09 Apr 2020 — Filed in:
Episodes | Season 3It began as an impromptu April Fools' Day gag, but Pimps at Sea was the joke that kept on giving. This is the story of how a chance encounter on the streets of Chicago led to a semi-annual tradition, an industry/fan-favourite insider joke, and a cult classic multiplayer game.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: bungie, matt soell, pimps at sea, joke games, comedy, halo
27 Feb 2020 — Filed in:
Episodes | Season 3How 2006 PS2 hit Bully (aka Canis Canem Edit) showed an alternate future for Rockstar and the open-world genre, with its compromised-yet-brilliant schoolyard satire — here I dive deep into the game, not for its overblown controversies but rather for its struggles against technological limitations and its triumphs in world-building, satire, and focused, more intimate and structured open-world game design. And I wonder why, nearly 15 years on, open-world games continue to strive for bigger and bigger playgrounds filled with more and more trivial collectibles rather than building on the legacy of Bully's deliberate, glorious smallness.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: bully, rockstar, open world, ps2, dma design, game design, satire, comedy
25 Jul 2019 — Filed in:
Episodes | Season 2Far from a mere "Worms in 3D", Hogs of War was its own breed of madness. Hear the story of how it evolved from a concept of "Command and Conquer with pigs", what made it such a well-designed satire, and how this underrated PlayStation game saw the funny side of serious global conflict.
See full show notes and episode player…Tags: game design, gremlin, worms, hogs of war, infogrames, ps1, artillery, british games, multiplayer games, command and conquer, comedy, satire
