GameDev Breakdown

Latest Episodes:

Annual Holiday Game Design – Thanksgiving 2018 Nov 22, 2018

Show notes

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 into a dark place where no vitriol is spared against man's greatest natural enemy: the waddling garbage monster that is the wild turkey. It's not too soon to be thinking about your holiday designs for Christmas!Your ratings and reviews are the lifeblood of the show. Help us get the word out by subscribing and telling a friend!

Religion, Metallica, and NBA Jam Nov 19, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Nov. 19, 2018 - Happy Thanksgiving week! In this episode, Todd shares the story about how two awesome arcade machines ended up in his basement and shares what he's thankful for (in addition to these awesome machines). There's still time to hit us up with your 1-2 sentence Thanksgiving game design ideas. We'll talk about our favorites on the next episode. As a bonus for checking out the show notes, here are some photos of the machines!

The World of Pico-8 Nov 12, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Nov. 12, 2018 - At last! We've certainly discussed Pico-8 enough on the podcast to warrant this top-to-bottom look at Pico-8 in general, which includes a walkthrough of my latest Pico-8 project, Letterworks, from design to submission. If you're an audio show listener, you may want to set aside a few minutes to check this one out on our YouTube page, as this episode's video shows the Pico-8 system, the code, the sprites, and even the forum where projects are shared and discussed. I tried my best to ensure the audio track alone made sense as well, so don't YouTube it behind the wheel or anything. You can get your hands on your own very affordable Pico-8 license at Lexaloffle.com. Search Pico-8 on Twitter to see even more wild and fantastic demos created by the community at large. As always, you can help get the word out about the podcast by telling a friend, leaving a review, or by subscribing any of the places below. We'll be back with more soon!

The Predator’s Code Nov 07, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Nov. 7, 2018 - John Schiber returns for Season 2! For once, we're each playing a new release: John has jumped on his horse and has high praise for Red Dead Redemption 2, I've scratched my Call of Duty itch and downloaded Black Ops 4. For the first time in the history of the show, we've both played (and enjoyed) a battle royal game. This show was recorded Monday night, so we were still getting bits and pieces about the Diablo Immortal story. It hasn't changed much since that time, but Blizzard has denied that they planned to announce Diablo 4 instead of a mobile title. As weird as the Red Dead Redemption 2 controversy is, we still wanted to dig in and find a worthwhile way to discuss it. We'll leave it for you to decide how we did.We love your comments and reviews; we're so glad you're playing along for another season.

Season 2 Intro Nov 04, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Nov. 4, 2018 - Welcome back! Just an informal sit-down to talk about the state of the podcast, how we set things up for Season 2, and some of the cool stuff we're working on in the coming months. Now is the time to subscribe and get in touch! Help make this the show you want to hear in 2019!

Who Is Video James? Jul 20, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Jul. 20, 2018 - We start with a public apology regarding last week's show. John nears completion on a new studio album and Todd refuses to bother one of Riot's founders with lunch. Finally, we discuss community feedback and topics, including how to recover from burnout.

Reach Out and Sue Someone Jul 03, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Jul. 3, 2018 - Since we left off, my house was on HGTV for whatever reason, I moved the site to a shiny new server, and I never ended up telling John I was going to go ahead and record this episode without him. Sorry John.John will be fine. If you want to worry about someone, worry about http://codewriteplay.com/2018/06/29/warner-bros-takes-bold-stance-against-bethesda-in-westworld-lawsuit/ and Behaviour Interactive in Bethesda's VATS-assisted crosshairs. This http://codewriteplay.com/2018/06/24/a-deep-dive-into-bethesdas-lawsuit-against-warner-bros-and-behaviour-interactive/ is going to get uglier before it gets pretty.The https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/68469/pubg-corp-ends-epic-games-lawsuit/, on the other hand, will go no further. We called it, and we'll recap why.There's a more interesting discussion to be had, I think, about Active Shooter--later renamed Standoff, I guess--being pulled from Steam and banished from PayPal of all things. I won't rehash the entire discussion, but I think there's plenty for indies to examine here. Can we effectively police ourselves? Should it be left to us? How can we keep the ball in our own court while continuing to create our way? The key, surely, is balance.As always, if you want to help us out, share the show with a friend, leave us a kind rating on https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gamedev-breakdown/id1262767515?mt=2 or somewhere else, and subscribe to get new episodes before anyone else! Reach out and let us know what you want to hear about or just say hi.

