Todd Mitchell

Todd Mitchell is a US Midwest-based comedy writer and game developer with bylines at Weekly Humorist, Fanbyte, Slackjaw, End of the Bench Sports, and more. He's the author of Inside Video Game Creation, the founder of CodeWritePlay, and host of the GameDev Breakdown podcast. Follow him on Twitter @Mechatodzilla.

Creating Universes and Characters with Ray Marek of Unparalleled Comics

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Story-driven games are often revered as the height of artistic game development. For as dearly as we all hold Rocket League, it can’t match the impact of Mass Effect or tug at the heart strings like Red Dead Redemption. To create a project that stays with your players, you need to design a world for them to experience.

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Winning the Screen Time Debate and Forming Your Company

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Hello 2019! We had huge plans for the Christmas show. If you don’t believe me, check out the functioning Unity game I made to show off as a joke. But being the family guys that we are, the actual holidays got in the way. So it’s back to business here in the new year. I’ll be showing you the process of launching my new development company, you’ll hear from more expert guests than ever before, and we’re even about to do our first giveaway–it’s something I absolutely love, and if you’re a listener, there’s a good chance you’ll love it too.

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The Trouble with Game Jam Culture

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Following a few discussions on social media in the wake of Ludum Dare 43 (enjoy my photo from LD19), I took an opportunity to gather my thoughts on this revered tradition of ours and ask a few important questions: Why do we do this? Why do we do it like this? Should we still be doing this? 

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Min-Maxing Your Audio Production with John Schiber

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At last, more than a year after adding him to the show, I sit down with John Schiber to ask him some questions relevant to his expertise: being a life-long musician and internationally-signed recording artist. John’s experience producing music with his band, A Dark Orbit, and his personal studies of theory, engineering, and instrumental techniques have left him with skills you’d normally need a room full of people to tell you about. The fact that I hadn’t properly grilled him for your benefit before now is a disappointment to us all. 

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Hot Take: The ESA Needs to Get Serious About Loot Boxes

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We Need the Same Decisiveness That Saved Us in the 90s to Protect Indies from Federal Bureaucracy If you’ve followed along with the #GameDev Breakdown Podcast, you’ve heard us discuss loot boxes with some concern for well in excess of a year now. In fact, it was last year’s Christmas episode that I seem to … Read more

How Players Learn and How to Teach Them

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It’s time for a mini-show full of things to know! I’ve sort of been bouncing catchphrases like that in my head for the better part of a day, and I’ve determined there are no good ones–but that may be the fever talking. I was in the throes of a full Man Cold for this episode, but I landed on a topic I liked a few days ago and I decided not to rest until I could be sure the show went out on time. 

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Annual Holiday Game Design – Thanksgiving 2018

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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. 

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Religion, Metallica, and NBA Jam

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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). 

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The World of Pico-8

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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. 

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The Predator’s Code

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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. 

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