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The game was built in Unity by people living in Portland (Portland has a very reasonable cost of living because it has traditionally had very high unemployment). A big expense I suppose was the licensed music, but I imagine even that wasn't exorbitant -- the Kill Rock Stars folks don't strike me as the type that are interested in ripping people off. Voice acting was done locally... Obviously a ton of work went into the game, but I also don't see any evidence that suggests that it was more expensive to produce than a typical game.

Oh hey, Moonbase Commander is available! http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/7/5389516/moonbase-commander-steam-release-date-pc-price-rebellion-developments

For a game made by a team of like 4 people that isn't Minecraft, 250k is very impressive!

Maybe? I don't think community voting has any impact on what gets turned into fully fleshed out games, but it does affect what prototypes you'll be able to play. Obviously if you don't care about checking out prototypes than it is true that voting isn't going to be so interesting. And I agree with you that watching the critiques is the best part of the whole experience.

Speaking of Jon Shafer, his new game, At the Gates, is going to have some events that have like a 1 in 100,000 probability of popping up. He's gotten really into roguelikes and the unique experiences those games generate, so I think that's influenced his decision making into including events in his game that only a handful of people will ever see.

So how did everyone else vote? These are the prototypes I ended up voting for: 1. Mnemonic 2. Dear Leader 3. Buried Metropolis There were probably 6 other games that almost made the cut for me.

J.P.'s game concept once again knocks it out of the park. I hope it receives the most votes!

So I was just thinking: p0wn control. Out of my brain into the forums. Sorry.

Does that mean Nick and Steve are banned from future cast?

It sounds like it comes down to an issue of expectations. I haven't played DA:O so I can't say for sure why that worked, and why this didn't, but I also suspect there wasn't any ambiguity when someone bought that game that they were buying a RPG, and that comes with a set of expectations about the content of the game. I don't know why the Thumbs were unaware that this was a tactical RPG, but it definitely sounds like that is what happened, and that undoubtedly impacted the impression of the game. Massive Challice is a game I am expecting to be more XCOM-like than RPG-like, and if that turns out to be wrong I suspect I'll end up pretty disappointed, so I can see how the writing of the game, which also seems totally benign to me, could end up leaving a poor impression depending on a different expectation set. This is also why I continue to disagree with the Thumbs crew about early access games on Steam. I think as the system currently exists, it makes it extremely difficult for a developer to properly calibrate player expectations, and that's a bad thing for both players and developers. This ties into the conversation from one of the team members from Far Cry 2 about how that game is a design failure in a way since it requires so much knowledge in advance about what makes the game good for someone to avoid having a negative experience.

I really wish my fiancee hadn't bought the season pass for this game on the 360. http://www.joystiq.com/2014/02/05/the-wolf-among-us-bitten-by-season-pass-issues-on-xbox-360/ Microsoft can't collapse soon enough as far as I'm concerned...

I wonder what people would think of Dishonored's morality system if they had removed all of the Outsider's like Greek tragedy style commentary about your actions? I think that's the main thing that comes across as dumb and annoying. Like if you just got through levels and saw that there was a chaos meter or whatever that strikes me as fairly innocuous, and not something that would really bother anyone. The problem isn't the systems itself, but just that the game designers decide to lay it on thick.

His game videos (especially Spelunky) are my favorite to watch because of how much joy he takes in destroying enemies in clever ways.

Yeah, that seems odd to me because everyone at C&C seems to have very distinct British accents so I never mixed anyone up even when I first started listening and was struggling to remember their different names. To dust off that old Idle Thumbs chestnut: brains are weird.

Evil is a strong word so I wouldn't use it to describe free-to-play. It's also a model that can encompass a wide variety of different designs and business models, so although it's a model that is always going to raise flags for me, it isn't easy to generalize either. That being said, I believe it's also true that it is a business model that corrupts any game design, and makes the game design worse than what it could be otherwise. I cannot think of a single game that has a free-to-play model where you can unequivocally say, this is a better game because of this business model. Even a game like Card Hunter that is very generous to its players, great fun, and what most people would consider a good value proposition, still fails this test in my mind. I think anyone passionate about game design should avoid letting a business decision determine your game design.

Steve Gaynor had some smart things to say about copyrights: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SteveGaynor/20140203/209927/Copyright_trademark__money_in_a_creative_industry.php Abolishing copyrights is probably too radical a step (and would possibly violate international treaties), but I think reducing the lifespan of copyrights is extremely desirable.

If I'm thinking of the right episode, I'm pretty sure they called it the "worst".

Another solution Soren has mentioned is how asymmetrical opponents can be a designer's best friend. Asymmetry gives the designer the opportunity to compensate for whatever difficulties the AI might be facing, or at a bare minimum the AI's stupidity might at least be less apparent to the player. The main problem of course is asymmetrical conflicts aren't always appropriate or desirable depending on the game being designed. Furthermore if there is the perception that the designer is cheating too much (alien squads "teleporting" in XCOM immediately springs to mind) you risk alienating players.

Yeah, that video is rad. The randomized roles, and how that will change your goals, is a really interesting idea too

Yeah, the DLC is really good. The annoying thing though is that they are two parts of the same story (just like how Bioshock Infinite has divided Burial at Sea into two parts), so you will need to pick up both and play them in order. So that's the bad news, but the good news is that it is really great additional content for Dishonored with some nice mechanical twists!

So the morality system in Dishonored was definitely not what made that game good, but the morality play that unfolds in the Brigmore Witches DLC is fascinating.

Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot about Brendon's background.

Awesome, I'm glad this episode was able to happen. In my mind Tom Francis is like the most inspirational indie dev just because he doesn't come from a programming background, which is obviously the biggest obstacle for people that have ideas about game designs from being able to make something that people can play. Also thanks for the Silent Storm recommendation Steve! I've never heard of that game before, but it looks rad.

Bruce's point about the difference experience a player has between rolling some dice and having a computer generate a random number got me to think about how the experience of something like the Combat Commander series (I probably bring those games up way too much on these forums, so I apologize about that). That's another GMT card-driven war game that does have dice rolls, but the dice rolls are simulated via numbers on the cards, so you never actually roll any dice! Drawing a card to reveal a dice roll has a similar uncertainty, tension, and drama to a rolling actual dice, but it's also an interesting case where theoretically a person with a photographic memory could keep track of cards play, and calculate future probabilities based on how many cards are left in a deck. For some people that can be an advantage to cards because it can create the impression that you can only get screwed by the dice so much (although that's probably inaccurate since there can be so many unpredictable variables at work), but I also know that some people hate dice rolling games, and some people hate games that rely on cards. I think people's appetite for different forms of randomness is going to vary. Ultimately I agree with Soren's point though that it's the game designer's job to communicate some transparency to that randomness if you want to get players on board with what is happening.

I'm always down for a couple of Nidhogg matches. I'll be out of town for a few days though...