Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Latest Episodes:

Mental Health and Discrimination (with Ashley Phipps) May 22, 2025

Show notes

The clubhouse welcomes Ashley Phipps, producer for the game Clock Out at 2, to discuss the topic of mental health and discrimination.

Mental Health and Discrimination

Game Design Gaming Narrative Clock Out at 2 Demo - Borderless Studios, Steam What to know about microaggressions - Anna Smith Haghighi, Medical News Today Queerty Gamers - Queerty Gamers Spooktober 2023 Clock Out at 2 Build - itch.io Depression Quest - Zoe Quinn Adventures with Anxiety - Nicky Case Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: How We Respond to Threats - "Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc", Simply Psychology

Good Reps for Mental Health depiction

Final Fantasy XIV - SquareEnix The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood Tales of Arise - Steam

"This is an impossible challenge." Friction by Design; Diversity in Scoring May 15, 2025

Show notes

In this episode the club house talks about the games that they have been playing. Mark attempts to define the terms good friction and bad friction, declares his distaste of rouge-likes, and talks about friction in his current projects. Lydia shows us how to make scoring sound way more academic.

0:18:21

Friction by Design

Mark tries to define some terms: Good Friction - something that was designed into the game, or that could be described as a bug, or only confuses a player Bad Friction - unintentional friction0:45:47

Diversity in Scoring

Huffington Post News Triva GameHuffington Post

Video Game IP Law (with Haley MacLeon) May 08, 2025

Show notes

Your nice hosts get a crash course on video game IP law from lawyer and MinnMax cohort, Haley MacLeon. We learn about incorporating, publishing agreements, the difference between a lot of commonly used terms like "copyright", and the joys of contract templates.

Video Game IP Law

Marketing Misc.Production The $10 Million Lawsuit That Hinges On An Oxford Comma - Anna King, NPR Video Game Publishing Agreement Market Report 2025 - Kellen Voyer & Haley MacLean, Voyer Law Corporation

"Our sense of epoch." Let's Plays; Responsive Game Design May 01, 2025

Show notes

A new Nintendo is on the way, and your nice hosts talk about both it and the world it's being born into. It kicks off a longer than usual episode where Lydia just wants a way to experience horror games, Mark has an unpopular opinion, and Stephen thinks players have too much agency already.

0:31:57

Let's Plays

Endoparasiticmizizizizitch.ioLet’s Plays: A Copyright ConundrumAlexandra ChampagneSlaw Why I am Hesitant to Declare Let's Plays as Fair UseAquasonReddit1:17:44

Responsive Game Design

What Capcom Didn't Tell You About Resident Evil 4Game Maker's ToolkitYouTubeWe should talk.Carol Mertz

Nice Games Jam: "The Intergalactic Dining Consortium" Apr 23, 2025

Show notes

Your nice hosts settle their differences in opinions when it comes to food to serve up a fresh game design document in a new Nice Games Jam episode.

PromptCreate a game with one of my favorite things, food! It cannot be about/or have mechanics that are cooking. Think: growing food, pairing foods, making an international food court, menu design, using foods in season, etc.Game typeDesign documentPlayer count1Rules

(Stephen note: This is more of a set of notes taken during the episode outlining a game design document.)

Human in an alien culture, giving recommendations for pairings for food
You should need to learn the rules before you can break them
- Gain credibility
People order categories of food and you put it on the plate (no cooking)
Gamer Journey
- You’re a plater at an alien restaurant
- You first do it like a human (based on taste)
- You get feedback that opposes basing plates on taste
- Player starts to get curious about how to make better plates to meet needs
Sense criteria
- Touch
- Sight
- Temperature
- Spiciness
Taste the “wine” to know what it “tastes” like
The threat is if you do poorly you get shipped to another planet, they have different foods and different desires for foods
Options to change
- Two ingredients (tomato and other tomato? Looks similar)
- Position of foods
- Container of foods
- Orientation of foods
- Aesthetic of the restaurant?
You design the special
- Create one dish for the special, you get an amount of feedback based on the size of the restaurant
- You can tweak your dish based on the feedback you get
- Things change as you go through the game and impact what you have available and what patrons like
- The goal is for players to experiment with the different foods (positions, containers, etc.) so they begin to understand the rules of the game
- There can be clues with the background/worldbuilding so players can learn why the foods these aliens like are why they like them
When do you get to influence cultures? Do you get to at all?
- Yes, you need to figure out a way to get aliens to love the food and not just like it

"You shouldn't pet the wolf." The art of Saying No; Tiny Interactions Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

Mark is still out sick, so Dale takes his place in the clubhouse and brings a topic! The club makes a prediction that by the time that this episode comes out, Mark will still be sick, and if you are listening on Patreon, that is absolutely true. If you aren't listening on Patreon, you probably should be.

