GameDev Breakdown

Original Air Date: Sep. 23, 2019 - Richard Rouse III calls in to talk about his new indie title, The Church in the Darkness, and treats us to some stories from his fantastic career including the design of The Suffering, writing Game Design: Theory & Practice, and some interesting creative projects we never got to see. Richard is a really insightful guy. He has too much writing and too many tal...

Original Air Date: Sep. 19, 2019 - Todd puts in an appearance on the Nightfall Unlimited test show with fan favorite Ray Marek, but not before an extended rant about positivity. Okay, Todd here, this is a short show and then I'm headed out of the country for a little getaway with my wife--sorry, not sorry. I thought about skipping this week's Thursday show completely or cooking up some kind of "be...

Original Air Date: Sep. 16, 2019 - LucasArts Employee #3 himself, David Fox joins to talk about his fantastic career contributing to some of the most iconic graphic adventure games of our time, chasing the technology to create location-based interactive experiences, and his philosophy on positive change through design. Topics include VR, interpersonal issues in the modern game industry, politics,...

Original Air Date: Sep. 12, 2019 - Our friend Ted drops by to talk about the history of martinis, what to look for at a Porta Potty in the woods, and the best way to combine Peeps, cola, and obstacle courses. We discuss game development here and there where it comes up. You have to meet Ted to understand him. He's the kind of teammate who divides his time between yelling at the other team, yelling...

Original Air Date: Sep. 9, 2019 - Indie developer and author (and podcaster!) Mat Bradley-Tschirgi discusses his beginnings in journalism and indie development, his upcoming book, The Films of Uwe Boll Vol. 1: The Video Game Movies, and makes a surprising revelation about an upcoming video game to which both he and Boll are attached. You read that right: a game project from the mind of notorious (...

Original Air Date: Sep. 5, 2019 - YouTuber Matt Hill joins to talk about running the OHCPlay channel, highs and lows in the gaming community, and we give the public their first glimpse of a list of spectacular gamer tags over 7 years in the making. I hope listeners enjoy this show half as much as I did. This is the first installment of our second weekly show. Each week we'll feature a content crea...

Original Air Date: Sep. 2, 2019 - Will Traxler of Traxmaster Software discusses his new game, Exception, his first commercial release following years of solo development. Will shares insight into his unique post-launch mindset, his solution to investing in his development, and the dynamics of outsourcing PR responsibilities as a one-man studio. Will has accomplished a ton with this game release. M...

Original Air Date: May 28, 2019 - To help us close out Season 2, Blake J. Harris makes a surprise appearance to reflect on his early life and career, the success of Console Wars and the upcoming television adaptation from Legendary Entertainment with producers Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg. We also discuss his new book, The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook and the Revolution that swept Vir...

Original Air Date: May 20, 2019 - Thanks to some gracious networking help from Patreon supporter https://www.volcanicbomb.com/ and https://indiegamerchick.com/, this time we're hearing from LEGO games veteran and current Huey Games CEO/Creative Director Rob Hewson! As has become a beautiful show tradition, we open up by discussing what everyday game development is like in the guest's part of the w...

Original Air Date: May 13, 2019 - This show was a couple of firsts for the podcast: I think it was probably the first time we've had on an industry producer who wasn't also responsible for several other jobs (at least no more than any producer is) and it was also the first guest we've had phone in from Poland--I trust you'll excuse the occasional dip in audio quality. If you haven't tried Serial C...

Original Air Date: May 7, 2019 - Previously on the podcast we've had opportunities to hear from highly specialized sound designers, musicians, and recording engineers, but we've had somewhat limited time to really dig into composition, and that happens to be one of Stephen Tanksley's areas of expertise. Stephen is a Chicago-area composer for both games and film. He has a wealth of formal music and...

Original Air Date: Apr. 28, 2019 - Jordan Lemos is a WGA award-nominated scriptwriter working at Ubisoft in Québec, with writing credit on Assassin's Creed Odyssey and the words of Socrates himself. He's been a Twitter pal for a while now, and for some reason, we have the conversational energy of the cousins you have to separate at Thanksgiving dinner. Jordan's path into the industry was far from...

