Kim and Harrison are here to talk about whether modern games leave enough to the player’s imagination, introducing a New Game Minus feature, if you have a lot of money, you can’t afford faith (from a corporate level), the weirdness of Earthbound, feeling obligated to share lore because you have it instead of holding it back, studios valuing plot logic over emotional logic between characters, open world design problems, giving players more verbs, being able to ask for help more in games, making choices explicit to players, too many twists, and the need for lower stakes.
Kim (scriptwriter at Ubisoft, co-author of the novel "Pure Steele", and co-host of the weekly podcast, "The Sexiest Podcast") and Harrison ( game designer at Telltale on seasons 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: 400 Days, and co-creator of Tales from the Borderlands. Recently a world designer at Hangar 13 on Mafia 3) are here to talk about whether modern games leave enough to the player’s imagination, introducing a New Game Minus feature, if you have a lot of money, you can’t afford faith (from a corporate level), the weirdness of Earthbound, feeling obligated to share lore because you have it instead of holding it back, studios valuing plot logic over emotional logic between characters, open world design problems, giving players more verbs, being able to ask for help more in games, making choices explicit to players, too many twists, and the need for lower stakes.
Our Guests on the Internet
Harrison's Twitter and Podcast.
Stuff We Talked About
Pure Steele by Kim Belair and Ariadne MacGillivray
Imagination vs Immersion by Kim Belair
List of games that support Tourism compiled by JP LeBreton
Arms' lore just gets weirder and weirder by Allegra Frank
The Door Problem by Liz England
Prey vs. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: why one intro works and the other doesn't by Tom Francis
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.