Cafe Booleans: A Game Dev Podcast

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: 💰 GameStop launching an NFT marketplace, and $100M grant program for game developers with Immutable 🤔 Unity lets employees go and announces it's merging with a company known for malware delivery 🎬 Nintendo purchases Tokyo-based CG animation studio and renames it 'Nintendo Pictures' 🎉 Screen Australia announces over $4 million for 31 games throug...

We chat with Alex's old game art lecturer from Flinders University, co-founder of Monkeystack and all around digital creative Shane Bevin about: 👀 A story about when Alex was Shane's student 🎨 Can you teach someone to be creative? How to exercise your creativity & what to do when the creativity "well" runs dry 📅 How to stay consistent as an artist 🔥 Coping with burnout and "bouncing back"...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: 🤿 A horrifying scientific study rom an Austrian university simulates suffocation with a special VR mask 🦆 Untitled Goose Game IP acquired by ACMI - what does this mean for the future of the games preservation? 🧠 EndeauvorRX - a video game for treating ADHD has been approved by the FDA ⚕️Games for Health, things to consider and the challenges that...

We chat with Simon Hanna aka Grand Prize Big Fuzz, award winning Music Artist & Composer for Video Games such as RITE and Immutable's Gods Unchained about: 🎼 Simon's process of creativity and composing music for games 👾 Working on the soundtrack for retro-inspired video game RITE 🎹 Composing for Immutable's trading card game, Gods Unchained 🎸 Finding and working with unique instruments and...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: - Melbourne developer Lumi Interactive smashes records securing largest to date investment, for any women-led studio in Australia, of $AU9.76 million dollars in VC seed funding - Lumi's gamified mindfulness planting game, and what else could gamification be applied to? - Epic Games rolls out new cross-play tools for steam and the Epic Games Store br...

Join us as we do a deep dive into: 🎮 Avoiding burnout and managing time as game developers  🥵 Define what burnout is and how it can affect us 🤔 Give ways to assess burnout in our lives ❗ Provide 9 steps to prevent burnout in our lives 🧰 Share our and listeners personal experiences, tools, and techniques that help us day to day  Avoiding Burnout & Managing our Time - it's an issu...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: - Xbox Game Pass coming directly to Samsung TVs - how this might open up distribution of games to new audiences - New research showing that making video games enables new forms of self-awareness for people struggling with their mental health - Exploring different types of social experiences in games and how games enhance the social experience of pla...

John takes us through a journey of two years of laughs, interviews, jokes, and most importantly, friends and family of this game development podcast. We would like to thank you all so much for joining us in the studio and the cafe week after week. Your continued support has meant the world to us and we hope we can continue to bring the good times into your mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: - Tennis legend John McEnroe plays against an AI version of himself via ESPN's Augmented Reality tennis match - what kind of opportunities does this open up in the future? - AI system DALLE2 which creates art from natural language descriptions, what does this kind of AI open up in game development - will it disrupt or impact workflows? - The French...

We chat with Carl Leducq NZ Games Advocate, Host of the Zero to Play game development podcast, and experienced Games Producer about: - His journey into games and game development - The intricacies of the New Zealand games industry and how it compares to Australia's industry - Starting and growing game development podcast, Zero to Play and learnings from it - Being a producer, finding suitable ment...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: - Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Wizard of Oz, 1984 and other huge IPs are going to, or are currently in, the public domain. What opportunities does this open up for new artistic direction and games for these iconic IPs? What would you like to see enter public domain? - 9-day Adelaide Game Developers SA Slam Jam coming 17th June!!! (Sean explains)...

We chat with Leo Cheung aka BlueTwoDays, Artist and Design lead of Paper Cactus Games about: - Developing, play-testing and launching the super unique and super fun tabletop RPG, Parselings - a game about tattoos and collaborative word magic - Hosting a successful Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaign, and the challenges that come with it - Working with a publisher across timezones, and the benefits...

Join us at the diner this week as we chat about: - The launch of Game Workers Australia (GWA); the new national union for Australian game workers and the Australian Chapter of Game Workers Unite (GWU) and what this means for indie devs and studio devs - Examples of educational games and the merit of teaching with games as opposed to the traditional teaching methods - Twitch to supposedly changing...

