The Clockwork Game Design Podcast

It has been an amazing ten years! Thank you to everyone who listened! This is a short episode where I just talk a little bit about where I’m at, and why I’m deciding to end the Clockwork Game Design Podcast. Thank you to all of the amazing guests – DOZENS of them – over the years who provided their amazing insights and thoughts on a huge variety of topics. I feel like we really contributed something to the archives of game design history and I’m really proud of that. I might be back with another podcast or video series at some point. But right now I’m mostly excited about making games. Thanks so much for listening all these years and thank you for supporting my Patreon, which (for now) is entirely devoted to making games and running our amazing Discord community. See you soon!

Hi all! Today I have a fascinating conversation with the brilliant Austin Anderson, who is I think the last of the guests that I’ll have on the show from the Alt-F4 conference (along with Dr. Rachel Kowert and Kathleen Morrissey). In this conversation we talk about a bunch of AAA games, such as Detroit Become Human the Last of Us and others, along with some of the ways in which these games get credit for being progressive while simultaneously protecting the neoliberal status quo. By the way, lots of The Last Of Us spoilers in this episode, so please be warned that the second half of the conversation goes into that territory. Thanks for listening. As always, you can support this podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/keithburgun and becoming a patron!

Hi everyone! I come to you with another great conversation, with another super cool person that I met at the Alt-F4: Rebooting Community After Gamergate conference: Kathleen Morrissey. Kathleen is working on a PhD in computational media over at Worchester Polytechnic Institute, she’s done all kinds of awesome academic stuff on the subjects of games, media studies, critical theory analysis and a lot more. She’s also a game designer who has created what I would almost call an “anti escape room” over at WPI called Memoirscape. We met and immediately started having interesting conversations about Final Fantasy. This was a longer (maybe the longest in Clockwork Game Design Podcast history? Someone fact-check me) conversation that touched on a wide range of topics, ranging from a conversation about consensual play, the lasting role of GamerGate, and of course… Final Fantasy. Thanks for listening! (Oh, and yeah, we have a new intro song. The old one was just a little too in your face for me so I just threw this one together real quick.) You can support this show by supporting me over at my Patreon, which is available right here.

Hi all! today I have a wide ranging conversation with Dr. Rachel Kowert, a researcher who studies the effects of games and also discusses a wide range of other pop culture topics, through her youtube channel Psychgeist. She’s written and contributed to a lot of books (including a Psychgeist series, spoken at numerous events including the United Nations and the United States Congress. I saw her talk at the Alt F4: Rebooting Community After Gamergate conference which was extremely impressive, and we quickly got into talking Final Fantasy between talks. We get into a bunch of topics here, such as dark patterns, games in communities, Final Fantasy games, and a lot more. I hope you enjoy the conversation! As always, you can support this podcast over at my Patreon.

Hi all! The Clockwork Game Design Podcast has re-taken-over its own podcast space from the Bannet Bulletin for a week, to share with you this exciting conversation I just had with my old pal Ryan Rigney. His first published game, Fast Fast Laser Laser, is actually a game that I did all of the artwork for, which was actually really fun. But these days he’s known for his comms and marketing work, heading up these departments for huge games like League of Legends, Apex Legend, PUBG, and Omega Strikers. His current company, Odyssey Interactive, is now in the process of deciding if they want to make Byte Breakers or not! All game devs need to check out his blog over at pushtotalk.gg. Thanks for listening. Up next: more Bannet Bulletins, and at least one more cool interview that’s already lined up.

Above is an early screenshot of our combat system in the prototype for Through Broken Land, which is coming along smoothly. The incredible UI art was just freshly finished by our artist, Wizbane, and oh my god I love it! Anyway, today I’m talking about our Impulse System, which is the core of the FF13-inspired combat system in Through Broken Land. Talking about why it is the way it is, how it works, and some stuff about action economy in RPGs. I also talk a bunch about a game I’m playing (and loving) right now: Bravely Default, for 3DS. It’s like Final Fantasy V with Haste cast onto its jobs system. Specifically, I talk about random encounters, and the tendency to want to speed up or automate these battle systems and what that means. Thanks for listening. If you think Through Broken Land is cool and you want to support its production, please visit www.patreon.com/keithburgun and sign up to become a patron! Catch you next time!

Hey all. Today I wanted to talk about the SKILL GRID for my upcoming RPG Through Broken Land, and talk about how it interacts with playable characters. I also give an update on some of the games I’m playing. Enjoy! The FFX “Sphere Grid”, an inspiration for our Skill Grid Don’t forget: you can support my work by going to www.patreon.com/keithburgun and becoming a patron!

