The Twin Geeks Interviews

ODR [Outdoor Rink] Hockey Heroes is an exciting new arcade-style hockey game from Christopher Atallah, a fellow hockey historian who has played all the stick-and-puck game conversions and put the best influences back into his game. On the eve of this year's hockey season, we talk about our diehard hockey habits, create the Mount Rushmore of hockey videogames, and give an exciting preview for Atallah's new game ODR Hockey Heroes, inspired by NHL 94, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, NHL 3-on-3 Arcade, and Midway's NHL Hitz series. This is Christopher Atallah's Game Dev Story.

Michael Long of Foolish Mortals joins the show to discuss Kaiju Wars, a great riff on Advance Wars that pits your military against a rogue's gallery of awesome Kaiju. The game is a unique spin on the turn-based strategy play style employing timed puzzles to route the Kaijus before they cause unspeakable destruction to each area. We love Kaijus, Advance Wars, and Kaiju Wars, and now we get to tell Michael Long's Game Dev Story.

Nolan Bushnell is one of the foremost figures in the world of games, one of the first true innovators in the market who brought the coin-op experience home, Bushnell brought us Atari, Pong, the 2600, and Chuck E Cheese. Few creators in games have given us so much... and now, Nolan Bushnell tells us his Game Dev Story, from the storied beginnings of console games to the expansion into his own arcade spaces to his present work in cultivating a game market for education. Bushnell is one of a kind and you won't want to miss his journey through the history of games, which also happens to be the history of games themselves.

You can order Nolan Bushnell's new book Shaping the Future of Education on Amazon

Zachtronics made singular games for engineers and people who make games. They made the game that inspired Minecraft. Imagine the breadth of their influence and it's clear what their open-ended puzzle games have truly inspired in modern game design. We chat with the studio's founder Zach Barth about the legendary history of these programming-forward computer games, the weight of outsized influence, working for Valve, and what he's up to today. This is Zach Barth's Game Dev Story.

Andres, Carlos, and Edmundo Bordeu (ACE Team) are surrealist Chilean game developers who began with Doom and Quake mods and led to a publishing contract with Atlus. The eccentricities of the Zeno Clash & Rock of Ages games point to a colorful story about a studio coding outside the lines. There’s even more to the story and we’re proud to help tell the story of three brothers and their videogame dream in Chile. This is ACE Team's Game Dev Story.

Alongside his wife Roberta Williams, Ken Williams co-founded Sierra On-Line, the most influential computer game publisher of their era. Hundreds of games followed. Sierra On-Line published everything from perennial in-house favorites like King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry to outside games that defined generations like Half-Life and Ultima. This is an interview podcast about the foundation of Sierra On-Line, a business partnership, life after game development, and returning to the fold. This is a document of one of the most influential subjects in videogames and an outline of an inspiring career. This is Ken Williams' Game Dev Story.

Ron Gilbert designed some of the most enduring adventure games, Maniac Mansion (1987) and The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), and is rightly heralded as one of our great genre pioneers. Gilbert's career, now stretching over several decades, offers many inflection points, and thoughtful swerves with and against the tides of the market. In this edition of Game Dev Story, we delve into Gilbert's full career, spanning from his time at LucasArts, to the foundation of the top-tier children's computer game studio Humungeous Entertainment, to crowd-funding his own games. It's a swashbuckling good time as we plunder the full career of such a notable game designer. There's something for everyone here, whether you may be a long-time fan or a game designer yourself, so let's sit back and enjoy Ron Gilbert's Game Dev Story.

Quentin De Beukelaer has gone from designing major games with Ubisoft to creating his own pixel horror scape, blending the styles of David Lynch & Satoshi Kon, with original music scored by Akira Yamaoka. Quentin joins the show to discuss his path to game development, the difference between developing massive franchises and more personal indie projects, and the Game Dev Story for his studio Atelier QDB's new narrative horror game, Decarnation.

The best cult cinema of the century is being made in Uganda. We interview the creator of some of Africa's best contemporary film exports, Nabwana I.G.G., and documentarian Cathryne Czubek who has made a new film about the Wakliwood project. Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010), Crazy World (2014), and Big Black (2016) will go down as some of the most thrilling action movies of our time. We talk about the influences of visceral kung-fu movies, cultural differences which inform the materials, the present and future of Ugandan cinema, and what it was like making a documentary about such globally revered action films.

Al Lowe is the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, the irreverent Sierra On-Line franchise that broke all the unspoken rules of game development. A crucial contributor through all of Sierra On-Line's brightest years, Al went from teaching music to students to developing videogames loaded with wit and personality. In our inaugural episode of Game Dev Story, a series where we talk to veteran and indie developers about their history in games, Al joins our show to share his philosophy about game development and to give the inside scoop about one of the most interesting studios of the '80s and '90s. Like playing one of Al's games, listening to him reflect on his career in games is compelling and very charming.