ETAO Podcast, Episode 63. Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka worked together on the original Anodyne, its under-appreciated follow-up Even the Ocean, and now their latest Analgesic Productions joint, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust. It’s a game about getting to know the world in its infinite strangeness, acquiring and shedding preconceptions, and meeting new people who … Continue reading "Welcoming Surrealism, with Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka"...
Aug 20, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 62. Alan Dang emerges from the shadows to talk about his work on the Skullgirls mobile game, the VR garden-’em-up Fujii, and the indie arcade esport stalwart Killer Queen. Plus, we talk about the broader possibilities for virtual reality, the criminally ignored potential of games for education, and the fact that a … Continue reading "A Consigliere’s Life for Me, with Alan Dang"...
Aug 06, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 61. Bryant Cannon joins us to discuss Oxenfree, its follow-up Afterparty, and the licensed, now-delisted Night School games that came in between—not to mention his previous mobile work, much of it also now delisted. As such, we talk about the melancholy weirdness of games being delisted, and more broadly, of games being … Continue reading "Better Ways to Build Better Stories, with Bryant Cannon"...
Jul 23, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 60. Juan Vaca chooses to adventure with us—into his work at Telltale Games, at Endless Entertainment, and now at the burgeoning interactive team at Netflix. We talk about Juan’s approach to narrative, the oft-ignored importance of theme, and his longstanding interest in using existing characters and worlds to tell original stories. We … Continue reading "Choices and Games and Stories, with Juan Vaca"...
Jul 09, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 59. Greg Batha has done a remarkable variety of creative/technical work, from the interface of Dream Daddy, to live visualizations for touring musicians, to the hectic and adorable puzzle battler bit bit blocks. What brings it all together, he explains in this wide-ranging interview, is the desire to do things in a … Continue reading "The Art of Design(ing Art), with Greg Batha"...
Jun 25, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 58. Jim Guthrie joins us to reflect on his storied soundtracking career, from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and BELOW, to Indie Game: The Movie, to (implicitly, here) Reigns: Her Majesty and Planet Coaster—not to mention his auspicious and only-semi-separate indie rock career, the joys and sorrows of playing live, and Bandcamp’s … Continue reading "Now Game Music Is Just Music, with Jim Guthrie"...
Jun 11, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 57. Zach Chandler catches the bus with us and talks about Nth Dimension[al] Hiking, his gently arcane spectral traverse-’em-up. We discuss Zach’s guiding principle, namely that if you’re going to make a game that isn’t obvious, then you’d better be sure that it’s nonetheless truthful. That’s easier said than done, of course, … Continue reading "Weird Mad Stuff, with Zachariah Chandler"...
May 28, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 56. Jordan Thomas hides out with us to talk about The Blackout Club. It’s a game that is at once an “infinite meaning machine” and an authored narrative, a game about “extremely rewarding movement” but not “physical combat with a clear victor,” an early access experience that shares much of the appeal … Continue reading "Something Bigger Than We Are, with Jordan Thomas"...
May 14, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 55. Jay Tholen remembers the internet of the ’90s, when things were a few shades dorkier, and whole lot less smoothed-over and centrally managed—and especially the internet of the late 90s, when an end-of-days urgency and paranoia hung over all of that. Hypnospace Outlaw is in some ways his attempt to capture … Continue reading "This Living Online Thing, with Jay Tholen"...
Apr 30, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 54. Brian Fairbanks’ game Lost and Hound brings together a whole lot of his passions—from meaningful soundscapes, to accessibility, to dogs. In this episode, we start by talking about Host and Hound and end up talking about mainstream games that are (often, accidentally) accessible, audiogames that are build from the ground up … Continue reading "Accessibility and Joy (also Dogs), with Brian Fairbanks"...
Apr 16, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 53. In lieu of a guest this week, we humbly present a conversation that Drew and Lucio recorded just before GDC, all about what it means to play a game wrong—from misunderstanding mechanics, to knowingly ignoring objectives and incentives, to adding one’s own layer of rules for tournament play or speedruning. Playing … Continue reading "How to Play Games Wrong"...
Apr 02, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 52. Evan Hill drops in to talk a little about Solar Ash Kingdom and Torment: Tides of Numenera, and a whole lot about his current work at Naughty Dog—though don’t expect any new details on The Last of Us Part II itself. Evan keeps that close, and fair enough. What he does … Continue reading "What Level Designers Design, with Evan Hill"
Mar 19, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 51. C. Andrew Rohrmann (also known as scntfc, previously known as Scientific American, and alternately known by some pseudonyms that we’re not at liberty to disclose) stops by to talk about reactive soundtracks, “the mutability of music,” his notion of “anonymous ubiquity,” and his work on games like Oxenfree, Afterparty, Old Man’s … Continue reading "The Thing Is the Thing It Is, with C. Andrew Rohrmann (a.k.a. scntfc)"...
Mar 05, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 50. Robin Baumgarten’s work doesn’t fit neatly into any single category or tradition. He makes games that are also toys, and also art installations, and also unusually beguiling lamps, and also—most straightforward to experience, most difficult to describe—simply objects that make the world a little stranger a little more beautiful whenever and … Continue reading "A Quantum of Wobble, with Robin Baumgarten"...
Feb 23, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 49. Philip Buchanan went indie so that he could finish 39 Days to Mars, a consummately silly co-op-as-comedy physics-and-gadgets puzzle-’em-up rendered in florid trichromatic line drawings and bone-dry Britishisms. The result is as delightful as any cuppa could hope to be be. In this episode, Philip stops by to talk about the … Continue reading "There Is Co-Op on Mars, with Philip Buchanan"...