Hello all and welcome to the first episode of the Bannet Bulletin! It’s still the Clockwork Game Design Podcast feed, but for awhile I’m going to do a series of shorter podcast episodes that talk about what is going on and what I’m thinking about with the RPG I’m making. This episode is an overview – what is this new game? What’s important? When can you actually play it? In future episodes, we’ll do deep dives into other aspects of the game. If you enjoy the episode, let me know – it will encourage me to take the time to make more! And as always, you can support this show and the creation of my games over at my Patreon page.

Hey all! Today I have a new episode where I’m going to be talking about two things. First, I’m going to report on a bunch of RPGs that I’ve been playing or trying out, and give my takes. I say more about each game on the podcast, so make sure to check that out. Here are some quick bullet points, though! What I’ve been playing SCARLET NEXUS – Extremely polished, simple but fun combat. Kind of “adolescent anime” feeling story, a little silly and a little too fantastical in its basic universe for me, but seems well written. Overly smoothed out, like most modern big production videogames. Bad level design. TALES OF BERSERIA – GREAT opening, compelling main character and good plot gravity. Sadly, also a way overly complicated combat system and overall it has “modern videogame over-smoothed-ness”. IN STARS AND TIME – Very cool game that I recommend you go check out. Great art, great music, good writing. It’s this and Octopath Traveler 2 I’m most excited to play next. Combat system miiiight be a little too simple, I don’t know. Turn based (I think it’s made with RPG maker but they do a good job of not making it feel like it). OCTOPATH TRAVELER 2 – This is probably my favorite of all of the games I’ve been playing, but, I am a little bleh about the way it tells its story. Doing 8 “90 minute character intro chapters” in a row sounds terrible. Introduce characters in a more natural way, please! Cool combat system, good art, good music – overall, good stuff. And it’s actually turn based, whaaaaaat! DONE WITH BALDURS GATE 3 – You know all about Baldur’s Gate 3. Listen to the podcast to hear me say more about it. The TL;DR is that honestly this game’s biggest flaw is the D&D license. Still one of the best RPGs of the last decade, though. FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS – Too depressing and cynical and 90s edgelord for me. Also I appreciate Obsidian’s attempt to Un-Bethesda the Bethesda Game, but the damage was too deep. KINGDOM HEARTS – As much hate as it seems to get, it sort of seems like videogames all turned into Kingdom Hearts over the 20 years I wasn’t watching. Surprisingly fun combat, but forced crappy minigames and why on earth would I want Cloud to talk to Mickey Mouse??? FINAL FANTASY XVI – After playing a bunch more Kingdomheartslikes and getting more used to that, I’ve gotta say, this is a very well made Kingdomheartslike. Still needs more color and sensitivity. Probably just needs to be way more overtly gay. Next up on the docket are Trails in Cold Steel 1, Demon’s Roots and Suikoden 2.   Some bad qualities in RPGs Recently, I wrote about the three most important qualities in an RPG. Today, I’d like to talk about some of the worst things in RPGs, and I’m specifically going to be talking about JRPG-style RPGs here, more than west

Hi all! Today I have a nice podcast episode, all about RPGs and RPG design! I feel like I have a lot to say here, and I do dare say that I am slowly, slowly pursuing becoming some kind of crazy expert on the topic, so hopefully there’s some interesting stuff in here to think about. I’m also starting pre-pre-production on my very own RPG finally (!!), so a lot of this is very non-theoretical for me. I also talk a bit about Trails in the Sky: First Chapter which I’ve been playing a bunch on and off over the past month or so, as well as a bunch of other games. Finally, I answer a bunch of questions from people on the Discord. Please let me know what you think below in the comments! Thanks for listening. Related stuff: definitely check out my piece on the 3 most important qualities in an RPG! And of course my Final Fantasy episode. You can support this show – as well as my upcoming RPG! – by becoming a Patron on patreon.com/keithburgun. Thanks again!

Hey all! This is kind of a “bonus episode” of sorts, only 30 minutes long. Here’s some of the topics covered: A bit of navel gazing about my own theory and approach to games and how it has changed A short essay I wrote about “speaking the language” and how building off of existing designs […]

Hi all! It’s been awhile since the last episode. This year I got married and went on my honeymoon, so things have been kind of crazy. But now, they’re sort of going back to normal. Over the last six months, I guess partially because I was doing a bit of traveling, but also partially because […]

Today Brett Lowey and I discuss DRAGON BRIDGE, my two player bumping card game. It’s a weird game for me, in a bunch of ways. For one thing, it was my first published tabletop game. But also, I produced it in a ridiculously short amount of time. That makes it even more… strange and interesting, […]

Today I bring you one of the world’s more renowned strategy videogame designers – the designer of Civilization IV, one of the most beloved in the series (probably my favorite one still), and the founder of Mohawk Games, who created Offworld Trading Company, and most recently, Old World. Old World has been out for awhile […]

Wow, things certainly have changed a lot since 2004, huh? Brett and I took a journey into the strange Reiner Knizia card game, Blue Moon. It’s… a challenging game, that’s for sure. Enjoy the episode!