Original Air Date: Apr. 21, 2019 - Joshua Davidson is a senior sound designer working at Gearbox Software in the Dallas, Texas area. After leaving Full Sail University in 2007, he Contributed to Red Faction: Guerilla and Saints Row 2 at Volition in northern Illinois before heading south to work on Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Battleborn, and Borderlands 3 after making the move to Gearbox. In additi...

Original Air Date: Apr. 15, 2019 - If you don't think you've read or at least seen any of David L. Craddock's phenomenal books on the game industry and game development, check again, you probably have. Some of the greatest stories of the development space have been captured in David's phenomenal pages, including Blizzard's early history with Diablo, tales from the days of NetHack and other early R...

Original Air Date: Apr. 8, 2019 - I'd have to do some detective work to figure out how long I've been Twitter pals with https://twitter.com/sayomgwtf and https://twitter.com/swgspork, but I'm sure it's been a couple of years now. One of the greatest benefits of doing this podcast is having the opportunity to go beyond tweets and capture the stories behind the work and the art that we enjoy seeing...

Original Air Date: Mar. 31, 2019 - Glad to be back with another podcast and all kinds of news! In this show, I'll go over some development topics from Twitter, we'll talk a little bit about the recent hiatus, and we'll go over some of what's happening over at our shiny new http://Patreon.com/codewriteplay. Patrons helped pick the topics for this show, but it wasn't hard to come up with a list. htt...

Original Air Date: Feb. 7, 2019 - I first interacted with Reyan Ali over Twitter just about a year ago. I'd just partnered with Microsoft to do a series of podcasts at GDC which was a total blast, but it caused me to miss the Classic Game Postmortem on the legendary NBA Jam. I tweeted out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3Os2kk6V4 with great entusiasm once it hit YouTube, and Reyan and I became f...

Original Air Date: Jan. 28, 2019 - Update: We've had a slow start on giveaway entries, so we're opening it up to everyone! Man, we've had some great guests lately, and you won't believe some of the folks we're going to be talking to in the coming months! With all this action, it was nice to get back on Skype with John for a night, check in, talk a little news, and hang out. We're also dialing in s...

Original Air Date: Jan. 20, 2019 - Michael Hicks has released more creative projects since his late teens than some folks get to throughout an entire career. His top two game releases, Pillar and The Path of Motus, have been downloaded half a million times across a wide variety of platforms. When Polygon investigated https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/19/17959138/steam-valve-developer-support-pricing...

Original Air Date: Jan. 15, 2019 - Story-driven games are often revered as the height of artistic game development. For as dearly as we all hold Rocket League, it can't match the impact of Mass Effect or tug at the heart strings like Red Dead Redemption. To create a project that stays with your players, you need to design a world for them to experience. When we last spoke with Ray Marek, we casual...

Original Air Date: Jan. 10, 2019 - Hello 2019! We had huge plans for the Christmas show. If you don't believe me, check out the https://twitter.com/mechatodzilla/status/1076907482881163269 I made to show off as a joke. But being the family guys that we are, the actual holidays got in the way. So it's back to business here in the new year. I'll be showing you the process of launching my new develop...

Original Air Date: Dec. 11, 2018 - Following a few discussions on social media in the wake of Ludum Dare 43 (enjoy my photo from LD19), I took an opportunity to gather my thoughts on this revered tradition of ours and ask a few important questions: Why do we do this? Why do we do it like this? Should we still be doing this? Believe me, I'm far from anti-jam. I've probably participated in a dozen o...

Original Air Date: Dec. 2, 2018 - At last, more than a year after adding him to the show, I sit down with John Schiber to ask him some questions relevant to his expertise: being a life-long musician and internationally-signed recording artist. John's experience producing music with his band, A Dark Orbit, and his personal studies of theory, engineering, and instrumental techniques have left him wi...

Original Air Date: Nov. 26, 2018 - It's time for a mini-show full of things to know! I've sort of been bouncing catchphrases like that in my head for the better part of a day, and I've determined there are no good ones--but that may be the fever talking. I was in the throes of a full Man Cold for this episode, but I landed on a topic I liked a few days ago and I decided not to rest until I could b...

Original Air Date: Nov. 22, 2018 - Happy Thanksgiving! In this special holiday episode, we give thanks for tremendous opportunities we've had this year, and for so many kind words from the community. In keeping with tradition, we come up with holiday-themed design concepts and follow them as far as we dare down the rabbit hole. What begins as a good-natured creative exercise quite frankly spirals...