The group talks about how often and when to say no. Stephen admits that he is the bottleneck, Lydia talks about things that she finds delightful in video games, and Dale makes a bold admission.

1:33

The art of Saying No

Gatchamari - Dale (and Mark)'s Global Game Jam GameGlobal Game JamMini Post-Mortems on Global Game Jam GamesIGDA TCYouTubeFTL PostmortemJustin Ma and Matthew DavisGDCCeleste team Cancels a project (Earthblade)ExokEarthblade OST SoundtrackLena Raine0:31:30

Tiny Interactions

Skyrim's myth of the treasure fox finally explainedWesley Yin-PooleEurogamer

Nice Games Jam: "Time Traveler Estate Sale" Apr 10, 2025

Show notes

Roles reverse as Dale joins Stephen and Lydia for a Nice Game Jam prompted by Mark. The results are an antiques-fueled jaunt through time, and an unexpected win for Stephen.

Prompt"Come up with a game where the winner is the player who gets (or gets closest to) a certain amount of points, but that amount changes from round to round. Hard mode variant: the players don’t always know what the amount is."Game typeTabletop gamePlayer count2-8Materials

Set of item cards from various years

10 chips for each player

Set of years/events

Timer

Setup

Place 8 item cards on the table easily accessible for all players.
Pick a random year/event.
Set timer for 1 minute.

Rules

Start the timer to start the round
While the timer runs, players place chips on items to bid on them
When the timer runs out, the player with the most chips on an item gets that item. In a tie, no one gets an item and it gets added to the pool during the next round
Items that are earned get their times revealed, player closest to the chosen year/event wins
Play repeats for three rounds, player with the most round wins wins the game

"Nice Games Club cannot solve all of your problems." Begging for Money; Quality of Life Apr 03, 2025

Show notes

Beth leads Mark and Stephen through a therapy session. Stephen talks Kickstarter, Mark talks Patreon, and everyone agrees Beth's game Verdant Skies is great.

0:06:40

Begging for Money

0:52:09

Quality of Life

Quality of LifeMichael “Kayin” O’ReillyKayin WorksVerdant SkiesHowling Moon SoftwareSteam

Nice Thinking: "Nice Games Alliance Workshops" Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

Beth Korth, board member of Nice Games Alliance, enters the clubhouse to talk about the purpose of the NGA and how to best fulfill that mission. They discuss how workshops, talks, and conferences fit into their plans. And how they can provide unique experiences and services that the gamedev community can't get elsewhere. They also emphasize the importance of lunch.

Nice Games Alliance Workshops

"A Paragraph Signing" Incremental Learning ; Making Science Fiction Worlds Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

Lydia joins the clubhouse for her first regular episode as a host (it's calendar math)! The clubhouse discusses the release of Civilization VII and how it is taking up all of Stephen's time. Lydia brings to the table the question of how she can learn more games, and how tutorials don't work for her. Stephen regrets not being able to fully develop the world which is the setting for his five-minute student film.

Civ VII
Civilization VII
Switch 2
Switch 2 mouse control - Kyle Orland, Ars Technica

0:15:01

Incremental Learning

Lydia talks about her success learning knitting, and her rectangle projections The club talks about differences between recipes and game development tutorialsTasksxkcd0:54:10

Making Science Fiction Worlds

This topic was inspired by Stephen's science fiction student film. You can watch that here:"All Good Things"Stephen McGregorYouTube"For All Mankind"Wikipedia

Widget Satchel

Widget Satchel is a game that Mark, Stephen, and Ellen worked on. Mark developed a lot of background story, including this: "I do not wish that the troubles of the past be carried into the stars. I imagined better for us and expected better also. But we do not realise our whole future in sequence, small futures each after the other. We must go anyway, blind and smiling, emissaries of wonder, explorers. On this day, at this place, together, we launch an expedition for which we are unprepared. Yet we are now even, a collected peoples concerned of justice looking in order to see our whole future, ahead of us. Widget Satchel is on Itch and other platformsAlso check out this episode from when we released Widget Satchel"Space ferrets lift off!" Widget Satchel Special