John Vitti of Versus Game

Versus CEO and Co-Founder, John Vitti, calls in to discuss the early success of Versus Game, designing around human nature, players as designers, and we speculate about our chances against the eventual rise of the machines.

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Jason Lee of Pixelmatic

Pixelmatic Chief Creative Officer, Jason Lee, calls in to discuss his design contributions to legendary RTS series (Age of Empires, Company of Heroes, and Warhammer 40,000), Pixelmatic’s upcoming space strategy game (Infinite Fleet), and the challenges of implementing actual cryptocurrencies both for in-game trade and to raise funds for the game’s development.

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Games as a Service

By community request, we take a look at the games as a service model, its performance in the game industry, and its impact on traditional revenue models in games.

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Avoid Millions in Fines

A major industry publisher has finally been burned in the global crackdown on loot crates. It could have been easily avoided.

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My Big Stupid Mouth

Trying to leverage LinkedIn and participating in a discussion about parenting, revenue models, and publisher trust may have recently landed me deeper in enemy territory than I intended to go. Get the full story, hear a good rule of thumb for dealing with publishers, and learn a two-word phrase that lets you know to stop listening to anyone immediately.

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Wheaton’s Law Has Consequences

An email from a familiar name illustrated a perfect example of why you should be kind to people in your content space, or failing that, at least be quiet. We’ll also discuss why a sky-high number of followers on social media isn’t exactly what you should be chasing.

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Pricing Your Game

By community request, we look at what successful developers have to say about pricing your indie game. I’ll talk about my experience, too, so you know what not to do.

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The Time Sierra On-Line Nearly Unionized

Ken Williams has released a new book, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line. In the process of telling Sierra’s entire story from his perspective for the first time, he reveals what was surely among the very earliest attempts at unionization within the game industry.

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Founder Ken Williams Discusses the Time Sierra On-Line Game Developers Nearly Unionized in New Book

Sierra On-Line founder Ken Williams clearly stayed busy during the pandemic. Earlier in October he released a new book, Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings: The rise and fall of Sierra On-Line, which tells Sierra On-Line’s complete story from his perspective for the first time.

In one Sierra story I’d never even heard hinted at before, Williams spent part of a chapter describing the process of clamping down on the company’s wild start-up culture—or trying to “bring discipline,” as he describes it—and pushing his team to a point that he admits became abusive.

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Video Segment: Todd Talks Epic and Microsoft vs. Google and Apple on Fandom Unlimited

Todd calls in for Fandom Unlimited’s Facebook live stream to discuss the unfolding courtroom drama over Fortnite, mobile app stores, and the very souls of teenagers everywhere. Okay probably not that last one, but it could have major ramifications for Unreal Engine devs everywhere.

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