Organization and Productivity May 16, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: May 16, 2018 - Since the start of the new year I've focused on coordinating content for our listeners that would improve their craft in a more direct and measurable way. We've hit on some popular topics since that time. Thinking like an entrepreneur, promoting your indie game, and accessibility all seemed to resonate with listeners in a much more real way than our previous reactionary gaming news talk and our other AM radio douchebaggery. And that feels good. To push that momentum even further, we're wandering out into Indie Land to see what problems we can bring back to the lab and, well, break down. What keeps catching my eye lately is indies (and pros) talking about the wide variety of real life problems that stand in the way of putting in project time. And, oh, I get it. John and I are both dads working full-time with separate side hustles and we both still desperately want to gain traction with our first cooperative indie game. We harp on overuse of the phrase "real soon" in this week's show, but believe me, we have to use it a lot too.That doesn't mean we don't have the answers! We've had to conquer some absolutely wild personal scenarios to achieve what we have professionally and as weekend warrior creators, and I gathered no small amount of wisdom from people infinitely more qualified than us. Our goal this week is to get you past "real soon," and send you back to the battle renewed.ResourcesOrganize your project* Comment your code like a champ - https://medium.freecodecamp.org/code-comments-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-be9cc65fbf83 does a great job of examining different schools of thought on the topic and shows great examples for inspiration.* Use source control - Just do it. Get https://git-scm.com. They have great tutorials and it's also free to use their great https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2.* Document your check-ins effectively - If it seems like a small detail to worry about, really think over https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/.* Number your releases like the pros - If you never thought or cared about this before, I get it, but be ready for that moment you'll need to enter a seemingly intelligent version number for the benefit of your players in the app stores. https://semver.org/ is a great system for it.

Designing for Accessibility May 11, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: May 11, 2018 - John returns at last following the birth of his second child!Upon getting back down to business this week, we started in on a topic we should have covered much sooner: accessibility in game design. I've always thought it was odd, some of the political baggage that gets heaped on this topic. If you design or develop video games, you should have a natural appreciation for the people who seek out and enjoy your work, and you probably have a genuine interest in helping them overcome anything that might stand in the way. I think maybe what keeps us from doing our best work in this area is a sense of being overwhelmed at the thought of designing for any potential impairment from which a player may suffer. This is probably fair, considering how easy it is to overlook whole categories of impairments: personally I'd hardly considered categories like temporary injuries or environmental impairments preventing a player from calling upon their complete faculties while playing. Maybe it's too bright in front of their screen. Maybe there's too much noise in the room. I'm sure I'm not helping to convince you you can cover everything.Luckily in researching for this episode, I quickly came across an invaluable resource at http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com. This is an in-depth guide to considerations that can keep your project from including crucial and totally unnecessary mistakes that might mean the difference between joy and disappointment for your players. While the entries range from "basically effortless" to "how would I even," I was floored by the simplicity of some of the recommendations that would no-doubt provide invaluable access to players with disabilities.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NT3-mg3_WIJohn and I definitely marveled at the site for a while and discussed how best to leverage the compiled wisdom for use in your projects, but I really want to emphasize the importance of staying available to your players, before and after launch. Save some resources and energy; people will come to you with simple requests for features and design elements you won't believe you didn't think of, and your willingness to help will make all the difference in the world. This is how you will learn, and this is how you will build a bond with the people who appreciate your art. We spend so much time talking about the limitations and shortcomings of video games as a medium, but what other kind of artist gets the opportunity to reach in and gently reshape their work to make a positive impact in someone's life?So consider this a call and a primer for common sense accessibility. Listen to us stumble around and go learn from those who know the material so much better than we do. I believe that simply taking some time to internalize this need and familiarize yourself with the design concepts will forever change your approach in perhaps a small but infinitely meaningful way.And as always, reach out, https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gamedev-breakdown/id1262767515?mt=2 to come along for the ride, consider leaving a kind rating to help us grow, but most of all let us know what you think and what you want to hear about. We'll always joke around like crabby old men protecting our lawns, but we couldn't be having more fun putting the show together for you creators. We're not making a dime. We'd like to, but for right now it's all about community, and it's a pleasure to be part of a community we enjoy so much.

How You Could Work in Games Next Week Apr 18, 2018

Show notes

Original Air Date: Apr. 18, 2018 - We dive deeper into a topic listeners are asking about: freelancing and remote work for game development. You'll hear how Todd left full-time professional software development, and started over in games from scratch with his own freelancing business. Congrats to John on the new baby!If you enjoy the #GameDev Breakdown podcast, we’d love to have you as a subscriber on https://soundcloud.com/user-782123614, https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gamedev-breakdown/id1262767515?mt=2, or https://play.google.com/music/m/Ifote6otur4u3tfidfytns2zi64?t=GameDev_Breakdown! We love your feedback!

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected