The Fourth Curtain

Co-founder and CEO of Overwolf, Uri Marchand has been building _THE_ UGC platform for over fourteen years and Overwolf has paid more than $200 million to mod-makers going deep on games from Minecraft to Stardew Valley! A hardcore Real Time Strategy player, Uri's company now supports all types of games including Ark and The Sims. We talk the funnel from gamer to creator, the best books on business, and surviving and thriving over the long haul.

Some of the books on Uri's Reading list:
Nonviolent Communication. By Marshall Rosenberg
Good To Great, Built To Last, Great By Choic. By, Jim Collins
Traction. By Gino Wickman
Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. By Patrick Clancione

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

Our guest Mark DeLoura has had a stunningly wide-ranging career: game developer and executive for Nintendo, Sony and THQ, Editor in Chief of Game Developer magazine, Senior Advisor for Digital Media in the White House, author of Programming Gems book series, built hardware and software for NASA and served on the Board at Games for Change. This week he joins us to talk about building entertainment and games as a language to serve a greater good!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

For a second time we are graced with the presence of videogame legend Shannon Loftis! Veteran of running Flight Simulator and Age of Empires at Microsoft, she was instrumental in the acquisition of Rare for Xbox game Studios. Now an advisor to Duke University's videogame program she joins us to talk franchises, Animal Well and the great Profanisaurus!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

Our guests this week are creators of the visually-striking games Cocoon, Limbo and Inside. Jakob Scmid is co-founder of Geometric Interactive and Erwin Kho is the artist guiding a couple of those projects. We talk about readable environments, demo scenes and more this week!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

This past March, 30,000 people went to San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference. Going since 1988, GDC, brings together people from all corners of the game development community. The Fourth Curtain followed four different journeys intersecting this conference.

The First Timer: Aaron has never gone to GDC and it terrified him.
The Seasoned Pro: Patrick Curry, game studio founder on how he grew up at the conference and how it changed him.
The Founder: Chris Crawford on why he started the conference and how it ultimately drove him from the industry.
The Indie: Geometric Interactive, their award nominated game Cocoon goes to GDC and they come back with something better than trophies.

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

In this inaugural Lunch Club episode of The Fourth Curtain we discuss starting a Game Studio, something Alex has done a few times. We fail to actually eat lunch, but we do talk about the following topics:

1) Why? Why do you want to start one? What are good reason to do so and what’s a game studio really?

2) Strategies. If you are starting a studio, does it have a strategy? Platform, genre, technology, IP? What’s the “sum is greater than its parts” part?

3) Funding. How to get off the ground

4) Needs. Team, Legal, Accounting, Technology Infrastructure, Nuts and Bolts and other operational considerations.

5) Team. How to recruit, building a culture, keeping focus, motivating long term and balancing hard skills vs soft skills

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

This week’s guest Tim Morten has been putting the “real” in real time strategy for years. Formerly lead on Starcraft II, he’s now CEO of Frost Giant Studios, where they’re making Stormgate, a game intended to broaden the RTS audience. We talk compromises, learning how to make games and Korea’s love of Starcraft this week!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

Our guest this week was a founder of Glu and Playfish and an early investor in Supercell. Now he’s CEO of Super Evil Megacorp working on TMNT for Switch. We talk the early days of mobile, the great Vainglory and roguelites in a very educational episode this week!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

Beginning with a 3DO dev kit he was developing on alone (!), Ted Price went on to make Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet and Clank and Spiderman. His company Insomniac has been making games for a boggling 30 years! We talk odd jobs, Hail Marys and hands for mechanics this week.

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505

Our guests Paul and Katy Bettner are the Co-CEOs of Playful Games. Paul got his start making Age of Empires and Halo Wars. Together Paul and Katy made the leap into mobile founding NewToy, where Words with Friends became one of the most-played games of all time. They’re now working on Wildcard, a game aiming to fulfill the promise of web3. We talk Alec Baldwin, terrible MySpaces and feelings this week!

Thank you for listening to our podcast all about videogames and the amazing people who bring them to life!
Hosted by Alexander Seropian and Aaron Marroquin
Find us at www.thefourthcurtain.com
Come join the conversation at https://discord.gg/KWeGE4xHfe
Videos available at https://www.youtube.com/@thefourthcurtain
Follow us on twitter: @fourthcurtain
Edited and mastered at https://noise-floor.com
Featuring the music track Liberation by 505