Talking Simulator

Community management with Victoria Tran

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:17 GMT

Victoria Tran is the community director at Innersloth, creators of the incredibly popular Among Us, and she has also worked on games like Unpacking, Boyfriend Dungeon, and Pupperazzi. For this deep dive into what it's like to manage communities of video game players, Victoria tells Jordan what makes her particularly suited to this kind of work, how she hopes to create kinder and more sustainable online communities, and how the approach to community management changes across games of different sizes, genres, and tones.

As always, if you enjoy this episode please do let us know! Rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, share it with your friends on social media (or even in person!), and help us to spread the word.

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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If Found... with Liadh Young

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:29 GMT

The wonderful If Found... is a game you play by erasing the sketch-filled pages of a young Irish woman's diary. So Jordan wanted to talk to its artist, Liadh Young, about the process of creating gorgeous illustrations that were made to be erased.

Links:

We Know the Devil

The Catamites

Hourly Comic Day

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

Goodnight Punpun

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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Wytchwood with Zoe Delahunty-Light

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 00:00:43 GMT

Eurogamer video producer Zoe Delahunty-Light asked Jordan if she could come on the podcast to talk about a recent indie game she "absolutely devoured": Wytchwood. Their conversation ended up covering the pros and cons of repetition in games, how it feels to play as an older female character, and a different kind of video game villain.

Check out Zoe's stream of the first hour of Wytchwood for Eurogamer on YouTube. Jordan also streamed it on Twitch!

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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No Longer Home with Hana Lee

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:42 GMT

Hana Lee co-developed the semi-autobiographical game No Longer Home with their partner Cel Davison (with help from others on the music and code) over the course of six years. In this episode, Hana tells Jordan what it was like to recreate their home and represent their relationship in a game, and how their feelings about it changed over the long development.

No Longer Home features the unhappy consequences of borders and visa limitations. If you've experienced similar, take care when listening to this episode and/or playing the game.

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Crème de la Crème with Hannah Powell-Smith

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:13 GMT

In Crème de la Crème you can be gay, straight, or pansexual; asexual and/or aromantic; monogamous or polyamorous; female, male, or nonbinary. You can choose the genders of other characters, and then befriend them, romance them, or even get engaged. You can use your time at the exclusive finishing school of Gallatin College to study, make connections, suck up to the staff, and try to restore your family name... or explore the darker side of the school and take a stand against it.

So how do you write a game with so much choice, and well enough to win several awards? Jordan asked its writer Hannah Powell-Smith.

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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A Monster's Expedition with Philippa Warr

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:00:23 GMT

Draknek is known for their excellent puzzle games like Sokobond, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and Cosmic Express. A Monster's Expedition (Through Puzzling Exhibitions) continues that legacy but also adds narrative. You play as an adorable monster navigating a museum of humanity curated by someone with only a vague understanding of what any of the objects actually are. In this episode, writer Pip Warr tells Jordan how she drew on her own interests and experience to write the humorous exhibition plaques that provide a moment of respite between the challenging puzzles.

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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Murder by Numbers with Liz Wright

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:08 GMT

Murder by Numbers is a joyful mix of genres: a visual novel with Phoenix Wright style witness interrogation interspersed with nonogram puzzle-solving, in a camp 1990s setting. To get a sense of how a game like that gets made, Jordan spoke to its lead programmer Liz Wright, who explains how she built the framework to hold all of those disparate parts, what she would change if there was a sequel (please, let there be a sequel), and what it's like to move from working on tools to working on games... and back again.

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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Romance in games with Sarah Wendell

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:13 GMT

Sarah Wendell is the co-founder of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a website for readers of romance fiction, and host of their podcast Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. When she's not reading, she loves to play video games, so Jordan invited her on the show to talk about how games approach her area of expertise: romance.

For this whistlestop tour through how romance is written in the kinds of games Sarah plays (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Stardew Valley...), she and Jordan discuss the male gaze, indecision when faced with an abundance of love interests, happily ever afters, whether or not romanceable characters should have their own preferences, and what romance novels Sarah would like to see adapted into a game.

Sarah has also discussed this topic with her cohost Amanda and with Laura Nash from The Short Game podcast.

Books mentioned: Alyssa Cole's Reluctant Royals and Shelly Laurenston's Call of Crows.

That Twitter thread about the male gaze that lived rent free in Sarah's head is from @kyalbr.

