Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Your nice hosts interview Ryan Sumo, Art Director and CEO of Squeaky Wheel Studio, an independent developer and publisher based in the Philippines. Topics include community building, conferences, becoming a publisher through serendipity, and the benefits of being transparent with your development practices. Plus jokes! Gamedev in the Philippines Misc. The Top 50 mobile games of 2006 - Stuart Dredge, Pocket Gamer Spacechem - Steam GDAP (Game Developers Association of the Philippines) IGDA Philippines Manila ESGS conference on Instagram Bit Summit conference (Japan) Level Up conference (Kuala Lumpur) Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder  - Steam Ryan's posts on Gamasutra - Ryan Sumo, Game Developer Ryan Sumo Guest Ryan Sumo co-founded the studio Squeaky Wheel. Visit their site at http://www.squeakywheel.ph/ and follow them on social media (links below). Follow Ryan on Twitter @ryansumo and check out Squeaky Wheel's upcoming game Academia: School Simulator. Squeaky Wheel is also getting into publishing with the title Ruinarch, an "evil overlord" game by developer Maccima. External link Squeaky Wheel on Twitter Squeaky Wheel on Facebook Squeaky Wheel on LinkedIn Squeaky Wheel on YouTube

Your nice hosts talk big picture and get deep into the weeds this week. Mark runs Flash at 60fps on the Switch, Ellen makes a Star Trek reference, and Stephen wants more games that aren't fun. Hey you! If you're porting a project, whether it's just to a new Unity build target, or to a whole new codebase, we want to hear about it! contact@noblerobot.com or @NiceGamesClub. GDC’s summer event will be digital only - Megan Farokhmanesh, The Verge Neat things that Star Trek Online did with Star Trek lore - Eliot Lefebvre, Massively Overpowered Fun in Games 0:11:09 Ellen Burns-Johnson Game Design Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Is Bringing Back The Instakill Hidden Blade, In A Sig… - Stephen Totilo, Kotaku Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Developers Say Breaking Series Traditions Made For A B… - Stephen Totilo, Kotaku 15 things you can do to make Breath of the Wild feel new again - Patricia Hernandez, Polygon Raph Koster's Theory of Fun, ten years on - Leigh Alexander, Game Developer Solaris (1972) - trailer Porting Your Game 0:44:11 Mark LaCroix Hardware Programming Your Indie Game on Console: A Practical Guide to Porting - Thomas O'Connor, GDC OUYA works with Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers - Rik Henderson, Pocket-lint Microsoft Windows Astoria bridge for Android is dead - Jan Vermeulen, MyBroadband Haxe (programming langauge) - Wikipedia Post-Mortem on Transitioning from Flash to Haxe - Doug Pearson, GameDaily Connect C-- (programming language) - Wikipedia Introduction to OpenFL - HaxeFlixel documentation Epic Games' Unreal Engine Heads To Flash - Kris Graft, Game Developer Adobe Flash Player Export in Unity 4.0 - Ralph Hauwert, Unity Sunsetting Flash - David Helgason, Unity Development of Duke Nukem Forever - Wikipedia

Mark gets back to Metro Nexus, Stephen explores the strange land where in-game and real-world economics overlap, and Ellen makes sure we have good posture. Metro Nexus is running on the Switch! Global Games Pitch IGDATC Widget Satchel Postmortem - igdatc Economies 0:11:20 Stephen McGregor Game Design Currencies in Star Trek Online - Gamepedia How Warframe built an ethical free-to-play economy - Ben Kuchera, Polygon I Am Not At All Relaxed by Animal Crossing - Cecilia D’Anastasio, Wired Ergonomics 0:55:15 Ellen Burns-Johnson IRL The Gamer’s Guide to Ergonomics: Your Posture, Chair, Desk, Fingers and everyth… - Matthew Hwu, 1HP Your posture is killing you: What gamers should know about ergonomics - Roman Jakob, VentureBeat Herman Miller Embody chair Mark's very neat workspace. "Kind of messy. Don't show my mom." ~ Stephen Ellen's workspace. Rustic. Dog.

