ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 113. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a big heartfelt spectacle of a game—you’ve likely seen some of its dream-vibrant, mirror-polished visuals, and a bit of its cartoony gunplay—and as the game’s Lead Writer, Lauren Mee had a huge amount to do with the heartfelt part of that equation. Rift Apart is … Continue reading "Hope Too Is Rad, with Lauren Mee"

Everybody's Talking At Once

Hope Too Is Rad, with Lauren Mee

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 112. Tali Faulkner (better known in internet circles as Veselekov) knew he had something timely on his hands when he made Umurangi Generation, but he couldn’t have known how timely. The base game was inspired by the fires in Australia in 2019, not the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—but with its themes of … Continue reading "How to See Everything Neoliberalism Ignores, with Tali Faulkner (a.k.a. Veselekov)"

How to See Everything Neoliberalism Ignores, with Tali Faulkner (a.k.a. Veselekov)

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 111. Amid the E3 madness, this crush of new games and games yet to be, we thought we’d take a moment and think a bit about games that are, in one way or another, not new. Let’s talk about games that we replay, and especially the ones that we keep revisiting at … Continue reading "On Replays, Remasters, and Remakes"

On Replays, Remasters, and Remakes

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 110. Xalavier Nelson Jr. is an absurdly prolific artist and an inveterate collaborator, having left his creative stamp on Hypnospace Outlaw, We Are The Caretakers, Can Androids Pray, Mr. Bucket Told Me To, and so, so much else, from tabletop RPG systems to comics to games journalism. Currently he’s working on SkateBIRD … Continue reading "As Joyously and Explicitly as You Can, into the Fleshy Breach, with Xalavier Nelson Jr."

As Joyously and Explicitly as You Can, into the Fleshy Breach, with Xalavier Nelson Jr.

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 109. Yadu Rajiv does a whole lot of different things, all of them to do with games and the people and technologies that make them possible. By day, he’s a Lead Game Designer at BYJU’S, working on educational games that toe the line between physical and digital, and the rest of the … Continue reading "Making Space to Make Games, with Yadu Rajiv"

Making Space to Make Games, with Yadu Rajiv

ETAO Podcast, Episode 108. Santago Zapata stops by to talk about the history of roguelikes, his own expansive body of small works for the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, and his larger works, from Castlevania Roguelike, to Ananias, to his current project NovaMundi: The Spear of Chaquén. Is it a roguelike, this new game? The purist would say (and … Continue reading "An Accidental Genre, with Santiago Zapata (a.k.a. Slashie)"

An Accidental Genre, with Santiago Zapata (a.k.a. Slashie)

ETAO Podcast, Episode 107. Jeremy Warmsley’s music has spanned pop (or more broadly, the whole touring band thing), film, television, radio, and recently, games. He’s an inventive, thoughtful, ever-expressive voice wherever he shows up (including on podcasts, as it happens). Here we mostly talk about his game soundtracking work on Russell’s Quinn’s Linda & Joan, … Continue reading "The Mayonnaise Allegory, with Jeremy Warmsley"

The Mayonnaise Allegory, with Jeremy Warmsley

ETAO Podcast, Episode 106. Russell Quinn has had a unique career as a technologist enabling stories, building the underlying systems for the ahead-of-its time McSweeney’s app, as well as for the equally-ahead-of-theirs, novel-adjacent multimedia projects The Silent History and The Pickle Index. He’s brought remarkably inventive and playful stories to the world, though not as … Continue reading "The Futures of Stories, with Russell Quinn"

The Futures of Stories, with Russell Quinn

ETAO Podcast, Episode 105. Chevy Ray has been making games for a long time now—though most of them are currently tough to play; RIP Flash—but is probably best known for Ikenfell, a tactical RPG about going to magic school, working through difficult relationships, and petting a great many cats. Here Chevy talks about what it … Continue reading "A Nuanced Critique of Subtlety, with Chevy Ray"

A Nuanced Critique of Subtlety, with Chevy Ray

ETAO Podcast, Episode 104. Anisa Sanusi is an accomplished UI/UX designer, probably best known for her work on Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster—two utterly different games that bring with them utterly different challenges in terms of usability, accessibility, tone, and scope. She’s also the founder of the Limit Break mentorship program, an organization dedicated to … Continue reading "Designing for Empathy, with Anisa Sanusi"

Designing for Empathy, with Anisa Sanusi

ETAO Podcast, Episode 103. Chris King of Batterystaple Games shares a chunk of his time to discuss 30XX, the reimagined, souped-up sequel to the Mega Man X-esque roguelike-alike 20XX. We get pretty far into the weeds as far as the differences between the two games, the double-edged beam-sword of encouraging player-created content from day one, … Continue reading "Rogue Chunks, with Chris King"

Rogue Chunks, with Chris King

ETAO Podcast, Episode 102. Our America puts you in the shoes of a Black father driving his son to school—and if that doesn’t sound potentially harrowing to you, then you might be exactly the project’s intended audience. It’s a work that means to illuminate, instruct, challenge, and speak simple, difficult truths. In this interview, Bryant … Continue reading "Experiencing America, with Bryant Young"

Experiencing America, with Bryant Young

ETAO Podcast, Episode 101. You might know Chel Wong from her rightly-celebrated, highly modular soundtrack to Kine, and some more people are about to know her from Watch This Space. But you definitely already know her if you’re even tangentially involved in the Boston-area indie scene (or for that matter, the New England Smash scene). … Continue reading "Communities and Modularities, with Chel Wong"

Communities and Modularities, with Chel Wong

ETAO Podcast, Episode 100. For our hundredth episode, we’re trying something a little different and editing together some of our favorite moments from the past year of the ‘cast. If you’ve been looking to catch up but haven’t had the time to dive into entire longform interviews, then this should provide a good place to … Continue reading "What We Heard and What We Learned in 2020"

What We Heard and What We Learned in 2020

ETAO Podcast, Episode 99. 2020, everybody. It was a weird year for lots of things, we think it’s fair to say—including but by no means limited to games. So in this episode, we take a moment to recap the games we played this year, the games currently glistening atop (or languishing deep within) our to-read … Continue reading "What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2020"

What We Played (and What We Didn’t) in 2020

A longform interview podcast mostly about video games—but also about design, storytelling, labor, and tech more broadly, not to mention music, books, movies, TV, theater, gallery art, food, and everything else that's important to the people who make games what they are. Trying to make sense of things, and sometimes even succeeding.

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Everybody's Talking At Once

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