Hello everyone! Welcome to our third episode of STRATEGY CAN BE FUN. Today, Brett Lowey and I discuss the Cole Wehrle game, Pax Pamir. I think this is maybe the first game where Brett and I’s positions on the game have diverged somewhat, although perhaps we have also pulled each other’s opinions together somewhat as […]

Hello all! Thanks so much for checking out the second episode of our new podcast, STRATEGY CAN BE FUN? It’s up sooner than expected — when you have a new show, I think it’s good to get a few episodes out quickly if you can. Today Brett Lowey and I are so excited to present […]

Surprise! New podcast! Introducing STRATEGY CAN BE FUN?, a new podcast with myself and Brett Lowey. Brett is a game designer and developer, creator behind BrainGoodGames, frequent guest on the Clockwork Game Design Podcast, and all-around awesome guy. We’ve decided to come up with a new show that we do as a collaborate project, one […]

Hello all! I have a special episode for you today, wherein we have a great big discussion on MAGIC: THE GATHERING – something I haven’t really dived into too deeply before on the show. For most of my life I was very, very skeptical of these games – I still think, for good reason. But […]

Hello everyone and welcome to the 91st episode of the CLOCKWORK GAME DESIGN PODCAST! Today’s guest is Dan Felder, a game designer who has worked at several studios, including EA, Blizzard, and Abrakam Games, where he worked on the popular CCG, Faeria. He also has written a bunch of game design articles on game balance, […]

Alexander King, who teaches at the NYU Game Center and the Parsons School of Design, has been tweeting about math for game designers a bunch – you should definitely go check out his tweet thread on the topic here. It also got me interested to have him on the show – I don’t think we’ve […]

Today’s guest is Dayan Radisic, the lead developer at Stygian Software, the team behind the indie CRPG UnderRail. I’ve personally only played a handful of hours of the game so far, but it’s definitely the kind of game that’s in the “RPG Project” territory – it’s quite clearly super inspired by games like the original […]

Hello again! This here is probably the most nitty gritty strategy game design podcast episode I’ve had on the show yet, which is made possible because I have a shared language and understanding with today’s guest. This guest, by the way, is none other than Brett Lowey, who has been on the podcast several times […]

If you listened to my last episode all the way to the end, you might’ve heard Justin Ma mention a game that he’s been playing recently that he thought was cool. That game, which he recommended and I ended up playing, was Quantum Protocol. Quantum Protocol is a one-player digital card game that isn’t a […]

I spoke with Justin Ma, co-founder of Subset Games, who are well known for their hit indie games FTL and Into the Breach. Our conversation touched on a pretty wide range of topics, from their creative process at Subset games, to the state of the industry, to Justin’s feelings on game design theory in general. […]

Today’s guest is Tanya X. Short, the co-founder of Kitfox Games, and the designer behind Moon Hunters and most recently, Boyfriend Dungeon. Tanya is also a contributor over at Gamasutra, where she writes about a bunch of game development and marketing stuff. I had wanted to get Tanya on the podcast for a long time, […]

Hello all and welcome to another episode of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast! This is Raph’s second time on the podcast (the first time was Episode 37) but it’s always good to have him on the show. On this episode, Raph and I talk a lot about simulationist RPGs, some of his experience working on […]

Hi! I come bearing the latest episode of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast! This one features Brett Lowey of Braingoodgames, who has been on the show before! He’s a great person to talk to for me, because we have just enough agreement and disagreement to have good discussions. In this episode, we talk about his […]

Hey everyone! Thanks for listening to this, the 82nd episode of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast. This episode doesn’t have a guest, it’s all me, and I’m talking about a bunch of stuff I’m thinking of with turn based tactics combat systems. A lot of this stuff is still up in the air, at […]

Kyle Kukshtel said he sees me as a bit like an “alternative universe version of” himself, because we’re both solo indie devs working on turn-based tactical wargames that do things differently. His game, Cantata, is looking really cool and different, and he’s been working on it for somewhere around six years! I’m really excited for […]

Today I had a conversation with Adam Stewart of One Man Left, one of my favorite indie developers of all time. The company has downsized since its heyday of the early 2010’s, and after operating for about ten years, there is now literally just one man left carrying the torch. Adam is currently working on […]

Today’s show has two main topics: how do we prioritize what to do as solo devs working on large projects? And secondly, we discuss Dark Souls and the other Fromsoft games. Today’s guest is Peter “Nomorebirds” Siecienski, who some might know as the winner of our Push the Lane Fan Art Contest, or as a […]

