Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

This week on the program, Mark starts playing Spider-Man, Stephen ignores your narrative, and Martha is very smart.The 'Spider-Man' Puddle Controversy Is One Of Gaming's Dumbest - Dave Thier, Forbes0:09:09Hub Worlds and Safe HousesDestiny 2 Will Let You Play 'Fully Scored Soccer'Alex WalkerKotakuGearbox and Claptrap honor late Borderlands fan with eulogy, NPC in sequel Jessica CondittEngadgetSea of Thieves is fun until you meet other piratesFraser BrownRock Paper Shotgun0:38:20Environmental StorytellingAn image of some of the narrative-assisting collectables in Widget SatchelMark talks about the subtext of Metro Nexus' overworld maps in our episode topic on research for games."That gets real meta, real fast."

This week on Nice Games Club your nice hosts talk all about Modding and Self-Publishing Must-Haves. Stephen explains different viewpoints on mod-ownership, Martha goes fishing on easier mode and Mark makes too many gifs.0:05:00Modding"Who owns the mods?"Yonnie Ming Kow and Bonnie NardiFirst MondayThe Requiem mod team tells its community about the delays to their update here.RedditNexus Mods is a great place to find community created mods.Wrye Musings is a blog from a famous Elder Scrolls modder who writes about vari…0:44:30Self-publishing Must-havesYou can find good examples of gifs on the Widget Satchel Steam page.SteamLearn more about how to make a good website on our Website topic in our episode"Ugly and hard to use."“How we Used Discord to build a dream community for our game Descenders”Mike Rose DiscordWe have had friend of the pod/media relations wiz Holly Harrison on the show to talk about Community Management and Media Relations in our interview episodeCommunity Managment

This week, we look at Verdant Skies, the sci-fi life-simluation game from Howling Moon Software, available now on Steam, Itch, and Humble Bundle!We're joined by two of the game's developers, Andy and Beth Korth, as well as their little one, Gabe. All three are making their second appearances in the clubhouse, as they were the program's very first guests back in our second episode (exactly 100 episodes ago)! We've already booked them for episode 202!Video

This week, Mark doesn’t respect your secrets (but will keep them), Martha tells us where D&D really comes from, and Stephen reveals that he will play a Kirby RPG if someone makes one for him.0:05:11Pitching to ConsolesPlayStationInformation is on the PlayStation Partners site. Your first step is to fill out their company registration page.XboxInformation is on the ID@Xbox site. Before submitting your game, your first step will be to apply to the program with basic information about your company.NintendoFor Wii U and 3DS development, registration is open to all developers on their developer portal.For Switch development, just send them an email! ThirdPartyPublisher@noa.nintendo.com.General Business stuffWe talked about starting a business for your game studio in a previous episode."I trolled myself."“Not-for-profit game developer faces major obstacles” Colin CampbellPolygon0:52:15Turn-Based RPGs“How to choose the least annoying Octopath Traveler”Brian GilbertPolygon“The Dungeons and Dragons Session That Became a Real-Life Phenomenon” Lewis PackwoodKotakuRPG Maker

In this episode, your nice hosts celebrate 100 episodes of Nice Games! We reminisce a bit on how the podcast has been going and go behind the scenes on what it takes to release one of the episodes.Thanks for listening to us 100 times!0:00:27100th Episode Special Our evil counterparts, Evil Games Club, have released two episodes so far...Evil Games Club! and this one Evil Games Club 2!Martha in the recording studio aka "Clubhouse"StephenThe Microphones we use to record.The audio interface (hardware) we use to record

This week’s episode is another edition of Code Comment, where your nice hosts look at the project, code, assets, and design of an indie game in development to see how it’s made.This week, we are joined by Lane Davis, Charles McGregor and our co-host Stephen McGregor to take a look behind the scenes of their cooperative shoot-em-up Fingeance! Lane shows us how he and Stephen design levels for different difficulties, Stephen explains how they use 'Object Pooling' to spawn bullets and Charles breaks down his music tracks to show us how he sets the emotion for each level. It's the episode that is definitely three three three!Video

This week, a listener gives Martha a great topic, Mark establishes a Do-ocracy, and Stephen has trouble with transitions.0:05:48Developing IdeasThe book Martha recommended is "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. It has been described as "the best book ever written about how to write" but its advice applies equally well to all types of creative work.0:36:10Game Dev Success

This week on Nice Games Club we interview VR Developer Andrew Fladeboe about his dream-like VR experience/thesis project Oneirogen! We explore the infinite and paradigm changing possibilities of VR, learn how Andrew brought his virtual experience into the real world as an installation and get his advice for creating change- make more weird art!Picture is a screenshot of Oneirogen by Andrew FladeboeVirtual RealityVR / AR / XROneirogen on SteamAlchemists - WikipediaJoseph Campbell - WikipediaCarl JungCave of Forgotten Dreams film by Werner Herzog

This week on Nice Games Club your nice hosts discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of Level Design and Heads Up Displays. Mark has opinions about Sonic, Stephen picks his hill to die on and Martha brings in a pinch hitter.Picture from this Reddit thread on MMO HUDs0:14:19Level DesignTen Principles of Good Level Design (Part 1)Dan TaylorGame DeveloperMark and Stephen rant about Sonic the Hedgehog’s level design, but here’s a def…Satchell DrakesYouTubeKoichi Hayashida is the Level Design Director for Mario Galaxy/Director of Mario 3D Land (and lots and lots of other Marios) that Mark mentioned.The Structure of Fun: Learning from Super Mario 3D Land’s Director Christian NuttGame DeveloperBug! gameWikipedia0:53:49HUDsDiegetic HUDs and UITV TropesThe Moon Fields by local dev Lunarsignals

This week’s episode is another edition of Code Comment, where your nice hosts look at the project, code, assets, and design of an indie game in development to see how it’s made.This week, we look at our first non-Unity project (!!!) as Mark walks us though the ActionScript codebase of Metro Nexus, his in-development homage to the classic(?) arcade-era game City Connection. We also look at the art asset workflow Mark designed for the game.Video