One Cool Thing

On this episode, we meet Jill Murray who chats to Hannah Nicklin about skating. Jill Murray is a Canadian creative director, coming fresh from the launch of Invincible Presents: Atom Eve . She is a writer for indie and AAA games, best known for her work as Lead Writer on Shadow of the Tomb Raider , and a bunch of the Assassin's Creed games but other highlights of her credits include Moon Hunt...

On this episode we meet Wren Brier who chats to Hannah Nicklin about Eki Stamps & Goshuin. Wren is a Brisbane-based game artist and creative director with a particular talent for and interest in pixel art. She’s curated a whole pixel art exhibit with the Brisbane Powerhouse as well as running workshops alongside other outreach work with Women in Games Brisbane. Wren has been working in games f...

On episode 20 we meet Char Putney who chats to Hannah Nicklin about "Negative Space" by BR Yeager. Char Putney is a multiple award-winning Irish writer from Dublin who currently lives in Copenhagen. She’s been a lot of things in her rich and varied life so far, from a yoga teacher to working production and management positions at Google and Facebook, writing for games such as Divinity Or...

On this episode, we meet Goldie Bartlett who chats to Hannah Nicklin about wimmelbilder. Goldie Bartlett is an illustrator and artist based out of Melbourne Australia. She works in paint, pencil, digital media and videogames. Recent games which feature her work include Florence and Movement Study 1, and most recently launched Wayward Strand as part of the core team of Ghost Pattern Games. Wayward...

On this episode, we meet Terry Burdack who chats to Hannah Nicklin about natural philosophy. Terry Burdak is a game developer based out of Melbourne Australia. The company he co-runs is called Paper House, and they make games and other creative things inspired by the world around them - that’s everything from a wonderful short story game where you play as a wombat in the heat of an Australian Summ...

On this episode, we meet Sharna Jackson who chats to Hannah Nicklin about barges. Sharna Jackson is a British game writer, artistic director and author. Before writing full time she was artistic director at Site Gallery in Sheffield, on the board of Sheffield Doc/Fest - a film festival that focuses on documentaries - and an advisor on several projects centering on children. Her award-winning books...

On episode 16 we meet Des Gayle who chats to Hannah Nicklin about The Matrix . Des Gayle is a prolific British producer who has over 20 years of experience in the field of games. From working on the launch of the original Xbox at Microsoft, to being the original producer for the Square Enix Collective, and work on the first Life is Strange series. As well as being on BAFTA-winning teams, Des is a...

In this episode, we meet Lisy Kane who chats to Hannah about being in a band . Lisy Kane is a Melbourne-based videogame producer and co-founder of Girl Geek Academy, a social enterprise set up to achieve (trans and nb inclusive) gender equality in the tech industry. As a producer, Lisy made a huge impact as a Production Director at League of Geeks (who mostly recently released Armello in 2019, and...

On this episode we meet Matthew Seiji Burns who chats to Hannah Nicklin about Two Visions of Zen. Matthew Seiji Burns is a writer, director, composer and game designer based in Seattle on the West Coast of the USA. All in all Matthew has worked on games as varied as AAA games like Halo 3, to high-concept Indies like Eliza as part of his long standing collaboration with Zachtronics, and on high imp...

On episode 13 we meet Claudia Molinari who chats with Hannah Nicklin about dreaming. Claudia is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director originally from Italy but who also lived in the UK for a while. After working as a graphic designer for a number of years she co-founded We Are Müesli with Matteo Pozzi, who are an indie game studio who focus on story-driven games such as Venti Mesi a gam...

About This Episode On episode 12 we meet Cara Ellison who chats to Hannah Nicklin about A Dictionary of Angels . Cara Ellison is a Scottish designer and writer for videogames, who also writes for TV and comics. Before working in game dev, Cara was a journalist and worked in books, comics and radio. Her website explains that most of all she’s interested in expanding “ideas of what interactive enter...