Feb 09, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 48. Rami Ismail wants everyone to be able to make games. “Literally anybody anywhere” should be able to work in this medium that has the potential to transcend not only cultural and national boundaries, but language. The work of including everyone is, of course, not trivial—but Rami is attempting to do the … Continue reading "Literally Anybody Anywhere, with Rami Ismail"...
Jan 26, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 47. Gabby DaRienzo stops by to talk about her work as one half of the core Laundry Bear Games team, from A Mortician’s Tale (and Tracktoons) to their still-in-its-early-days next project—as well as her excellent, now-concluded podcast Play Dead, and her extensive and varied freelance work on Celeste, Parkitect, Graceful Explosion Machine, … Continue reading "Food, Death, and Everything Else Worth Talking About, with Gabby DaRienzo"...
Jan 12, 2019•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 46. Greg Kasavin descends and/or ascends to our realm to talk about Hades, Supergiant’s roguelike recently surprise-released into Early Access on Epic Games’ brand new storefront. We talk about how Hades both builds on and departs from Supergiant’s previous games (Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre), and then we talk a great deal about … Continue reading "One Hell of a Not-Hell, with Greg Kasavin"...
Dec 29, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 45. As 2018 winds down, esteemed ETAO Podcast producer Frances Michelle Lopez sits down to talk about what we played in 2018, what we’re looking forward to playing in 2019, and what’s currently sitting in our to-read piles. We couldn’t get to everything, during this conversation or throughout this year. We never … Continue reading "What We Played and ‘Casted (and What We Didn’t) in 2018"...
Dec 15, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 44. Heather Flowers talks EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER: Powered by Blood (and the MEATPUNKS material beyond). We talk about body horror, episodic storytelling and serialization, the anger and clarity of punk, the multiplicity and illegibility of punk, and the process of creating EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER on a schedule that’s more MODERATE MEATPUNKS SOME … Continue reading "The Perfidy of THE SUN, with Heather Flowers"...
Dec 01, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 43. ARMS got announced with the Switch, and it launched with the Switch, and it’s been both passionately loved and broadly ignored. Lucio was late to the Switch party, and thus late to the ARMS party, but he’s been pretty taken with the game. We’ve played together a bunch, and had about … Continue reading "This Is a Call (Back) to ARMS"...
Nov 17, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 42. Headliner: NoviNews puts you in the shoes of he/she/xe who curates the news in a country that is rapidly going strange, and just as rapidly becoming politically unstable. It’s a game about information as a tool, news as a product, and ideology as a career. We talk about the process of … Continue reading "Be a Part of the World You’re Changing, with Jakub Kasztalski"...
Nov 03, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 41. Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux (collectively known as Almost A Game) stop by for a Halloween-as-hell chat about their whimsical tabletop skulduggery simulator, Wicked Apples. We talk about the unique joys of tabletop games—and of digital game, for that matter, and about translating each to the other. We also discuss the … Continue reading "Something Wicked This Way Apples, with Bobby Fowler and Brenda Noiseux"...
Oct 31, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 40. Henrik Pettersson introduces us to The Gardens Between, a wordless narrative puzzle game in which you play as time itself. We talk about themes surrounding memory, the quest to make complicated games simple (and vice-versa), the seemingly-ever-in-progress indiepocolypse, and a few untranslatable Swedish words. Oh, and SPOILERS for Persona 5 from … Continue reading "The Persistence of (Stories about) Memory, with Henrik Pettersson"...
Oct 20, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 39. Greg Lobanov swings by to walk about Wandersong, with its happy-go-lucky approach to world-in-the-balance storytelling, its massive 110-tune soundtrack, and its uncommonly rich soundscapes. We talk about the collaborate process that brought the game to life, the thinking behind a music-driven game, and how our emotional connections to games—both in the … Continue reading "Let’s Be Bards, with Greg Lobanov"...
Oct 06, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 38. Josie Brechner (a.k.a. Visager) talks about her OST work in EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, Blossom Tales, Spice of Life, Gay Monster Kiss Club, and my electric heart, not to mention her other music, including the Songs for Unmade Worlds series. She makes wonderful music, for games both real and imagined (as well … Continue reading "This Is MEATPUNK and I’m Telling Everyone, with Josie Brechner (a.k.a. Visager)"...
Sep 22, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 37. Max Arocena (a.k.a. Colorfiction) hangs out on his porch, amid a rising squall of crickets, to discuss 0°N 0°W (a.k.a. Zero North Zero West), his carefully crafted new dream-’em-up. We discuss the rich possibilities of games without gameplay as such, the incomparable surreality of roadtrips, and the odd connections between working … Continue reading "Singing Dunes and Wandering Creatures, with Max Arocena"...
Sep 08, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 36. Zach Barth is back to talk about EXAPUNKS, and the cyber-lanche (always create new hyphenate words, in accordance with the WIRED style guide) of questions that the game raises: Do we miss something by wringing our hands about privacy when what’s really at stake in an increasingly computerized world is agency? … Continue reading "REPL PUNK, with Zach Barth"...
Aug 25, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 35. Kenny Lee is the less-frequently-interviewed half of the two-brother team that founded Cellar Door Games, the studio behind (most famously) Rogue Legacy and (most recently) Full Metal Furies. He’s also a fan of Ganbare Goemon and Mischief Makers and therefore a megaconnoisseur and the greatest game scholar of our age—so people … Continue reading "Co-Op Hath Four Furies, with Kenny Lee"...
Apr 18, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast ETAO Podcast, Episode 34. Zach Barth is back to talk about Opus Magnum and SHENZHEN I/O, the latest in each of Zachtronics’ semi-distinct trademark genres: games where you make things that makes things, and games where you actually code or script, respectively. We talk about how these two parallel tracks came to be, where their … Continue reading "You Can Feel Great All The Time Solving Problems, with Zach Barth"...
Mar 21, 2018•Transcript available on Metacast 