Mark interviews Sébastien Deguy and Jérémie Noguer, the Vice President and Principal Product Manager of 3D & Immersive at Adobe, about developing Substance, the leading suite of tools for 3D texturing and material creation. In a wide-ranging discussion, your nice guests reveal what it's like joining a big ol’ company like Adobe, how to design a tool for multiple audiences, the difference between "black magic" and "white magic," and how COVID-19 is impacting their teams. They also share a peek into the future of licensing and subscriptions for Substance and Adobe's other 3D tools, and the reason they haven't been able to release a Blender plugin yet. Building Substance Art Production Tools Substance & 3D News Livestream (GDC 2020 Keynote) - GDC, YouTube Adobe Announces Substance Designer and Painter Updates - Animation World Network Sébastien Deguy Guest Founder of Allegorithmic, makers of Substance. VP 3D & Immersive at Adobe. External link Substance 3D https://twitter.com/sebdeguy Jérémie Noguer Guest Principal Product Manager of 3D and Immersive at Adobe. External link Substance 3D https://twitter.com/gahadmor

This week, it's Ellen's first rodeo as your permanent nice host, Stephen looks forward to watching someone else play The Last of Us Part II, and Mark is a bad VR person. Bulletin topic (Recent releases) Timecode 0:14:55 Remakes: FFVII Remake Persona 5 Royal Saints Row: IV - Re-Elected Doom 64 Delays Last of Us Part II Iron Man VR Marvel’s Avengers Half-Life: Alyx Switch Lite (Coral) Bulletin topic (News) Timecode 0:31:59 Events Confirming your nice hosts' suspicions, just after this episode was published, GDC announced that GDC Summer will be an online-only event. San Diego Comic-Con 2020 is officially canceled due to coronavirus - Tracy Brown, Los Angeles Times Media drama! Press Sneak Out - Jason Schreier, Kotaku Jason Schreier (and co-hosts) took his podcast to the Maximum Fun network. Two More Editors Depat G/O Media in Ongoing Exodus - Brandon Katz, Observer Vox Media Furloughs 9% of Staff for Three Months, Cuts Salaries and Benefits - Todd Spangler, Variety Valorant Why Valorant’s anti-cheat system has to launch when your computer starts - Austen Goslin, Polygon Riot places $100,000 bounty on Valorant anti-cheat system bugs - Jordan Gerblick, GamesRadar Valorant makes you watch before you play—that’ll change online games forever - Sam Machkovech, Ars Technica Hardware Shortages Resellers Using Checkout Bots Are Driving the Nintendo Switch Shortage - Joseph Cox, Motherboard Nintendo Switch Is Sold Out Everywhere, So This Guy Built One Himself - Matthew Gault, Vice PS5 Sony Plans Limited PlayStation 5 Output in First Year - Takashi Mochizuki and Yuki Furukawa, Bloomberg PS5 controller, the DualSense, officially revealed - Connor Sheridan, GamesRadar

Martha has a big announcement, Mark tells the story of Babylon 5, and Stephen owes everyone a hug. Also, Ellen is back in the (distributed) clubhouse with her own big news! Stephen didn’t know what the word "Emeritus" means, so he put it in the notes: "Holding, after retirement, an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service." In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, NPCs can be seen breaking character after you walk away from them (via Twitter). Ending Projects 0:13:13 Martha Megarry IRL Production Definition of Done - Agile Alliance A Work of Art Is Never Finished, Merely Abandoned - Quote Investigator Adam Savage On Why Mythbusters Ended - B. Co Creative Agency, YouTube How Babylon 5 went from space opera to space junk - Ben Gazur, The Guardian THE INSTITUTE: a 2013 documentary film The Perplexing Final Chapter Of San Francisco’s Jejune Institute - Rick Paulas, The Awl "How I Met Your Mother" Kids Kept Show's Ending Secret for 9 Years - Brian Anthony Hernandez, Mashable The reason Rebecca Sugar made Steven Universe Future, and why it’s the actual e… - Tasha Robinson, Polygon Rock Band Network Shutting Down After Four Years and Over 2,000 Songs - Eddie Makuch, GameSpot Project management triangle (aka: "The Iron Triangle") - Wikipedia Starting Projects 1:11:55 Ellen Burns-Johnson IRL Production Mark's "Noble Menu" system for Unity is available on Itch.io.

