Podcast appearances

I've mentioned before that I enjoy listening to podcasts -- especially game industry and design focused ones. I've even entertained the thought of getting into it myself, though not much became of that for a while. But eventually it led to The Argument Hour with Seth and TC. We've only done two episodes so far, and then my schedule went a little bit awry when my baby was born.

Not too long ago, I hit the podcast circuit to promote TMG's upcoming 10th anniversary, and the accompanying kickstarter for Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition and the New Beginnings expansion. And I've been invited on a few other podcasts in the past as well. Here's a list of all of them, mostly so I can find and share them easily. Feel free to have a listen and enjoy them!

On Board Games: The Argument Hour

With Seth and TC

I mentioned that TC and I have done 2 episodes of The Argument Hour:

5/07/18: In the first Argument Hour, TC and I threw down about "the Alpha Player problem," and I explained a distinction I see between 2 types of cooperative games. Afterwards we talked about Kingdomino, how it works, and the types of people who may or may not enjoy it.

6/07/18: In the second Argument Hour, TC and I got into it about different forms of "going back to the well" -- iterating on a design, honing the mechanisms, and standing on the shoulders of giants, vs lazy rehashing, or downright plagiarism. Afterwards we went over The Voyages of Marco Polo.

On 10/5/18 TC and I took a bit of a break when my son Corbin was born, but we just recorded a 3rd episode about the use of mechanics that rely on loss aversion in games, such as loans, and we mentioned a related (?) topic, scoring leftovers at the end of a game. We ran out of time to do a game review, so we skipped it this time. I'm not sure when that one will air, hopefully I'll remember to come back and link it when it does.
(podcast went live 12/3/18)

On 10/17/18 we recorded another episode about cognitive load, spurred by this blog post by Jeff Warrender. We ran long again, and couldn't really decide on a game to review, so we skipped that segment again. Since I haven't really been playing many games lately, we might just reserve the review segment until we actually have something we'd like to talk about.
(podcast went live 2/18/19)

The TMG Podcast

With Lance Myxter

I've actually been on The TMG Podcast several times:

5/26/17: On episode 003 I joined Lance to talk about How I got into game design, about several of my early designs, and about what led to founding TMG

6/30/17: On Episode 007 I joined Lance again to talk about the Origins convention, testing out new games, and my latest creation (that was on Kickstarter at the time), Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done.

10/27/17: On my third sit-down with Lance, we discussed Essen 2017 releases in general, and TMG's offerings: Exodus Fleet, Harvest, and Pioneer Days, with a few detours to discuss some of TMG's older games as well.

4/13/18: I was on the podcast one more time ahead of the kickstarter project for Homesteaders 10th Anniversary Edition, as well as the New Beginnings expansion. We talked about the beginnings of TMG, as well as plans for TMG's 10th anniversary, such as the revival of our launch titles, Homesteaders, and my game Terra Prime, which is coming back as Eminent Domain Origins. I also explained Ultimate Frisbee to Lance, who seemed to confuse it with disc golf :)

10/5/18: I came back on the podcast to talk about game development in general, but specifically about Belfort, as the kickstarter for the Belfort reprint (with the Expansion expansion and a brand new expansion) was ongoing.

10/8/18: Tasty Take #1: Since Halloween is coming up. Lance asked me if I like scary movies, and if so, which is my favorite.

10/10/18: Tasty Take #2: I talked about playing Eminent Domain and Dice Forge on BoardGameArena.com


And speaking of TMG's 10th anniversary...

TMG 10th Anniversary Promotion

I got myself invited onto a handful of podcasts to promote the 10th anniversary of TMG, and the launch of the 10th anniversary edition of Homesteaders. Here are those appearances:

Hooked On Geek

With Greg Dixon and Stephanie 

4/23/18: In episode 17 of Hooked on Geek, I talked to Greg Dixon and Meeple Lady about everything from how I got into gaming and the game industry, to my engineering background and how that relates to game design and development, to the few published games I've been able to play lately (Bunny Kingdom, Santa Maria), to TMG's 10th anniversary.

Who, What, Why

With Mike Bonet

4/22/18: Season 19, episode 1 of the Who, What, Why podcast began with me reminiscing about the biggest disappointment of my game design career thus far, a Three Musketeers themed game called All For One that I worked on with the original designer David Brain, and how that game basically launched my career as a game developer, and shaped the process I use to develop games. We talked a little about my game design blog, some of my design articles (such as the one on game end dynamics), and about the upcoming reboot of Terra Prime as Eminent Domain Origins

The Brawling Brothers

With Josh and Brandon

5/1/18: For a short segment in the middle of episode 72, the Brawling Brothers took a break from talking about The Grimm Forest and IPs in board games to talk to me about TMG and the Homesteaders 10th anniversary edition / expansion kickstarter.

