with Mark DeLoura
Mark DeLoura's decades-long career in games includes roles ranging from Nintendo engineer to White House senior advisor.
2026.02.26
Nice Replay
- Emotional Effects of Music
- A New Foe Has Appeared!
Mark rushes through the introduction to talk about his two rush projects, one of which, Blippo+, was announced on Sunday during the PC Gaming Show!
2026.02.19
Nice Games Jam
The clubhouse gets Cretaceous this week; your nice hosts have been challenged to create a game about dinosaurs and their feeding habits.
2026.02.12
Nice Thinking
Stephen Business is back! And he’s attempting to make a meme into a reality. The clubhouse attempts to answer these (and other) questions:
2026.02.05
with Freya Holmér
We welcome Freya Holmér back into the clubhouse to talk about 3D game development for independent game developers.
2026.01.29
- What Happened With Future Club
- Design Surface Area
Your nice hosts all secured a Switch 2 pre-order... from a certain point of view. Then, Stephen examines the body, Mark attempts a vocabulary, and Lydia has recommendations.
2026.01.22
Nice Games Jam
Roles reverse as Dale joins Stephen and Lydia for a Nice Game Jam prompted by Mark. The results are an antiques-fueled jaunt through time, and an unexpected win for Stephen.
2026.01.15
with Haley MacLeon
Your nice hosts get a crash course on video game IP law from lawyer and MinnMax cohort, Haley MacLeon.
2026.01.08
- Composting
- Overdesigning
Ellen's back for a serendipitously in-sync pair of metacognition-rich roundtable topics.
2026.01.01
with Lydia Symchych
All of your hosts are together in the Clubhouse for a special interview! Lydia Symchych is an impact game designer who has been working with Ellen over the last year.
2025.12.25
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