Game Breaking Feature

Special Guest: Meagan Byrne is the founder of Achimostawinan Games and Digital Interactive Coordinator with ImagineNATIVE. She gives us the backstory on Exposition in Games. Can games tell stories in their own unique...

Special Guest: Mike Bithell is the Director of John Wick Hex and in this episode he guides us through designing escort missions in games. What makes escort missions bearable? Are there games that get away with it more...

Special Guest: Jeff Larkin is a VFX Artist at Gunfire Games, the studio behind Remnant: From the Ashes. He spontaneously rolls his way into a discussion about random number generation in games. Why do we use so much RNG...

Special Guest: Nina Freeman is a designer behind games like Cibele and Tacoma and she chose to talk with us about her philosophies on Dialogue Options in games. What sense of agency does this give the player? What are...

Special Guest: Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an IGF-nominated developer here to run with the topic of climbing and free-running in games. Is this mechanic a product of popular culture or is it here to stay forever? How does...

Steve and Jarrod tackle issues with some of video games’ minor mechanics such as, Ladders: How do they work? Metroidvania: Guess who’s back and Closets: What lives in yours? We also discuss the state of the show and...

Special Guest: Carolyn Petit is the Managing Editor at Feminist Frequency and on this episode we’re on the case of Detective Vision in games. Why have we seen so many recent games use this mechanic? Does it change the...

Special Guest: Chandana Ekanayake is the creative director with Outerloop Games, the team behind the VR game Falcon Age. He soars his way over a discussion about Crafting systems in games. How does crafting tie into the...

Special Guest: Daanish Syed is a developer at NetherRealm Studios and host of the podcast Someone Should Make This. He stops for a quick interlude on the subject of Cutscenes in games. What makes narrative delivery in...

Special Guest: Doc Burford is a game developer on Paratopic and is the author of the blog, Stomp. We discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of Karma and Morality systems in games. Why do we see these systems so often in...

Special Guest: Juan Vaca is a narrative designer with Endless Entertainment and a Latinx in Gaming co-founder and we’re talking about video games that are adapted from other IPs. How do video game licenses work? Who...

Special Guest: Amanda Farough is the managing Editor at GameDaily.biz and she makes a house call for a regular check up to discuss health and HP mechanics in games. What does HP represent? How has healing changed over...

Special Guest: Will Lewis is the Co-Founder of Rose City Games and lead community organizer of the Portland Indie Game Squad. He holds our hand through a discussion about different approaches to onboarding in game...

***Producer’s Note: We had some technical issues on Steve’s mic that gets worse over time. You may hear some clicking and popping towards the end that we were unable to get out. The problem has been fixed for future...

Returning Guest: Matthew Burnside certifies our discussion on how the QA process works for video games. Why do we have so many Day 1 patches these days? Is the QA team considered developers? How many hours does it take...

Special Guest: Dr. Anthony Bean (aka The Video Game Doc) is a clinical psychologist and author. He makes a house call to walk us through daily and weekly quest design in video games. Do those quests deliver effective or...

Returning Guest: Kahlief Adams from Spawn on Me dances his way into a discussion about emotes in video games. What are the origins of emotes in games? How have emotes worked their way into game mechanics? Who owns the...

Special Guest: Elaine Gómez is a game designer at E-Line Media and content developer for Make Room. She schools us on the topic of Educational video games. What’s more effective: A game where you learn through mechanics...

November 6th is election day in the United States. Please let your voice be heard. Voting is a gift and a responsibility that we all share. Check out www.vote.org for information about same day registration and a...

Special Guest: Osama Dorias is the senior game designer at Warner Bros. He stopped by to piece together how puzzles mesh with the rest of the game. What defines something as puzzle game? How has the internet changed the...

Special Guest: Tristan Moore is the co-founder and lead designer at Broken Widow Studios. He accepted a sidequest from a message board and ended up walking us through Open World game design and theory. We’re back after...

Steve and Jarrod take a moment to discuss how Aging Games are holding up with a modern context. Is it important to play games in their day? Does Half-Life 2 hold up? Does games-as-a-service mean the doom of a huge...

Sorry! We’re AFK this week but we still have a bunch of Narcosis codes to giveaway. While you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for us to return, go back and check out Epsisode 34: Romance with Victoria Tran. That...

Special Guest: Victoria Tran is a community developer at KitFox Games and currently working on Boyfriend Dungeon where you get to date your weapons. She helps guide us through the lovestruck world of Romance in video...

Special Guest: Dany Peña, founder of Gamertag Radio, throws in his two cents about how Community Feedback is considered in the game development process. How do we interpret an influx of opinion and implement it in an...