The State of Games

With Chris Kirkman, Darrel Louder, and TC Petty 

5/1/18: This was a long one, and we covered a lot of miscellaneous topics, but the meat of the podcast was about special, deluxe, or limited editions of games. Also, TC explains why everyone should just enjoy Avengers: Infinity War rather than be critical about it.

The Good, the Board, and the Ugly

With Joe Sallen and T.C. 

5/2/18: After Joe reviewed Eminent Domain and Oblivion, I explained some of the background thinking behind both the base game and the new expansion. I also told some of my favorite amusing stories about the game, and I described my Eminent Domain Legacy tournament format.

What I'm Playing Now Podcast

With Joe Leuzzi

5/6/18: Joe interviewed me on some more obscure history, including my thoughts on role playing games, the 30+ hour holiday game marathons I used to host, and the first real game I worked on: All For One, and another of my prototypes: Alter Ego. The topic of Ultimate Frisbee came up, and I explained the challenges I see with trying to capture the feel of a sport in a tabletop game. And of course I promoted Homesteaders, New Beginnings, and Terra Prime / Eminent Domain Origins.

Go Forth and Game

With Tom Gurganus 

5/18/18: I talked with Tom a little bit about the upcoming TMG titles I was working on at the time (Embark, Old West Empresario), as well as the history of Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (and a little about the expansion I was working on at the time). Then we talked about the difference between game design and game development, and due to lack of specificity in the term "developer," I proposed a new term to replace it: "gamegineer." Next, I explained my philosophy that games ought to stand up to competitive play -- not all games are meant to, but all things being equal, a game is only better if it DOES hold up to competitive play. And finally, I offered some tips for pitching to publishers, and ran down a few of the games I'm working on (Alter Ego, Riders of the Pony Express, Automatown, Deities and Demigods, and the next TMG project I'm working on: Back To Earth)

Views From The Outer Rim

With Clive Lovett 

5/21/18: Views from the Outer Rim is less a gaming podcast and more of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy podcast. I knew Clive from back in my BGDF chat days, and he invited me on to talk about my sci-fi themed games. I ended up talking about a wide variety of things on that podcast!

Other/Older podcast appearances

Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

5/10/19: Tom got me talking about topics of interest to game designers en route to conventions - how to prepare to pitch your game, and what to expect at a pitch meeting, and stuff about sell sheets and prototypes too.

Breaking Into Board Games

With Gil Hova, Ian Zang, and Tony Miller 

12/30/15: Gil, Ian, and Tony asked me about how I broke into the industry, specifically into game development.

Board Games Insider - Interview

With Ignacy Trzewik 

9/21/16: Ignacy interviewed me for a special interview series, and we talked about the difference between new and novel mechanisms, and refined versions of existing ones. I got my first chance to mention Crusaders at the end, which had only just been green lit at the time.

Board Game Design Lab

With Gabe Barrett 

6/28/17: Gabe asked me some questions about ways to take a game from good to great.

Board Game Design Lab - Bonus Round

With Gabe Barrett 

6/30/17: Gabe and I discussed the value of playing games more than once each, both as a player, and as a designer.

On Board Games

With Isaac Shalev 

9/18/17: Isaac and I discussed a proposed entry into the game designer glossary he's putting together: Fragility in games (and the opposite, which would be "robust"). We discussed some older/classic games such as Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Container, and A Few Acres of Snow, as well as more contemporary titles such as Hanabi, Pandemic, Dominion, and others. Isaac prompted me to talk about an instance where I, as a developer, removed a source of fragility from Scoville, and we also talked about what we can do as designers to add or avoid fragility in our games.

Let's Level Up

With Rick 

2/2/14: Rick asked me about my creative process, and what TMG had planned for 2014 (and beyond).

A Dash of Science

With Chris Birkinbine 

9/5/17: Chris had me on his not-game-centered podcast to talk about "the science of game design," creating and developing board games.

Wurfel Reviews interview on YouTube

With Alina

10/20/16: Alina prompted me with interview questions (she did her homework!) about the difference between design and development, kickstarter and what games are suitable for it, and my upcoming games.

