4921

Nope. There hasn’t been mention of her in forever. I have assumed for awhile that they broke up.

4922

Hi all, I’ve started my own podcast in which I interview various game designers about their careers. My first guest is Rob Pardo, formerly of Blizzard. Let me know if you have any thoughts!

Site: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/designer-notes/id935345158?mt=2

4923

Aren’t you treading on Steve Gaynor’s turf a bit there? I mean, his podcast is even on Idle Thumbs.

4924

Tone Control is on hiatus, so they are hoping that Designer Notes will serve people who wanted more of Steve’s format.

4925

Thanks Soren! I really enjoyed the first part of that interview, can’t wait for the second.

I have to say though…please try to get your levels under control :-) The overall interview volume is way too low, requiring me to turn up my iPod to max volume, yet the musical interludes are way too loud to the point it hurt my ears since it was turned up all the way. There was also a lot of unevenness in the sounds - lots of loud “bangs” during the interview probably because of people shifting feet, setting stuff down, etc. which are extremely jarring…

4926

Speaking of Idle Thumbs, I’m really enjoying the addition of Danielle Riendeau. She plays a lot of ‘current’ games that the others don’t always have time for and brings a lot to the podcast.

4927

Completely agreed. I’m still a couple months behind, but she’s been a fantastic addition so far.

4928

Ah Danielle, I’m glad she’s on there, since I’ve missed her on the Jumping the Shark podcast since she left.

Also I’ll have to check out Soren, I’ve always enjoyed his appearances on Three Moves Ahead, so I’m sure he’ll be good here too.

4929

yeah, we had a bit of an awkward setup in my hotel room… I think the other ones I’ve done sound better.

4930

Regardless of the recording set-up, in post production you could and should normalize the various sections to a relatively constant volume, perhaps 75-80% of maximum. That’s why they’re called levels: they should be relatively level. ;)

4931

Neat!

4932

What, no way, you could have an entire network of podcasts about game design, that would be great. No reason to limit it to one.

4933

Here are my thoughts: that was freakin’ excellent. Anyone remotely interested in PC gaming history should check this out. Thanks for doing that and looking forward to more.

4934

Surely you’re joking? In the event you’re not though, I don’t even think he’s treading on Steve’s turf, and if you listened to both podcasts I think you’ll see they cover very different aspects of game design, which is not surprising if you consider the different backgrounds Soren and Steve come from (deep strategy games and immersive first person storytelling games respectively).

4935

I was teasing, of course. I’m never going to complain about more quality podcasts, epsecially one from someone as insightful as Soren.

4936

Just listened to the first episode of the Sirlin of Game Design Podcast, run by David Sirlin. He’s a video game developer and professional Street Fighter player who turned to designing boardgames that mimic Street Fighter games (Puzzle Strike, Yomi, etc.). I thought it was pretty good, although it got a bit preachy. “Let me tell you why this common opinion people have is so incredibly wrong!” The best part was the final segment, where he was talking to someone named “Garcia1000” (?) about Clicker Heroes. They had a wry, quite funny discussion about how Clicker Heroes is clearly an improved Diablo III. Anyway, I’d recommend it, I think, because it’s a solid start and all podcasts get better as their panelists get more experienced in the format.

4937

I enjoy Dave Sirlin’s thoughts on game design, but yeah I agree about the 1st episode sounding pretty preachy. I think part of the problem was the topic was a little too narrow in scope, and so it felt at times like they were just repeating themselves a bunch. Anyway early days so I hope they get better at things as they keep at it.

4938

Cool, I do enjoy me some sirlin.

Doesn’t surprise me that he comes across preachy. He’s been nursing his opinions for quite a long time, and he often comes across that way. Hopefully as he settles into the podcast he’ll realize he doesn’t have to correct all of the people all of the time.

4939

I started a podcast with my brother and some friends about Dungeons and Dragons Video Games! Bit niche, but we’re going to sit down and spend time talking about the games themselves, how they compare to the tabletop experience, and whether or not they’re worth recommending. Please feel free to give it a listen and a watch - there’s companion videos showing off gameplay and introducing its elements so you can follow the convo even if you’re never played the game!

4940

Listening to the Giant Bombcast GOTY podcast, and this has gone from being wildly entertaining in past years to being just a slog now.

There are numerous times where I feel like everyone in the room wanted Alex Navarro to have to be sent out of the room to pick up carryout so they could actually get to the end of a category. Especially the “Best Looking Game” category, you could almost feel everyone wanting to just slip him a tranquilizer to shut him up. “Guys, I reaaaaallllly like that gaaaaaame.” Dude. You need to pick 3. 3 only. You can’t say that about 25 games.