Ellen Burns-Johnson joins us once again in the virtual club house to discuss Redundancy and Arcades! Ellen teaches us about how we learn, Mark balances the game, Martha only plays the best character, and Stephen has a revelation. Photo Credit: Michelle Bruch, from this Southwest Journal Article about the Donutron Redundancy 0:13:01 Mark LaCroix Game Design UI / UX The Forgetting Curve hypothesis by Hermann Ebbinghous - Wikipedia The Distributed Practice learning strategy - Wikipedia Arcades 0:50:39 Stephen McGregor Gaming IRL Why You Can't Call It a "Barcade" - Brenna Houck, Eater Dino Dash -  Abdel Shahied, YouTube The 'Donutron' Arcade at Glam Doll Donuts in Minneapolis

This week, your nice hosts put together a design document for a co-op game of corporate espionage. Martha wants to crawl through vents, Mark wants low stakes moral choices, and Stephen wants everyone to yell at everyone. On Wednesday this week, Mark presented a in-depth postmortem on the production of Widget Satchel for the April IGDATC monthly community meeting, held remotely on Twitch. You can "attend" the meeting ex post facto on the IGDATC Twitch channel! Prompt "How about an asymmetrical couch co-op game? Maybe it's meant to be played with a younger sibling, or maybe it's a teaching tool." Game type Design document Player count 2 Rules Premise Two players, who are a team of freelance infiltrators. One player is out in the field doing their thing (1st-person perspective). One player is a hacker at home base, providing assistance to the field player (in VR). Spy theme, corporate espionage. Field player observes the scene, gathering information for the hacker so they can do the hacking. Field player does some deduction, but they are playing an action game, while the hacker player is playing a puzzle game.. Hacker is doing their hax from a kind of holographic computer interface (Minority Report-esque perhaps). They do not see what the field player sees directly, but have many resources at their disposal (camera feeds, scanning tech, etc) Hacker manages resources and allocates mechanical abilities to the field player based on mission requirements and moment-to-moment events. Game is a series of missions, Hitman-style, selected in any order. Each mission contributes to a larger narrative of rival companies/factions. Pre-Mission Players see information about future missions, the team chooses the next mission, but the hacker player literally picks it, opening up potential conflict between players. Throughout the campaign, various moral choices can crop up. The team can choose their missions based on which client they support, or they can chose to become double agents, thwarting their client's goals. Example Mission Infiltrate a restaurant that actually is a complicated science lab to steal a secret recipe. First task: sneak past into the entrance of the lab: Hacker player needs to manipulate orders and customers so that few people see the field player. Field player observing the state of play in the restaurant and doing the actions. Second task: get past a bunch of lasers. Hacker player can take out some lasers and protect the field player using shields. Field player gets past the lasers through first-person platforming actions. Third task: get the recipe. Field player is sneaking past guards or other security obstacles. Hacker player is opening vault with the recipe and doing stealth gadget things. Getting to the recipe, do you steal the recipe or copy the recipe down? Do you want to simply defeat opponents, or destroy them? As with mission selection, one player (the field player in this case) literally makes the call, but the game encourages the team to choose their course of action together. Last task, get out of restaurant Option for field player: could sneak through vents, or take the same way out, or run past guards in a mad dash to escape. In the case of a "stealth fail state," hacker player must hacking frantically to resolve the situation quickly (i.e.: convincing the guards it was a false alarm, disabling the lights to give the field player time to hide, etc), while field player is explicitly avoiding conflict.