Meeple Nation

With Ryan, Brent, and Nathan 

4/27/16: The Meeple Nation guys interviewed Michael, Andy, at SaltCon 2016, which began with me talking about my upcoming games: the plan to revamp Terra Prime as Eminent Domain Origins, and my next non-Eminent Domain related game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done.

4/28/15: This SaltCon 2015 interview went into detail about Eminent Domain and the at-the-time upcoming expansion, Exotica.

I, Geek podcast

With Mark and Sten 

11/29/15: At BGGcon 2015, I sat down with Mark and Sten to talk everything gaming... from what gateway game got me into the hobby, to inspirations for games I've designed, to a sneak peak at the games I was developing at the time.

Legends of Tabletop on YouTube

With John Haremza

7/28/17: In the summer of 2017, I was on the Legends of Tabletop to talk about my upcoming game, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, which was on kickstarter at the time.

Legends of Tabletop on YouTube

With John Haremza on YouTube

11/01/16: We stated this interview talking about Rincon, the game convention I ran for 5 years, which had just occurred at the time. Then we bounced around between my history at TMG, "competition" in the game industry, how I got into game design and how I go about it, what exactly a game developer does, do I have a design style?, some games I was working on at the time, and various other topics.

Arizona Public Media

11/29/15: A public radio station interviewed Karen Arnold Ewing and I about Rincon 2016, the game convention I started up in 2012. That was the last year I was the convention chair before handing the reins over to Karen and her husband Tony, who have made the convention bigger and better than I ever did!

The Dice Tower

2/29/12: I was on The Dice Tower episode 246, debating Eminent Domain vs Core Worlds with Stephen Buonocore, way back when both TMG and Stronghold Games were in their youth!

Written interviews

Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

10/11/17: Tom got me talking about publishing Deluxified games, designing games in general, and specifically about upcoming EmDo content.

Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

4/1/14: Tom interviewed Michael and I about 5 years of TMG.

Dice Hate Me / Go Forth And Game

With Tom Gurganus 

12/14/11: Tom, in conjunction with Dice Hate Me Games, interviewed me way back in 2011 about design advice, how different parts of Eminent Domain came to pass, what it was like to be on kickstarter (at the time it was less ubiquitous), and what other games I was working on, both for TMG and my own designs.

Go Play Listen

With Chris Marling 

12/19/16: Chris does a series of Q&A interviews called Designer's Dozen, where he'll ask a designer a dozen questions about designers they admire, the best and worst aspects of designing, tips, and other miscellaneous design related stuff. 

The Argument Hour, with Seth and TC

I listen to a lot of game industry podcasts. 

Many of them are just people talking about games they like, or games they're looking forward to. There's never been a lot of design focused podcasts... a few have cropped up over the years, some better than others. I listen to the following pretty regularly that actually talk about the design of games:

Ludology
Board Game Design Lab
Building the Game
Game Designers of North Carolina

There are a few others as well, but I still always thought there was room for designers talking about the nitty-gritty of game design. I've always wanted to participate in something like that, but I didn't want to figure out how to do hosting and editing myself, and I would have wanted another voice to talk to (rather than just monologueing).

I mentioned something about this on social media a couple of months ago, and I got some interest from game designer, podcaster, and boardgame twitter personality, T.C. Petty III. Then Isaac Shalev of On Board Games contacted us, offering to edit and host such a podcast on On Board Games, should T.C. and I decide to record one.

And so was born The Argument Hour, with Seth and TC! 

The Argument Hour is a segment I've started doing with TC Petty III on the On Board Games podcast, where T.C. and I pick a topic related to board game design, and we basically argue about it for while. Then we do our twist on a game review. I don't like the idea of unilaterally saying whether a game is good or bad, so our reviews are more of a mechanical look at the game in question, and then our opinion on what kind of player that game would be good for.

Edit: after the first two episodes, we stopped doing reviews. We might reserve that for times where we have a game we really want to talk about, rather than try to do a review each time. It's been a while since we've done one of these, but I do hope to get back to it some time. In the meantime, the 4 existing episodes are pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Episode 1 dealt with the "Alpha Player Problem" (whether it even exists), and included a brief review of Kingdomino.

Episode 2 was all about honing/returning to the well/designers revisiting ideas. The review that time was The Voyages of Marco Polo.

Episode 3 was about the use of mechanics that rely on loss aversion in games, such as loans, and we mentioned a related (?) topic, scoring leftovers at the end of a game.

Episode 4 discussed games that put excess cognitive load on the players, spurred by this blog post by Jeff Warrender.

So if you read this blog, maybe you'd be interested in this. Give them a listen and enjoy! Leave a note here with comments and suggestions...

An audio blast from the past - a design chat about All For One

Back in... I want to say 2007 [edit: turns out it was may 2005!], I thought it would be cool to do a podcast about game design. At the time, podcasting had started to become a thing, and a few people were starting up podcasts about gaming - mostly gamers talking about games they play, or games they like. Not much about design though.

Years later, there are now literally hundreds of podcasts about gaming, but still a relative dearth of shows about the design of games. There are some - I recently discovered Ludology, with Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm (now Mike Fitzgerald), a show about games from an academic point of view. I enjoyed that one, consuming 4 years worth of episodes over the course of the summer.

Another one I found is Building The Game, with Rob Couch and Jason Slingerland, who document their trials and tribulations as they navigate the amateur design community trying to ascertain the golden formula to create a publishable game. After about 3 years at it, I believe each of them has gotten to the point of getting a game signed by a publisher, so props to them. One feature I like about this one is their Practicing The Pitch segment. Every week one of the guys pitches a game idea, either one they've just come up with (sometimes with a constraint from boardgamizer or a listener challenge), or one they've been kicking around for a week or so. It's a neat design exercise, though perhaps it leads to a little too much invention and not enough development.

So, back to 2007 [edit: 2005!]. After listening to an episode of Board Games To Go with Mark Johnson, I downloaded a program called Audacity and I recorded a half hour of myself talking about my big game project at the time, All For One. At this point some of the information about the game is well out of date, but such is life when you dig up old posts. Other then myself, nobody has ever heard that recording... until now:



Feel free to leave comments, either here or on SoundCloud. I don't know if I'll try this again, but talking through design ideas is something I'm interested in, so you never know. Ideally I'd like to team up with someone else (maybe someone who's savvy with sound editing) and talk design with them once in a while.

Anyway, enjoy this slice of history!

Thinking about podcasting

I've long thought that while the number of gaming podcasts is high, there's an aspect of the industry that's underrepresented... there aren't a lot of podcasts dealing with game design. Once (circa 2007 I think) I even downloaded Audacity and tried recording something... it turned out to be about a half an hour of me talking about one of my first games, All For One.

Nowadays, with the advent of crowdfunding, the amateur/indy design scene has grown quite a bit. Gaming in general has become a lot bigger and more well known, and now more than ever there are a lot more podcasts and video-casts focusing on games. Some of them are by designers, and some interview designers about their games, but for the most part I still don't see a lot of content about the actual design of games.

Prominent reviewer Richard Ham (Radho Runs Through) started a podcast series recently, and reading some comments about that new show, as well as some of the comments they made on The State of Games,renewed my interest in pursuing the idea of a game design focused podcast. I polled Twitter to see if people would be interested in hearing that type of thing, and got a general sort of "I'd listen if it were short" type of response.

Based on what I imagine people would be interested in, I was thinking that each episode might be organized as follows...

1. Recent gaming (5 min): I could mention the games I've been playing, maybe going into detail about the most prominent one.

2. Thoughts on hotness (5 min): I could give my opinion on whatever the hot topic of the day might be... a particular game that'sbeing hyped, the SdJ nominees, or some other hot topic in gaming.

3. The meat of the podcast - some game design topic (10-20 min): I figure I'd choose some topic and approach it from a "this is how I did it" point of view, then solicit comments from the audience as to how they would have gone about it.

I might ought to squeeze in there some segment for answering questions from Twitter or previous show comments. In total I'd try to keep the episodes down to 30 mins or less. I figure I could record several episodes at a time, cut it up and stitch it together into episodes with Audacity, and post them on SoundCloud or something.

So what do you think? Does this sound like something worth doing? Would you be interested in listening to this type of thing?

@Mentions!

At KublaCon I played some of my prototypes (Dice Works, Bluff Auction, and Eminent Domain) with some people who write for some board game blogs, and since then they have posted their convention reports, each with a section about my games! I thought I'd go ahead and link to them here:

Ian Noble (The Noble Gamer)

GeekInsight (Giant Fire Breathing Robot)

Also, Chris from DiceHateMe.com mentioned Mike and I in his podcast - you know, the one about getting kickstarted.

Enjoy the links!