It's a gamedev podcast!

 
The show where nice gamedevs Lydia Symchych, Mark LaCroix, and Stephen McGregor (with friends and guests) talk gaming and game development!

Nice Games Jam
#386

Your nice hosts settle their differences in opinions when it comes to food to serve up a fresh game design document in a new Nice Games Jam episode.

2025.04.23
 
  • The art of Saying No
  • Tiny Interactions
#385

Mark is still out sick, so Dale takes his place in the clubhouse and brings a topic!

2025.04.17
 
  • Begging for Money
  • Quality of Life
#383

Beth leads Mark and Stephen through a therapy session. Stephen talks Kickstarter, Mark talks Patreon, and everyone agrees Beth's game Verdant Skies is great. 

2025.04.03
 
Nice Thinking
#382

Beth Korth, board member of Nice Games Alliance, enters the clubhouse to talk about the purpose of the NGA and how to best fulfill that mission. They discuss how workshops, talks, and conferences fit into their plans.

2025.03.27
 
  • Incremental Learning
  • Making Science Fiction Worlds
#379

Lydia joins the clubhouse for her first regular episode as a host (it's calendar math)! The clubhouse discusses the release of Civilization VII and how it is taking up all of Stephen's time.

2025.03.20
 
Nice Games Jam
#381

The clubhouse gets Cretaceous this week; your nice hosts have been challenged to create a game about dinosaurs and their feeding habits.

2025.03.13
 
with Arvi "Hempuli" Teikari

Releasing 2019's "Baba is You" after more than a decade of making puzzle games was a milestone for this week's guest, but it was also just the beginning of his design journey.

2025.02.27
 
  • Communicating Difficulty
  • Remixed Play Modes

This week, Ellen kicks things off with a chat about how games tell players, “This might be tough!” and how to make that fun and fair. Stephen and Mark jump in with their takes on what makes difficulty settings shine.

2025.02.20
 
with Jarryd Huntley

Entering the clubhouse this week is our the third Owl (employee of Owlchemy Labs) and first Peabody Award winner (as lead developer for We Are OFK), to talk about the "dos," "don'ts," and "good enoughs" of optimization.

2025.02.13
 
Nice Thinking

Stephen brings a half-baked thought into the clubhouse for this Nice Thinking episode: how can we improve dialogue systems? He's got some opinions, which Mark and Ellen immediately debunk, but it leads to some engaging conversation.

2025.02.06
 
  • Theming vs. Aesthetics
  • Parries

It’s hot in the clubhouse and hot in Ellen’s greenhouse this week, so your hosts are eager to crunch through some discussion.

2025.01.30
 
with Luke Spierewka

"Tutorials shouldn’t feel like tutorials!" Like most aspects of game design, it's an easy concept to summarize but a difficult one to pull off.

2025.01.23
 
  • King Making
  • Thinky Bits (Off-Screen Gameplay)

In the episode, Mark, Ellen, and Stephen talk local events, including (don’t worry everyone’s fine) a fire in the clubhouse’s building, construction, and the games they are playing, so if you are just here for the topics, go ahead and sk

2025.01.16