Show058: Interview with Robert Bohl
Here’s an interview I did with Robert Bohl a few weeks ago. I think the Skype interviews are really improving, there seems to be much less of the falling in and out that used to occur when using Skype.
In this show we talk about; Misspent Youth, defeating blank page syndrome, mechanizing fun, “my guy” versus “our guy,” why Rob is a more successful designer than me, Ashcans, and abusing people through games and psychology. (Note to literal.net: there is a tongue in cheek in that description.)
- Linkies!
- One of Joshua Newman’s cool sculptures.
- The game whose name I can’t remember that reminds me of Human Contact.
- Misspent Youth which can be preordered at the Unstore.
- The This Week In Start-ups interview with Neil Young, CEO of ngmoco, who discusses game design of games like We Rule, among other start-up type things. The interview is around 15:00 minutes into the episode to 47:00 minutes.
- Gabe’s Balls
Tags: Interview, Robert Bohl
It was fun to talk with you, Clyde. Looking forward to hearing how it sounds.
It sounds good, even with the damn flatline I had to make. Heh.
Hey, Clyde, thanks for the shoutout!
Shock:Human Contact will be a complete game, based on Shock: rules, even though it’s had a couple of supplement-style preview editions. It’s got some very specific hacks that work within the structure of Shock: to produce more aesthetically rich and directed results.
I don’t think I really believe in “supplements”. Instead I’m sort of doing it inside out; Human Contact will contain all the rules of Shock: along with a bunch of rules refined for the Human Contact universe, and then it will have an index of stuff that’s different from Shock: rules for easy reference by Shock: players. That simultaneously frees me from the problems that “generic” systems have, where the rules only apply distantly to the subject matter, but I get to retain the benefit of players knowing pretty much how it works.
Hmm… I don’t own Shock. That certainly makes Human Contact more attractive.
See how that works?
I think iTunes screwed up somewhere, for some reason I got what I think is a TWiT episode instead… A podcast I’m not even subscribed to
Oh man. Thanks a lot, Sal. That was my screw up, I forgot that wordpress builds automatic RSS enclosures for links to media files. I did that accidently several years ago with a Sons of Kryos episode. It should be fixed. Thanks again, it would have been another 24 hours before I caught it.
Great discussion. You could have split it into two episodes though…I would have had time to listen to it sooner.
Regarding Silence Keeps Me A Victim, have you thought about trying to design a couple of other games first, and coming back to it later?
Also, have you seen Tobias’s talk about abusive game design? http://vimeo.com/10030923
Watching it, I couldn’t help but keep thinking of SKMAV.
Huh. Your blog ate my link but you can do a Google search for ‘Game Lecture Series – Tobias Wrigstad’
It didn’t eat the link, it just is the same color as the background… I haven’t spent the time to figure out how to change it.
As far as coming back to it, I guess it could happen.
Enjoyed this one, Clyde because it was informative and entertaining. Thanks.
Thanks Andrew.
This was a really good one. I liked the kind of sarcastic energy between you and Rob. More to the point, there were a lot of distinctly segmented ideas in the cast, all of which were interesting. Well done.