On today’s show, we have an interview with designer and theorist Fabian Fischer. Fabian is the designer behind Crimson Company, which is now running its fourth Kickstarter, which is currently doing incredibly well—at the time of this writing, it has over $33,000 pledged (and they were only asking or $11,000)! On the show, we discuss […]

Hi everyone! Today’s episode goes into some depth about emergent complexity: what is it, what isn’t it, why would we want it, and how do we get more of it? We talk about specific examples in games like 4X strategy games, and most importantly (because I’m making one), squad tactics games. I want to say […]

Hey everyone! Weird times. I’ve actually been a little sick myself (don’t worry, I’m doing all of the things) and less productive over the past week or so than I’d like to have been. I originally wanted to have a new podcast episode ready for you guys today but sadly because of how weird everything […]

Today’s show features a conversation with Arnold Rauers, one of the world’s most successful single-player strategy game designers. We talked about the business of indie games, how Arnold makes things work, some thoughts on his latest game, Maze-Machina, and a lot more. If you haven’t checked out any of the TinyTouchTales’ games, I strongly recommend […]

“Points quantify something which should remain in the realm of qualitative measurement.” This is the most succinct way that I know to express my problem, not so much with “score systems” per se as described in Ella Hoeppner’s recent blog post – which also spurred a bunch of conversations on my (now daily!) Twitch stream […]

Today on the Clockwork Game Design Podcast I have an interview with game developer & designer Brett Lowey (AKA BrickRoadDX), the lead (and only!) developer at BrainGoodGames. Under this company he has made a number of cool, interesting and fun single player strategy games which you should definitely check out (here they all are on […]

Hi everyone! Today is one of those “a bunch of stuff” episodes, featuring a bit of a dev journal on stuff like Uninstall Academy (a very tiny gag game I released last week), Gem Wizards Tactics (yes, that’s the name again), and a bunch more. I also talk about a bunch of games I’ve been […]

Today on the show I have a conversation with Jeremiah Reid, a software dev and indie Rogue-like game developer. Jeremiah first came on my radar when he wrote this article on the topic of the “Indie Game Apocalypse”, wherein he mentioned my work and its difficulty getting press and sales, despite the fact that I […]

Today I spoke with Elizabeth Hargrave. After playing her game Wingspan and reading some interviews with her, I thought she’d be a great person to have on to talk about some of the stuff I’ve been exploring in terms of strategy games and their relationship to violence, both mechanically and thematically speaking. She had a […]

Today’s episode is not a theory-heavy episode at all. Instead, we have a lot of practical advice and other game development thoughts that may be helpful to anyone else who, like me, wants to make and try to sell their own games. On the docket for today: How to not hate marketing (partially by not […]

I’m deep in the weeds of setting up the Dragon Bridge Kickstarter, which should hopefully launch next week or so. But I wanted to share this quick bonus episode with you: a conversation with Jenny Bee, who has a masters in visual storytelling, is a creator of games, films and other narrative work, and—full disclosure—is […]

This is one of our longer episodes, coming in at 1 hour 10 minutes, and it’s chock full of both theory and practice! For the theory bit, check out my conversation with Hopenager, a game developer and frequent chatter over at the kbgames discord, wherein we talk about binary goals versus score goals. Hopenager believes […]

Hello everyone! Today I come to you bringing yet another great board game designer: Rob Daviau, probably best known at this point for his Legacy series games, particularly Pandemic Legacy, which is indeed awesome, and which even inspired an article of mine. But he’s an extremely prolific designer overall who has dozens and dozens of […]

I’ve been saying this a lot recently, but this is a big one! Clocking in at nearly an hour and twenty minutes, this is, I think, the longest Clockwork Game Design Podcast episode yet. Eric Zimmerman is a game design instructor at the NYU Game Center, where he works with other CGD guests Naomi Clark, […]

I can’t believe I went this long without interviewing one of my biggest game design theory heroes, Geoff Engelstein. Together with designer, game design writer and fellow game design podcaster Isaac Shalev, they’ve written a book that seems like it might be kind of a big deal in this field. To quote a bit of […]

Episode 58 is HERE, with the incredibly awesome and prolific board (and video) game designer Tim Fowers! This was, in many ways, a model episode of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast, because we hit so many different (but relevant) topics involving the process of game design. Yay! Here’s a few key items: Conventions/conferences – which […]

Hi everyone! Here is episode 57 of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast, where I give a bunch of updates on the games I’m devvin’. I talk a bunch about progress on both my Gem Wizards games and many of the game design struggles, particularly with the card game, which I’m deep in the design-weeds and […]

Today I talked to Dan Cook about competitive games, social games, and our objectives behind making games in the first place. This was one of my favorite conversations with one of my favorite game design theorists out there. His blog, Lost Garden, was literally THE blog (along with maybe some stuff from Anna Anthropy) that […]