Sarah Brown is the Lead Technologist at Code Like a Girl - a social enterprise providing girls, women and minorities with the confidence, tools, knowledge and support to enter and flourish in the world of code. With John and Susannah in the interviewer chairs this episode, we discuss: - The difference between equality and equity and why it is important - Why initiatives like 'Code like a Girl...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about: - Meta planning to take a nearly 50% cut on virtual asset sales in its 'metaverse' game Horizon Worlds - Unreal Engine 5 now available including UNREAL new features Nanite, Lumen, Metasounds, and more - Unpacking wins best narrative and best game at the BAFTA game awards (woohoo!) - Nintendo Switch Online leak teases game boy games are coming to th...

We chat with Ceri Hutton, the Director of Operations & Projects at the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (IGEA) about: - Ceri’s journey into the games industry - Nurturing an inclusive environment at The Arcade, a game development incubator and shared workspace in Melbourne Victoria - Ceri’s view on supporting game developers and the importance of a community - The challenges o...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about: - PAX Australia announced! & AVCon's approach to in-person events this year - Statistics showing how releasing on Microsoft's Game Pass could benefit your indie game - Apple rumoured to be exploring the idea of a game console and what this means for developers - A cover of a Kirby song from the 90s won a grammy! - We asked the community about w...

We chat with Cam Rogers, a digital entertainment lawyer having worked on over 100 shipped titles on platforms across PS5, Xbox, Steam, Switch, VR, and mobile platforms about: - Common legal issues game developers and creatives run into early on and how to prevent them - Where to start with protecting your video game - Cam's journey into the film industry and then the games industry - Stories assis...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about: - VicScreen allocating funds to support the Victorian game development ecosystem - A breakdown of the various rebates you can utilise as a developer around Australia - IGEAs new Australian Games: Expansion Pack - Gaming market trends in Unity's newly released 2022 Gaming Report - Indie superstars accused of emotional abuse - Where does the glorific...

We chat with Celia Hodent, expert in game UX (user experience) and cognitive psychology previously on games such as Fortnite, Star Wars 1313, and at Ubisoft about: - What is 'UX'? And the history of UX - Celias studies in cognitive psychology and journey into the games industry - How game developers can design games to be more inclusive and accessible - Biases we have as game developers and how we...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about: - Game development studios hiring practices, workplace culture and employee benefits - The state of the games industry in Ukraine and the effect of current events - John Romero making new level of Doom II and other industry initiatives supporting Ukraine - Strange game controller peripherals (a Rez 'vibrator'?!) - Controversy after Ubisoft UX direc...

We chat with Chris Larkin, composer for video games such as Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight: Silksong, TOHU, Hacknet, and more about: - His journey into composing music and inspirations - Experience working on a variety of TV, film, and games - Working on Hollow Knight with Team Cherry - 'Getting your foot in the door' and getting hired as a composer on projects - A fun little activity testing Chris'...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about: - Mighty Kingdom's new tie-in video game called 'Carnifex' - Local indie MMO project TitanReach shutting down - Crowd-funding video games through Kickstarter and risks/issues involved - Kickstarter for games trends for 2021 - Trying out games from the latest Adelaide Global 2022 Game Jam - Answering last episodes question " What current game do you...

We chat with Gayan Ediriweera, AR/VR developer formerly at Facebook/Oculus, about: - His journey into game development on franchises such as Star Wars at Krome Studios - Development on rhythm game NBA Baller Beats and using a real-life basketball as a controller - VR development at Oculus, culture at Facebook  - Meeting Palmer Lucky and John Carmack  - The future of VR and AR in video ga...

Join us at the diner this week, as we chat about the changing 'value' of games and the costs of distribution for game developers, players habits and game design choices in the newly released in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a new game for Sega Dreamcast - 23 years after console launch, a huge Kaws art exhibit in Fortnite, the upcoming games user research summit, Sony buying Bungie, and so much more! Su...