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Unpacking with Wren Brier

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 17:00:49 GMT

Jordan knew she would love Unpacking, but it turned out to be one of her favourite games of the year so far. In this episode, she interviews its creative director Wren Brier about how this gentle puzzle game about unpacking moving boxes uses that popular concept of 'environmental storytelling' to almost wordlessly convey a character's life and relationships.

Mix: Dan Parkes

Music: Jazz Mickle

Art: Emily Majarian

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Mental illness as a plot twist with Katherine Cross

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 23:00:02 GMT

After playing yet another indie game that used something that looked a lot like mental illness for its plot twist, Jordan wrote an article for Waypoint criticising the trope, which quoted a similarly critical review of the game Draugen by writer Katherine Cross. For this first episode of Season 3 of Talking Simulator, Jordan and Katherine pick apart the problems they have with the use of certain kinds of life experiences for surprise reveals in video games, and in doing so also discuss content warnings and spoilers.

If you enjoy this episode, please let us know!

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Majora's Mask with Shay Thompson

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

As the 35th anniversary of the Zelda franchise prompts rankings and discussion of which game was best, Breath of the Wild seems to top everyone’s lists. But not Shay Thompson’s. In this final episode of series 2 of Talking Simulator, she tells Jordan what she loves about a very different kind of Zelda game: the creepy time-looping Majora’s Mask.

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Using play for everyday activism with mattie brice

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

mattie brice is an activist, critic, designer, and currently Visiting Assistant Arts Professor at New York University’s Game Center. In this episode, she and Jordan discuss the effectiveness of so-called educational games and games for change, and mattie shares her ideas for how we can use play for everyday activism, touching on topics from diversity and inclusion to psychological experiments to BDSM.

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The future of narrative design with Leigh Alexander

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Writer and narrative designer Leigh Alexander, known for her work on games like Neo Cab and Reigns: Her Majesty, talks through some of her thoughts on the current state of narrative design in games and its potential for the future.

How can narrative designers meet a younger audience where they already are? Is it possible to harness the undeniable power of social media in more constructive ways? And what can we learn from looking back to the games and other future-looking media of the past?

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Storytelling with Kim Belair

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Kim Belair is a writer and narrative designer who has worked on a wide range of games, from big franchises like the recent Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to smaller, more unique titles like Neo Cab and Goodbye Volcano High.

She talks Jordan through what it was like to work on Valhalla, the latest entry to a series with more than a decade of history, and how she contributed to what makes it different (no spoilers!). Then, the conversation expands into broader questions about the work of writing video games. How does it differ across games and teams? What’s the role of a narrative development company like Sweet Baby? And what are Kim’s hopes for the future of storytelling in games?

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I Am Dead with Catherine Johnson

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I Am Dead is a charming puzzle adventure game from the creators of Hohokum and Wilmot’s Warehouse, in which you play as a ghost finding other ghosts by exploring an island, unlocking the memories of its colourful characters, and using supernatural powers to peer through objects and find mementos linked to the dead.

Catherine Johnson is an experienced writer of books, radio, television and more, but this is her first game. She tells Jordan what it was like to jump into this new medium, and how she and the rest of the team crafted this rich world and the stories the player uncovers within.

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African game development with Sithe Ncube

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The African continent has historically been underrepresented in the global game development scene, but game developers living there want to change that. Sithe Ncube, who is Zambian and currently studying Computer Science in South Africa, spends much of her spare time working with various initiatives supporting Black game developers, African game developers, and specifically African women making games.

Among other work, Sithe is a strategic advisor for Humble Bundle’s new $1 million a year Black Game Developer Fund, and a regional organiser for Global Game Jam supporting participants in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this conversation, she tells Jordan about game development in Africa and about her own initiative, Prosearium, which aims to document 1,000 African women creating and contributing to games.

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The Sims 4 with Danielle (EbonixSims)

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The Sims is one of the most popular series of games in the world, in part because it caters to many players who are underrepresented elsewhere. But players like Danielle have long been dissatisfied with the way this series represents Black people, with fewer options for skin tones and hair styles than their white equivalents and often lower quality for those options that do exist.

Danielle, otherwise known as EbonixSims, tells Jordan how she started making custom content for The Sims 4 to fill this gap and provide more options for Black sims, and how she has been involved—as an EA Game Changer—with helping the Sims team make the game better for players like her.

You can find Danielle’s custom content for The Sims 4 at ebonix.com

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Young game designers with Elizabeth Orji-Smith

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In 2019, Elizabeth Orji-Smith was one of the winners of that year’s BAFTA Young Game Designers competition for their game concept Creatively Bankrupt, an action RPG that uses heists to explore topics like unionisation in creative industries. In this episode, they tell Jordan where they got the idea for the game, what they’re up to now, and what they want from the future.

