Talking all about design this week with Jolie (cinematic artist & game designer at Telltale Games on The Walking Dead: 400 Days, The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands and more, and currently a level designer at Ubisoft San Francisco on South Park: The Fracture But Whole) and Teddy (writer and game designer, worked on Shove Pro, The Moonlighters, and Hyper Light Drifter, and currently a creative director at Square Enix Montreal). We also chat about the story and lack of text in Hyper Light Drifter, games being different based on what department heads the studio, breaking design down into systems/levels/narratives, narrative puzzle design, iteration, having intimate conversations with developers by playing their game, giving players choice when they don’t expect it, the balance of showing how much a game is listening to players, subtlety in design, storytelling through level design, games withholding their payoffs for too long, and the need to not be precious with your work.
Our Guests on the Internet
Jolie's Twitter.
Teddy's Twitter, Podcast, and Hyper Light Drifter.
Stuff We Talked About
The Moonlighters
Catherine
Jolie’s GDC 2016 talk - Solving Puzzle Design
Teddy’s Lost Levels talk
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
The Five C's of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques by Joseph V. Mascelli
Alias
Prison Break
Sleep No More (again)
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.