linkhttps://www.adriansandoval.net/https://bsky.app/profile/adriansandoval.net

Your nice hosts all secured a Switch 2 pre-order... from a certain point of view. Then, Stephen examines the body, Mark attempts a vocabulary, and Lydia has recommendations.

• Chants of Sennaar - Wikipedia
• Nintendo Switch 2 preorders were a total mess — at first - Jay Peters, The Verge
• Missed out on a Nintendo Switch 2 pre-order? GameStop and Best Buy will have mo… - Demi Williams, TechRadar

0:22:17What Happened With Future ClubPart-Time Hero Campaign EndingFuture ClubKickstarter0:48:57Design Surface AreaRubber duck debuggingWikipedia

The clubhouse welcomes Ashley Phipps, producer for the game Clock Out at 2, to discuss the topic of mental health and discrimination.

Mental Health and DiscriminationGame DesignGamingNarrativeClock Out at 2 Demo -  Borderless Studios, SteamWhat to know about microaggressions - Anna Smith Haghighi, Medical News TodayQueerty Gamers - Queerty GamersSpooktober 2023 Clock Out at 2 Build - itch.ioDepression Quest - Zoe QuinnAdventures with Anxiety - Nicky CaseFight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: How We Respond to Threats - "Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc", Simply Psychology

Good Reps for Mental Health depiction

Final Fantasy XIV - SquareEnixThe Cosmic Wheel SisterhoodTales of Arise - SteamAshley PhippsGuestProducer and Community Manager with 10+ years of experience in project management and leadership. Producer for the game Clock Out at 2.External linkWebsiteInstagramClock Out at 2

In this episode the club house talks about the games that they have been playing. Mark attempts to define the terms good friction and bad friction, declares his distaste of rouge-likes, and talks about friction in his current projects. Lydia shows us how to make scoring sound way more academic.

• Civilization VII
• Age of Mythology Retold
• Blue Prince

0:18:21Friction by DesignMark tries to define some terms:

Good Friction - something that was designed into the game, or that could be described as a bug, or only confuses a player

Bad Friction - unintentional friction0:45:47Diversity in ScoringHuffington Post News Triva GameHuffington Post

Your nice hosts get a crash course on video game IP law from lawyer and MinnMax cohort, Haley MacLeon. We learn about incorporating, publishing agreements, the difference between a lot of commonly used terms like "copyright", and the joys of contract templates. 

• MinnMax - MinnMax
• Game Informer Revival - Game Informer

Video Game IP LawMarketingMisc.ProductionThe $10 Million Lawsuit That Hinges On An Oxford Comma - Anna King, NPRVideo Game Publishing Agreement Market Report 2025 - Kellen Voyer & Haley MacLean, Voyer Law CorporationHaley MacLeonGuestHaley is a Canadian lawyer who advises clients on tech, corporate and intellectual property law. She previously worked as a journalist in the video game industry and continues her work with video game companies, now as a lawyer. In her free time, she appears on numerous gaming podcasts and video content.External link@haleyfax on TwitchVoyer Law Corporation

A new Nintendo is on the way, and your nice hosts talk about both it and the world it's being born into. It kicks off a longer than usual episode where Lydia just wants a way to experience horror games, Mark has an unpopular opinion, and Stephen thinks players have too much agency already.

0:31:57Let's PlaysEndoparasiticmizizizizitch.ioLet’s Plays: A Copyright ConundrumAlexandra ChampagneSlaw Why I am Hesitant to Declare Let's Plays as Fair UseAquasonReddit1:17:44Responsive Game DesignWhat Capcom Didn't Tell You About Resident Evil 4Game Maker's ToolkitYouTubeWe should talk.Carol Mertz

Your nice hosts settle their differences in opinions when it comes to food to serve up a fresh game design document in a new Nice Games Jam episode.

PromptCreate a game with one of my favorite things, food! It cannot be about/or have mechanics that are cooking. Think: growing food, pairing foods, making an international food court, menu design, using foods in season, etc.Game typeDesign documentPlayer count1Rules

(Stephen note: This is more of a set of notes taken during the episode outlining a game design document.)