The 2021 BAFTA Young Game Designers competition is open for entries until March 2021. Sadly, a few days before this episode was released, BAFTA shared the news that a previous winner, Lucy-Jack Reynolds, died in March 2020. In her memory, book publisher Muswell Press has launched a competition for entries to a new anthology called Queer Life, Queer Love. Please consider supporting young trans people.

The Beak, Feather, & Bone supplement Tail, Scale, & Bone, which Elizabeth illustrated, is available on itch.io - all proceeds are being donated to the Bukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh.

The actual play podcast that provided some of the inspiration for Creatively Bankrupt is Friends at the Table.

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Fictional games with Brittney Morris

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Brittney Morris is a writer of novels and video games. Her debut novel Slay (2019) is about a fictional online multiplayer game of the same name, designed by a teenager called Kiera as a secret safe space for her and other Black players.

In the novel, Kiera faces a crisis when the rest of the world finds out about her game, but this conversation doesn’t spoil what happens next. Instead, Brittney tells Jordan how she designed her fictional game, and what it was like to go on to write for real-world video games like Subnautica: Below Zero.

Brittney mentions the novel Warcross by Marie Lu, the film Black Panther, and the television series Code Lyoko.

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Before I Forget with Chella Ramanan

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

For this first episode of series 2, Jordan invites her good friend Chella Ramanan to talk about her new game Before I Forget, which tells the story of a woman with dementia. They discuss the main characters—Indian cosmologist Sunita and her pianist husband Dylan—and how Chella wrote mental illness into the game, which may well teach you something you didn’t know about what having dementia is really like.

This episode contains discussion of some key moments from the game, which some listeners may want to save for after they’ve played it, but avoids spoiling the central mystery of the story.

Chella mentions the film Still Alice and the novel Elizabeth is Missing.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons (cultural events) with Marie Foulston

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:00:00 GMT

In the final episode of this five-part mini-series all about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Marie explains how she came to host one of the Now Play This at Home events in Animal Crossing, and describes some of the other cultural events she’s seen take place in this game and others in the series.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Bunny Day) with Pip Warr

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 13:00:00 GMT

In episode four of this five-part mini-series all about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Jordan and Pip discuss the run up to Bunny Day and its much-maligned proliferation of eggs. Since this episode was recorded, Nintendo has reduced the rate at which eggs appear, but people are still annoyed, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where the event coincides with cherry blossom season. The big question, of course, is: would we be this frustrated with the fortnight of changes to the game if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic?

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons (multiplayer) with V Buckenham

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 13:00:00 GMT

In the third episode of this five-part mini series all about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, V tells Jordan what delights and frustrates them about the online multiplayer aspects of the game, and the online community around it.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons (learning) with Chella Ramanan

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 13:00:00 GMT

In the second episode of this five-part mini series all about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Jordan and Chella discuss how well the game introduces his systems to players. With millions playing New Horizons and sharing their progress on social media, what is it like for those players who are taking things more slowly and learning as they go?

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons (min-maxing) with Kat Brewster

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 13:00:00 GMT

While preparing for Series 2 in the midst of a pandemic, we’ve made this bonus mini-series about a game that has arrived at an opportune moment for millions of isolated and anxious people worldwide: Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

In this first episode, Jordan and Kat discuss the notion of min-maxing and the discomfort that comes when the process of optimisation involves the consumption of natural resources. And, since Kat is a researcher of archives, they pose the question: why do we collect things?

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Telling Lies with Lizi Attwood

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Miraculously, this episode about the investigative full-motion video game Telling Lies has absolutely no spoilers. Instead, the game’s sole programmer Lizi Attwood explains how she developed the virtual desktop with which the player interacts, what it was like to work on a game that – by its FMV nature – basically had no content for a large part of development, and how the changing reflection of the player character seen in the background of the screen at all times actually works.

Jordan also frets that she’s playing the game wrong.

This episode marks the end of the first series of Talking Simulator. The podcast will be back with a second series, so make sure to Tweet your ideas for excellent potential guests to @talkingsimpod.

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Parenthood with Keza MacDonald

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 23:00:00 GMT

The Guardian’s video games editor Keza MacDonald is about to have a baby, at which point she will have – as she puts it – “a bunch of kids”. She joined Jordan to talk about life as a parent who plays and works in video games, and about how parents are represented in the games themselves. Why don’t kids’ games feature parental characters? Why did we suddenly get an influx of dads? And where are all the mums?