Your Nice Hosts are still recording remotely while we physically distance ourselves! We talk about our new normal and give each other advice on Working From Home and Games to Play while we stay inside. Stay safe out there, Nice Listeners! We are all in this together. How did Animal Crossing’s Isabelle and the Doomguy become best friends? - Julia Lee, Polygon Working From Home 0:09:00 Stephen McGregor IRL Because Internet, a book by Gretchen McCulloch Collaborate with Live Share (Visual Studio Code) Games to Play While Social Distancing 0:34:14 Martha Megarry Gaming IRL Charles made a HyperDot painting in Animal Crossing - @DarkaysTG, Twitter Your Complete Guide To The SimCity Disaster - Jason Schreier, Kotaku We talked about Martha's love of 'safe zones' in this previous episode (#104): "Safety gone!"

Yes, yes, we know GDC was cancelled, but your nice hosts still had plenty of stuff to talk about, including how GDC itself adapted itself into a non-event, how some business still got done, and next-gen hardware news from Microsoft and Sony that was too big to be rescheduled. As part of an industry-wide effort to give people something to do while they're stuck inside, Mark gathered a few Twin Cities indiedevs to sell a bundle of their recent titles at a deep discount. It's the Twin Cities Indies Say Stay Inside Bundle! It includes 5 full games (Adjacency, Joggernauts, Newt One, Verdant Skies, and Widget Satchel), and it's available on Itch for the next two weeks at 84% off the normal price. Stay home and enjoy! Mark joked that the Summer Olympics would be the next thing to be postponed, and sure enough, a day after we recorded this episode, they were. The GDC That Wasn't 0:12:40 Events IRL GDC on Twitch GDC's channel on Youtube - GDC, YouTube GDC Summer is (currently) planned for August 4th-6th IGF Awards 2020: Finalists and winners GDCA 2020: Finalists and winners Next-Gen Console Reveals 0:39:52 Events Hardware Xbox Series X: A Closer Look at the Technology Powering the Next Generation - Will Tuttle, Xbox Wire The Road to PS5: A talk by PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny - PlayStation, YouTube

This week on Nice Games Club, we talk about Naming Things and Rhythm Games! Stephen lays down a beat, Martha brings up fuzzy math, and Mark uses every excuse to talk about Star Trek. We mentioned the previous Train Jam episode (#17): GDC 2017 Special (Part 1) Naming Things 0:17:47 Mark LaCroix Game Design Marketing Production Google Trends Rhythm Games 0:52:45 Martha Megarry Game Design Harminix's next music-making game puts your DJ skills to the test - Christine Fisher, Engadget Episode where Mark talks about his Rock Band experience (#153): "She also cheats a lot." Ape Out - Arcade Mode Gameplay - IGN, YouTube

Your nice hosts finally get around to some classic topics in this week's episode. Mark explains why Widget Satchel takes longer to download than he'd have liked, Stephen is worried that you might learn the wrong lessons, and Martha disagrees. It took some sleuthing, but Mark found proof that Crunch, the mascot for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was named for the Nestle candy bar. Day-One Patches 0:02:48 Mark LaCroix Production Programming Why 'Day-One Patches' Are So Common - Rami Ismail, Kotaku The Switch patch for Widget Satchel that Mark mentioned working on just passed though Nintendo's lotcheck system and was released today. Pick up a copy it if you haven't already! Crunch 0:42:22 Stephen McGregor IRL Production Programming 'Anthem' is proof that crunch can't save AAA games - Jessica Conditt, Engadget Video Game Delays Cause More Crunch - Jason Schreier, Kotaku Book Review: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland - Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer Crunch Time: How Indies Are Falling Victim To Launch Day Pressures - Kate Fanthorpe, The Indie Game Website Studio MDHR delays Cuphead DLC to 2020, in bid to avoid development crunch - Aaron Mamiit, Digital Trends Mark referenced how Mr. Scott maintains his reputation as a miracle worker.