• Human in an alien culture, giving recommendations for pairings for food
• You should need to learn the rules before you can break them
  • Gain credibility
• People order categories of food and you put it on the plate (no cooking)
• Gamer Journey
  • You’re a plater at an alien restaurant
  • You first do it like a human (based on taste)
  • You get feedback that opposes basing plates on taste
  • Player starts to get curious about how to make better plates to meet needs
• Sense criteria
  • Touch
  • Sight
  • Temperature
  • Spiciness
• Taste the “wine” to know what it “tastes” like
• The threat is if you do poorly you get shipped to another planet, they have different foods and different desires for foods
• Options to change
  • Two ingredients (tomato and other tomato? Looks similar)
  • Position of foods
  • Container of foods
  • Orientation of foods
  • Aesthetic of the restaurant?
• You design the special
  • Create one dish for the special, you get an amount of feedback based on the size of the restaurant
  • You can tweak your dish based on the feedback you get
  • Things change as you go through the game and impact what you have available and what patrons like
  • The goal is for players to experiment with the different foods (positions, containers, etc.) so they begin to understand the rules of the game
  • There can be clues with the background/worldbuilding so players can learn why the foods these aliens like are why they like them
• When do you get to influence cultures? Do you get to at all?
  • Yes, you need to figure out a way to get aliens to love the food and not just like it

Mark is still out sick, so Dale takes his place in the clubhouse and brings a topic! The club makes a prediction that by the time that this episode comes out, Mark will still be sick, and if you are listening on Patreon, that is absolutely true. If you aren't listening on Patreon, you probably should be.

The group talks about how often and when to say no. Stephen admits that he is the bottleneck, Lydia talks about things that she finds delightful in video games, and Dale makes a bold admission.

1:33The art of Saying NoGatchamari - Dale (and Mark)'s Global Game Jam GameGlobal Game JamMini Post-Mortems on Global Game Jam GamesIGDA TCYouTubeFTL PostmortemJustin Ma and Matthew DavisGDCCeleste team Cancels a project (Earthblade)ExokEarthblade OST SoundtrackLena Raine0:31:30Tiny InteractionsSkyrim's myth of the treasure fox finally explainedWesley Yin-PooleEurogamer

Roles reverse as Dale joins Stephen and Lydia for a Nice Game Jam prompted by Mark. The results are an antiques-fueled jaunt through time, and an unexpected win for Stephen.

• Costcodle - Zak Kermitz, Costcodle
• Timeline Inventions - Zygomatic, Zygomatic
• Hypodermic Needles - Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, Maximum Fun

Prompt"Come up with a game where the winner is the player who gets (or gets closest to) a certain amount of points, but that amount changes from round to round. Hard mode variant: the players don’t always know what the amount is."Game typeTabletop gamePlayer count2-8Materials

Set of item cards from various years

10 chips for each player

Set of years/events

Timer

Setup

• Place 8 item cards on the table easily accessible for all players.
• Pick a random year/event.
• Set timer for 1 minute.

Rules

• Start the timer to start the round
• While the timer runs, players place chips on items to bid on them
• When the timer runs out, the player with the most chips on an item gets that item. In a tie, no one gets an item and it gets added to the pool during the next round
• Items that are earned get their times revealed, player closest to the chosen year/event wins
• Play repeats for three rounds, player with the most round wins wins the game

Beth leads Mark and Stephen through a therapy session. Stephen talks Kickstarter, Mark talks Patreon, and everyone agrees Beth's game Verdant Skies is great. 

• Part-Time Hero: I'm Broke But I Have To Save The World! - Future Club, Kickstarter
• Dreamsettler - Tendershoot, Patreon

0:06:40Begging for Money0:52:09Quality of LifeQuality of LifeMichael “Kayin” O’ReillyKayin WorksVerdant SkiesHowling Moon SoftwareSteam