Theory From the Closet

Show037: Interview with Mike Holmes

This is the first of the RPG recordings I made at Forge Midwest. I only made two, but I got to play some games and it was sweet. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to talk to Mike since last year but have kept dropping the ball. We discuss why you can’t reward Simulationism, the game he is working on called Other Worlds, and quite a few other things. We recorded in a room covered in tile with a loud refrigerator, I tried to take the refrigerator noise out, but didn’t want to be too aggressive to prevent robot voices. Hopefully it worked, although you folks with expensive headphones might be pissed off. Ha. Macklin.

I may have more to say later… although I never seem to follow through with that.

Show036: Marketing and Customer Service for Game Designers

This show is out of order. Show035 isn’t done yet and will be out later this week. Why don’t you just make this show035, Clyde? Good question, Clyde. It was already done which means the id3 tags were already made and I didn’t want to go back and take the time to change them. Anyway….

This episode will include very few questions from me. On these “blank for game designer” shows I normally work with the person I contacted whom I think has a lot of knowledge about the particular subject. This usually entails a back and forth, and adding to an outline until we think we have a somewhat definitive covering of the subject. I however knew nothing about customer service or marketing, so this really is Fred Hicks outline. Frankly I could have turned the laptop around, and just sat there, but it was more fun to get in the way. You can read a text post Fred did after this podcast that basically covers all this ground in text form, and you can keep track of Fred’s thoughts about game design and the games he is working on here.

Also this show wouldn’t have gotten done if Luke Crane hadn’t stood in for Fred’s shift at IPR, and his lending us the laptop to use. Many of these Dreamation shows wouldn’t have gotten done without Thor Olavsrud, and Bob Hawking Radiation, and their niceness of letting me kick them out of bed or keep them up late. Thanks guys.

This is the last Dreamation show. In two weeks we move to Forge Midwest.

Show031: Interview with Julia Bond Ellingboe       (<—–Click this link to listen!!)

This is another interview that happened at Dreamation. This time it’s with Julia Bond Ellingboe creator of the slave narrative game, “Steal Away Jordan.” I typically am not terribly nervous or worried doing an interview, but I was a bit concerned doing this one. Being a bald, facial tattooed white guy I’m typically seen by default as a racist by society. That being said I approached Julia to discuss her game after playing a demo with her at Gen Con 2007. (Please note, don’t post in that thread it’s old and dead.) One of the reasons was the content of the game, but the other reason was because Julia seemed to just accept me as a person, and made me think we could have this discussion without a lot of stereotyping coming into play.

Here’s a link to a bunch of The Whitest Kids You Know videos that I mention in the podcast.

Show029: Inteview with Vincent Baker

Here’s the follow up interview I did with Vincent Baker somewhat based on feedback folks gave to Show025. I will at some point have a link to the interview Luke Crane did with Vincent right before this interview, that is mentioned at the beginning. For the record it’s not me being lazy. This time…. I think Luke hasn’t finished editing them yet. They’ll be somewhere around see pagexx. Wow, four links. I’m tired. Let me know if this interview helped alleviate your questions.