Ellen Burns-Johnson joins us in the club house to discuss the latest in game dev news! We talk about the latest releases, GDC getting "postponed", Kickstarter unionizing and more. Be nice and have a listen! Bulletin topic (Recent releases) Timecode 0:05:34 HyperDot is a local game by Stephen's brother Charles! Buy it! Bulletin topic (News) Timecode 0:20:22 Important GDC 2020 Update - GDC Train Jam is still on! Wings Fund is providing GDC relief funding. Plan B Project has an event page on Facebook. AltGDC will have conference talks and panels that will be recorded. #notGDC is an annual, free, online event that runs concurrently every year. ​​​​​​​COVID-19 information from the World Health Organization. Google's ambitious push into gaming is floundering, and it's due largely to too… - Ben Gilbert, Business Insider Kickstarter employees vote to unionize, relieving tension among game developers - Charlie Hall, Polygon

This week, Stephen is crowned the new King of Transitions, Martha gets around to playing two games she'd been meaning to for awhile, and Mark briefly impersonates a saxophone. Unlocks 0:06:19 Stephen McGregor Game Design Stephen's Unlock Taxonomy: Achievement-based: Do a thing, get unlock related to thing. Experience-based: Play the game, get a thing based on how much you've played. Loot-based: Play the game, get random thing. Currency-based: Earn in-game currency, pick an unlock to purchase. New Game Plus: Complete the game, get new content on second playthrough. Case Study (Mutazione & Later Alligator) 0:39:26 Martha Megarry Game Design Gaming Mutazione Later Alligator We played though one of Martha's favorites in a previous video episode: Nice Plays: Pajama Sam 2 (1998) Dr. Katz - Wikipedia

We're back! This week, your nice hosts talk about what they did over their winter break, from taking up residence in a new clubhouse, to developing a new logo and website, and more! But in the end, everything is still nice. Highlights of this extra-long special episode: Martha proposes a Nice Games Club IDE color theme... ...Dale joins the show to point out that making a logo for a podcast is harder than making a logo for a game... ...and after all the redesign work, Stephen makes a late pitch to rename the show "Hot Takes Games Club." Plus, the entire clubhouse goes back and forth making promises (setting expectations) on the new website. It's an iterative process, people! What We Did On Our Winter Break (2020) IRL Meta Nice Games Club Logo Development Here's a Nice Game Club "Bug" concept that was rejected Logo Option #1: Stars Logo Option #2: Git Tree Logo Option #3: Coding Brackets Stephen and the Fingeance team talk about their love of "choice #3" in one of our "Code Comment" episodes: Code Comment: "Fingeance" Iteration on Logo #3 (brackets) Logo in multiple color contexts, including the "Valentine" theme Variations on the "logo on a cartridge" concept We made our new site using Drupal, a VERY open source web development tool. December 2019 IGDATC's monthly meetings Dale talked about developing Reravel, which was first developed during a Nice Games Jam episode: Reravel: A Backwards Storytelling Game January 2020 Protospiel Hyperdot, a game by Stephen's brother Charles McGregor was released this month on January 31st. It is available on Xbox, Steam, itch.io and Windows PC. You can buy it now. Global Game Jam 2020 The Global Game Jam 2019 keynote (aka: the best keynote ever) starts at 04:00 The Global Game Jam 2020 keynote We mentioned Rachel, the head of GLITCH's Discord, who we have had on a previous episode: Games Education Mark worked with Scott Lembke for GGJ 2020. We interviewed Scott on a previous GGJ episode: "Steal this episode." Mark's logo for his team's GGJ 2020, with character art by teammate Kissi Kissi worked on a few games during the jam! Screenshot from "Super City Mayor," Mark's GGJ game You can play Dale and Beth's GGJ game, "Corporate Espionage" right in your brow… February 2020 Mark and Dale saw David Byrne's American Utopia! American Utopia on Broadway American Utopia: Full Cast Album - Spotify New York Transit Museum Dale in a very old subway car at the transit museum Dale in a moderately old subway car at the transit museum NYU Games Center has playtest events every Thursday