The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook

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Alexa Ray Corriea chats with Alison Lührs, Narrative Director on Bungie's Destiny 2. Together they discuss her approach to writing for fantasy in the Dungeons & Dragons universe and now sci-fi for Destiny 2; the unique aspects of writing for live service games; how to start projects effectively; and how theater and improv have informed the way she writes.

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Trent Kusters chats with indie gaming business guru, Dan Adelman. Together they discuss his time at Xbox and Nintendo helping to start their digital content marketplaces; transitioning to working independently with game developers to help them launch and market their games; how he decides which developers and projects to work with; and his perspective on how the markets have shifted for indie games over his 20 years in the industry.

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Please consider supporting game dev students with: AIAS Foundation

This episode is supported by Xsolla

Austin Wintory chats with longtime Valve composer and music designer, Mike Morasky. Together they discuss how he started his career outside of music in the visual effects industry working on film series such as  The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings; how he found himself pursuing music and then joining Valve; and his work across several of Valve's most memorable titles from Portal to Counter-Strike 2. 

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Trent Kusters chats with Tynan Sylvester, creator of RimWorld and author of Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences. Together they discuss his ideas around development concepts and processes; how crystalizing those ideas in book form led to the creation of RimWorld; his ideas around core systems and how they lead to successful games; generating human stories with elastic failure; and the fundamental theory on why people play games.

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Please consider supporting game dev students with: AIAS Foundation

This episode is supported by Xsolla

Trent Kusters chats with brothers and co-founders of SFB Games, Adam & Tom Vian. Together they discuss how they began creating games in the early days of Flash and Newgrounds; transitioning to console development and working with Nintendo on the multi D.I.C.E. Award winning Snipperclips; the inspirations and development of Crow Country; and the secret to making games look and feel how we remember while avoiding the limits of the past.

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Greg Rice chats with Aggro Crab developers Nick Kaman and Caelan Pollock about their recently released undersea soulslike, Another Crab's Treasure. Together they discuss how the team got started as a game design club in college; their first commercial project in Going Under; the early ideas that led to Another Crab's Treasure; avoiding the pitfalls of difficulty that players expect in the soulslike genre; and the nuance of discussing climate change as a central narrative theme.

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Please consider supporting game dev students with: AIAS Foundation

This episode is supported by Xsolla

Greg Rice chats with David Hellman, Nico Recabarren, and Nick Suttner of Furniture & Mattress, about their debut title as a studio, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. Together they discuss how the team got together; the ground rules they established for the puzzle designs; decisions around scope; and how they balanced gameplay and narrative elements. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review.

Please consider supporting game dev students with: AIAS Foundation

This episode is supported by: Xsolla

Adam Orth chats with Matt Wood and Micah Breitweiser from Double Dagger Studio about their first tile as a studio, Little Kitty, Big City. Together they discuss how Little Kitty, Big City began as a teaching opportunity for Matt's children; the iterative nature of development and having malleable design pillars; the importance of scope and restraint; the conscious decision to direct players as little as possible; and the process of bringing the kitty to life and how Micah's career outside of games helped make that a reality.

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Please consider supporting game dev students with: AIAS Foundation

Trent Kusters chats with Xalavier Nelson Jr., the studio head, writer, and creative director of titles such as El Paso Elsewhere, Space Warlord Orgran Trading Simulator, Clickolding, and the upcoming I Am Your Beast. Together they discuss Xalavier's ideas around sustainable game development such as the importance of prioritizing shipping projects on time and within scope; how giving players unique experiences keeps them coming back for the next game; and the challenges of their approach when pitching to potential partners.  Watch this episode on our YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review.

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Alexa Ray Corriea chats with Max and Nick Folkman. Nick is a writer at Insomniac Games and Max a writer at Riot Games who together also host the Script Lock podcast where they chat to fellow game writers. Together they discuss their ideas around writing for games; what it takes to get into the games industry; how to write for live service games versus single player games; and about their experiences interviewing fellow writers and what they've learned from them. Watch this episode on our YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review.