- 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
It's a gamedev podcast!
The show where nice gamedevs Ellen Burns-Johnson, Mark LaCroix, and Stephen McGregor (with friends and guests) talk gaming and game development!
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
"More Ellen in the future." What We Did On Our Winter Break (2024-25)
#380
NEWS! New episodes now come out a week early on Patreon!! Sign up to listen to next week's episode now!
2025.03.06
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
Nice Games Jam
2025.01.09
with Ron Gilbert
Your nice hosts welcome famed designer Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Thimbleweed Park) into the clubhouse to discuss the virtues of inexperience, friction for its own sake, how it's all about story, and it's puzzles all the way down.
2025.01.02
- Code Libraries
- Game Overs
This week, your nice hosts talk about code that isn't yours and ask about the natural conclusion of the narrative. Mark is handy, Ellen kinda wants to add a note, and Stephen is grounded.
2024.12.27