Listening to Game Designers

As good as interviews with game designers can get, designers are sometimes more open about their work when they’re talking with other designers. The Idle Thumbs podcast network has two great podcasts with these kinds of interviews, get blasted:

  • Tone Control
    Steve Gaynor (Tacoma, Gone Home) interviewed developers for 13 episodes. You’ve got your Ken Levine and Tim Schafer interviews in addition to greats like Tom Francis of Heat Signature and Gunpoint and Brendon Chung of Atom Zombie Smasher and more.
  • Designer Notes
    Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, Overland) and Soren Johnson (Civilization 3 & 4 and Offworld Trading Company) even interviewed Steve Gaynor with their take on this genre of podcast. It’s so good at giving you insights into game designers. I’m currently on episode 2 of the 4 episode series with Sid Meier and there’s so much great stuff in there about the process of working on his incredible games. Some of the best episodes are with designers I wasn’t familiar with at all. One of the recent episodes had Margaret Robertson on and she discussed her work with a game about a movie where a woman was found dead in her apartment after three years.