For more chat from the perspective of parents who play games, make sure to check out Keza’s new podcast Spawnpoint.

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Esports with Frankie Ward

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 23:00:00 GMT

The umbrella of “games” contains many categories, and one that Jordan knows very little about is esports. Luckily, esports host Frankie Ward – who you may know as the woman who appeared in a shark costume when she presented the PC Gaming Show at E3 2019 – took the time to explain why she loves esports so much, and to answer questions like:

Why have publishers failed to create brand new esports?

How do these digital sports compare to the more traditional physical ones?

And how does the industry make its money?

(Once you’ve listened to this episode, you may also like to check out Cecilia D'Anastasio’s investigation for Kotaku on whether esports is a bubble ready to burst.)

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Elsinore with Katie Chironis

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 23:00:00 GMT

In this episode: another time loop game. In Elsinore, you play as Ophelia trying to change the events of the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet, which have been condensed down to a four-day loop. Every time Ophelia dies or fails to avert disaster, the loop resets. Since all Ophelia keeps between loops is any knowledge gained, the game is all about choosing what to say to whom and when.

Jordan invited Elsinore’s writer and team lead Katie Chironis on to ask more about the process of building this clever social simulation as a side project over the course of seven years, and to find out whether she thinks Shakespeare would approve.

This episode contains one or two minor spoilers for Elsinore, but nothing that would ruin the experience of playing the game.

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Outer Wilds with Maggie Tan

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Outer Wilds is an open-world mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop, which has proven so popular that people are already calling it a potential Game of the Year for 2019. But it’s not flawless. Or, at least: not every player has enjoyed every minute of the game. Jordan invited her friend and colleague Maggie Tan onto the podcast to talk about how very physical frustrations can affect the enjoyment of a game that’s all about the acquisition of knowledge.

This episode contains spoilers for Outer Wilds, and one spoiler for Oxenfree. Outer Wilds is a game best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible, so if you haven’t played it and think you might like to, maybe save this episode for later.

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Feral Vector with Chella Ramanan

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Compare and contrast the previous episode on E3 with this one on Feral Vector, an annual festival of games and play that takes place in an old church up a hill in a Yorkshire town called Hebden Bridge. Chella Ramanan, a games writer and one of the founders of POC in Play, explains why this left-field festival is so important to her and to the UK games scene.

Chella also wrote about Feral Vector for gameindustry.com

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E3 2019 with Laura Dale

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Laura Dale has been following E3 for 15 years, first personally and then professionally. She tells us how it has changed in that time, whether it still has anything to offer, and what E3 2019 says about the current state of video games.

Very few actual games are discussed.

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Heaven's Vault with Philippa Warr

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Heaven’s Vault is an “archeological science fiction adventure game” from Inkle. In the game, you – as archeologist Aliya – sail the Nebula from moon to moon, exploring ruins and meeting people and, most importantly, translating an ancient language called… Ancient. Philippa Warr wrote a glowing review of Heaven’s Vault for PC Gamer, so Jordan invited her on the podcast to explain more about why she loved it so much.

While this episode is almost entirely about the translation puzzles, no actual solutions are discussed beyond those you might discover within the first few minutes of play.

You can watch Jon Ingold’s talk “Designing a Lost Language for Heaven’s Vault” on YouTube.

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Astrologaster with Katharine Neil

Mon, 20 May 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Astrologaster (2019) is “a story-driven astrological comedy game set in Shakespeare’s London”, a genre that must surely soon be as popular as the battle royale. It was developed by a whole team of people for independent developer Nyamyam, and designed and directed by Jennifer Schneidereit. But Jordan wanted to talk to its narrative designer and writer Katharine Neil, to find out how she managed to squeeze history, astrology, and comedy into a game.

Content warning: this episode contains mention of miscarriage. There are no major spoilers for the story of Astrologaster, but there are some for events that took place during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

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Award-worthiness with Kat Brewster

Fri, 03 May 2019 13:35:12 GMT

After attending the 2019 BAFTA Games Awards, Jordan wanted to talk about how video games are tackled by this venerable British institution. Kat Brewster, a PhD student who a) is not British, and b) has not played any of the winning games, was the perfect guest.

This episode contains minor spoilers for the beginning of God of War, the beginning of Life is Strange 2, and the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC Bloodline.

In a previous version of this episode we misattributed the creation of Queers in Love at the End of the World. The game was developed by Anna Anthropy.

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