Behold the Presale Crunchpocalypse

In this mid-week edition of the GameDev Breakdown podcast, we examine a chaotic update to the SNES Classic Edition story, Xbox One X goes live with pre-orders of its own, and a AAA game industry veteran promotes his new book and praises crunch time in the game industry.

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Max Krieger’s Train Takes Dialogue Somewhere New

I don’t always agree with my friend Max Krieger. We’ve been connected on Twitter for some time, maybe a couple of years now, but we initially had video games in common and probably not much else. There have been a couple of times I’ve chimed in on a conversation with him to present a differing personal view, but in many situations we just look at things in different ways which don’t affect one of us or the other in a real enough way to cause issues. I respected his passion about the world around him and considered us different, friendly people.

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An Afternoon with Obsidian Entertainment

A road show from Irvine California! I traveled to the sacred ground that gave us Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and the awesome new Pillars of Eternity series. Hear about my tour, lunch with the team, and also how my USB microphone scared the TSA and got me briefly detained.

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The Legend of Extreme Paintbrawl’s Mysterious Soundtrack

I was talking shop with a close friend recently about OST composition (he’s an extraordinary musician, producer, and almost certainly one of my studio’s future composers) when he brought up a desire to compose a game soundtrack he would really enjoy listening to, even when he’s not playing the game. It’s a noble goal, and in fact, it immediately made me think of Extreme Paintbrawl (Head Games/Creative Carnage, 1998): a game most agree is greatly inferior to its own music. 

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Next-Gen Nerds: Episode 2 – Unofficial Show Notes

After a brief trial period and confirmation that I won’t be too easily fired, I’m happy to share my new podcast, Next-Gen Nerds! This show is the product of me and two close friends having kids, being nerds, and spending an hour a week together, under the tutelage of our friends at Lineup Media. The early feedback has … Read more

Letter Taps – The Official Postmortem

A version of this article was also submitted to the go-to game industry shop talk site, Gamasutra.

If you’re not familiar with the tradition of postmortem write-ups in the game industry, it’s not a negative term. It’s the practice of writing about the design, development, and the launch of a game, including reflection on what went right, and what lessons you learned along the way. What follows is the official postmortem for my educational indie game, Letter Taps. 

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