My guest today is Rami Ismail, a Dutch/Egyptian video game developer, creator of presskit() and one half of one of the most prolific and successful independent video game studios of the past few years, Vlambeer.
Episode 52 - Ori Takemura
My guest today is Ori Takemura. Originally from Russia, Ori is an award winning UX and product designer, a video game designer and the founder of qixen-p design. This is perhaps the most international episode yet. I spoke to Ori about growing up in Russia, winning design awards in Germany, being inspired by Japan and living in Singapore.
Episode 51 - Alexis Kennedy
My guest today is Alexis Kennedy, the founder of Failbetter Games, creator of Fallen London, creative director of Sunless Sea, and as of just a few days ago, the first ever guest writer for BioWare.
Episode 50 - Bennett Foddy
My guest today is Bennett Foddy, the creator of QWOP, GIRP and Multibowl and a professor at the NYU Game Center.
Episode 49 - Steve McNeil
My guest today is Steve McNeil, one of the creators and team captains of Go 8 Bit, a videogame comedy show that started life as a fringe experiment and has now been turned into a real life TV show! It starts tonight in the UK at 10pm on Dave.
Episode 48 - Tony Coles
My guest today is Tony Coles, a freelance videogame writer and former videogame PR. The length of the episode gives you some idea of how passionate and excited Tony is by videogames. This episode runs on the rocket fuel of enthusiasm and nostalgia.
AUTOSAVE (4) - Performance
This is a special episode of Checkpoints all about the relationship between performance and playing games. I spoke with a number of actors about how their relationship with games was shaped by their experience of acting.
Episode 47 - Ellie Gibson
My guest today is Ellie Gibson, one half of the Scummy Mummies Podcast/comedy team, an award winning videogame journalist and coming to TVs near you as the videogame expert in Dara O'Briain's Go 8 Bit.
Episode 46 - Jo Twist
Episode 45 - Chris Remo
My guest today is Chris Remo. Chris is designer and a composer at the videogame studio Campo Santo and the producer and host of Idle Thumbs. After spending a number of years as a videogame journalist Chris moved into development, working on games like Gone Home, The Cave, Thirty Flights of Loving and most recently, Firewatch.
Episode 44 - Chris Totten
My guest today is Chris Totten. An author, architect, founder of the Smithsonian Art Museum Indie Arcade and the Game Artist in Residence at American University. Some CV right? We talk about the relationship between architecture and level design, why Super Mario 3 was such a life changing game, the ubiquity of Madden, how single player games can be communal and a unique teaching experience which replicated the mechanics of Pokemon.
Episode 43 - Eskil Steenberg
My guest today is Eskil Steenberg. A high school dropout who went on to become a researcher at an academic institute just a few years later, Eskil is an incredibly bright and passionate creator of videogames and tools. His game, Love, is bold, imaginative and unlike almost any other game out there. This is a long old episode but Eskil has a lot to talk about including what a game actually is and how he's attempting to re-engineer the internet.
Episode 42 - Dan Croucher
My guest today is Dan Croucher, a videogame producer currently working on [redacted]. Dan started in QA many years ago with Babel, and has gone on to produce games for large developers like Relentless as well as in the indie trenches on Scram Kitty for Dakko Dakko.
Episode 41 - Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy
My guests today are Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy, the directors and producers of the newly released videogame documentary Man vs. Snake.
Episode 40 - Chris Suellentrop
My guest today is Chris Suellentrop. Chris is writer on national affairs & digital culture and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Kotaku, Slate and Wired. Chris has been involved in political writing since 2000, but over the past few years he has become more and more focussed on videogames. He also hosts the excellent podcast Shall We Play a Game? which was recently featured on NPR.
AUTOSAVE (3) - GLESGAMES VIII
On June 11th 2016, Glesgames VIII took place at the Drygate bar here in Glasgow. It was an excellent event, with a ton of good and cool people and excellent local multiplayer games. This episode is all about that.
Episode 39 - John Davison
My guest today is John Davison. John is currently the general manager of Glixel, a new gaming website by the publisher of Rolling Stone, but is perhaps best known to most as the VP of 1up and one of the original hosts of 1up Yours.
Episode 38 - Adriel Wallick
My guest today is Adriel Wallick a programmer, developer and creator of the Train Jam, an annual game jam that, unsurprisingly, takes place on a train as it travels across the US toward GDC.
Episode 37 - Marc Flury
Today's guest on the show is Marc Flury. Marc worked at Harmonix before leaving to form his own company, Drool. Alongside his partner and Lightning Bolt alum Brian Gibson, they've spent the last few years working on the upcoming rhythm violence game, THUMPER. The all caps are mine, but entirely necessary.
Episode 36 - Shailesh Prabhu
Today's guest on the show is Shailesh Prabhu, creative director of Yellow Monkey Studios and owner of one of the finest beards I know of.