Liner Notes Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain Eleanor Davis’ You & a Bike & a Road Hannah’s essay on Zwift under lockdown for New Rules  Mountain High: Europe’s 50 Greatest Cycle Climbs - Daniel Friebe & Pete Golding Zwift A Short Hike Stacklands Aran's Bike Trip Sokpop Skidlands One Cool Thing Production Credits One Cool Thing is hosted by Die Gute Fabrik's Studio Lead Hann...

About This Episode In episode 10 we meet Josie Giles who chats with Hannah Nicklin about the late Rachel Pollack's Unquenchable Fire . Josie is a writer and performer from Orkney, who now lives in Leith, Edinburgh. You might have heard of her recently because her super cool verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. Liner Notes “Ho...

About This Episode In episode 9 we meet Moo Yu who chats with Hannah Nicklin about Legally Blonde. Moo is a gameplay programmer with an extremely distinguished two decade long career. He’s worked on larger-scale games like LittleBigPlanet , Ratchet and Clank before moving on to smaller-scale indie games. Moo was the lead, and indeed only programmer on the super cool Knights and Bikes . His current...

About This Episode In episode 8 we meet Kate Dollarhyde who chats with Hannah Nicklin about gardening. Kate is a Nebula and GLAAD Media Award-winning game designer and writer of speculative fiction. She’s had short stories published in Fireside Fiction , Lackington’s , Beneath Ceaseless Skies , among other magazines and has also been the co-editor-in-chief of the speculative fiction magazine Stran...

About This Episode On episode 7 we meet Kaitlin Tremblay who chats to Hannah Nicklin about found footage horror movies. Kaitlin is a Toronto-based narrative designer and writer working all across the scale of games from writing on indie works like A Mortician’s Tale to working as a team lead narrative designer on Watchdogs Legion . They were also recently released an excellent looking book Collabo...

About This Episode In episode 6 we meet Nicole He who chats with Hannah Nicklin about Dipthyque’s L’ombre Dans l’Eau. Nicole He is and independent game developer and creative technologist based in New York. As well as directing two whole unannounced video games right now, Nicole’s work as a creative technologist uses digital tech to explore questions of modern living through and with that tech. Li...

About This Episode In episode 5 of One Cool Thing we meet V Buckenham who chats to Hannah Nicklin about pottery. V is an artist, curator, game designer and that space between games and tech and art which is sometimes called ‘creative technologist’. Liner Notes Tom Armitage Technology as a Material Epicycles Sokpop’s sok-edit Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Downpour...

About This Episode In episode 4 we meet Jake Elliott of Cardboard Computer who chats to Hannah Nicklin about Christopher Strachey's "Love Letter Generator". Jake is probably most well-known for being one-third of Cardboard Computer, who made the era-defining and extraordinarily ambitious Kentucky Route Zero series. But he’s also a musician, runs an excellent Patreon where he teaches...

About This Episode On episode 3 of One Cool Thing, we meet Halima Hassan one of our Die Gute Collaborators who chats with Hannah Nicklin about the importance of communities. Halima was one of our game writing interns in 2022 and has since moved on from us to work with the game design collective ghosts as a lead writer, and in her newly minted game writing portfolio describes herself as being inter...

About This Episode Our next guest on episode 2 of One Cool Thing is Mike Cook, Senior Lecturer in AI at King's College London who chats to Hannah Nicklin all about being on strike. Mike Cook is a British game designer and Artificial Intelligence researcher, who’s currently a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London. He has been advocating in the AI research community to demand better ethics a...

About This Episode Our first guest on episode 1 of One Cool Thing is Die Gute Fabrik's Doug Wilson who chats to Hannah Nicklin all about the reality competition TV series, Survivor . Doug is originally from the USA but now lives in Melbourne Australia, and as well as being a core part of Die Gute Fabrik is a senior lecturer in Game Design at RMIT University. Doug is best known for Johann Seba...

One Cool Thing is a podcast speaking with people in and around videogames about One Cool Thing not from games which is really fascinating them at the moment. One of the founding principles of Die Gute Fabrik is interdisciplinarity - collaborating with people from other art forms to bring fresh ideas to video games. And that’s also what’s at the heart of this podcast series: what not from games is...