Links
If you’re curious about me or my games, here’s some podcasts, video interviews, and Q&A sessions I’ve done:| Date | Source | Episode | Discussed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-08-10 | The Kindred Spirit Podcast YouTube channel | Livestream interview [Ted Vessenes + me] | Nature Incarnate |
| 2023-04-26 | Cardboard Creations | Video interview | Spirit Island (initial design/creation), very brief For Science! bit at very end |
| 2022-07-30 | The Kindred Spirit Podcast | Episode #67 | Horizons of Spirit Island |
| 2022-05-22 | The Board Game Community Show | Episode #60 | Games of *many* sorts, several other hobbies, Spirit Island, For Science!, multiple digressions, and a memory near the very end |
| 2021-07-09 | Euro Board Games FB group | Written interview | Design process, how I got into board games, and miscellaneous bits |
| 2021-06-17 | Lo scelto dai goblin 2021 award | Video interview (Italian, Q&A translated) | Spirit Island, one question on For SCIENCE! |
| 2021-05-22 | The Kindred Spirit podcast | Episode #38 | Loads of Spirit Island, some non-games |
| 2021-01-27 | Solo Playthroughs | Video interview | Spirit Island, a bit of For SCIENCE! |
| 2020-11 | Player Lair podcast | Episode #15 | Spirit Island, For SCIENCE! |
| 2020-05-14 | The Cardboard Herald | Video interview | *Spirit Island (+Jagged Earth, digital), For Science!, game design |
| 2020-04-26 | Quackalope | Video interview | |
| 2019-10-22 | The Nerdlab | Episode #33 | Asymmetry in board games, Spirit Island |
| 2019-10-14 | Handelabra (creators of SI Digital) | Video interview | Spirit Island + digital |
| 2019-06-13 | Dragon’s Demize | Video Jenga interview | Spirit Island, For Science!, hobbies, and more |
| 2019-04-30 | The Nerdlab | Episode #22 [one of many designers interviewed] | “The One Thing You Need to Know as a Game Designer” |
| 2019-01-04 | Every Night is Game Night (now Shelf Stories on YouTube) | Episodes #120 and #121 [3-guest show: Elizabeth Hargrave, Sarah Reed, and me] | Games with non-traditional themes |
| 2018-10-25 | AMA from 2018 | Spirit Island, designing games, boardgame industry, and more | |
| 2018-10-24 | The Cardboard Herald | Episode #102 | Spirit Island (+Jagged Earth) |
| 2018-10-17 | Greater Than Games (publisher of SI) | Video interview | Jagged Earth |
| 2018-08-20 | Paradox DoxCast | Episode #231 | Spirit Island, For Science! |
| 2018-06-13 | The Thoughtful Gamer | Episode #33 | Spirit Island, For Science!, and more |
| 2018-05-08 | So Very Wrong About Games | Episode #24 | Spirit Island |
| 2017-10-27 | Low Player Count | Interview | |
| 2017-09-17 | Quarter to Three | Interview | Spirit Island |
| 2015-09-24 | Vox Republica of Cardboard Republic | Episode #099 | Spirit Island |
| 2014-12-05 | Cardboard Vault | Video interview live at BGG.CON 2014 | Spirit Island first look |
If you’d like to interview me
I’m generally amenable, though I won’t always be available – I don’t want to cut too much into time spent on game design, parenting, or other pursuits. If I’m actively trying to publicize something, I’ll carve out more time for interviews and the like; the reverse if I’m heads-down in the middle of a project. I somewhat prefer podcasts and other live interviews to “here’s a list of text questions, answer them at your leisure”. Even though live interviews are less flexible in scheduling, I find them more fun, with a greater sense of personal connection… and empirically, the text-based interviews have taken more of my time (editing) and been less enduring online (some never post at all; those which do have rarely stayed up for longer than a year or two). If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend this thread by Elizabeth Hargrave on requesting interviews, as well as the follow-up comments on it. All the info she discusses is very useful to have up-front.Talks
(This will eventually go into a “Game Design” section of the website, but that’s not built yet.)The Lens of Tempo
At Tabletop Network 2019, I gave a talk on The Lens of Tempo (YouTube video). This concept of “lenses” – particular ways / viewpoints of looking at a game – comes from Jesse Schell’s excellent book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. The book has several lenses which touch on timing, but not from this particular angle: “how much progress towards victory do you make per turn?”, with the closely linked question of “how much advantage do you gain per turn?”. (The Interest Curve is the closest thing he describes, and while it’s related, it’s not the same.) I don’t think this lens is unusually distinctive or anything, just that it’s a useful addition to the many other lens-vantage-points already described. When I run across other discussions relevant to the concept, I’ll link to them below:- Episode 87 of The Nerdlab – Victory Points and Player Agency with Tom Lehmann – I was originally going to just point at the discussion of victory point chits from 42:00 – 46:20, but in scrubbing to find those time markers I realized much of the episode is relevant in one way or another.
- Cole Wehrle’s Designer Diary “Two Types of Time in Arcs” – looking at Arcs’ treatment of time / tempo in a variety of ways, some of which involve the sort of tempo I was thinking about with my talk.