Games as Art

Here's the full interview with Greg Rice, producer at the great indie studio, Double Fine Productions! If you're not already aware, Double Fine is the home of gaming legends Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. Their past console successes include Psychonauts and Brutal Legend. Their more recent games include the downloadable wonders Costume Quest, Iron Brigade, Happy Action Theater, and Stacking!

....Oh yeah, and they raised millions on Kickstarter in mere days to fund their upcoming adventure game; and don't you know that Greg had a huge part in this!?

Thanks for watching, and enjoy!

Get ready for an awesome two hours with Edmund McMillen, creator (and co-creator) of some amazing titles over the years, including the recent hits Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac.

In this open, honest interview, McMillen dishes about his role in Indie Game: The Movie, his influences, his thoughts on business, the origins of his games, and much, much more.

Our thanks to him for sitting down with us. Enjoy!

Here's our interview with Derek Yu and Andy Hull of Mossmouth Games, creators of this Summer's fantastic adventure game, Spelunky!

In this interview we learn all about Spelunky's march from freeware lark to Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) powerhouse. We also hear all about Derek and Andy's history in the indie scene, as well as Derek's award-winning Aquaria!

So, Journey. My review schedule was quite full when this much-anticipated project from thatgamecompany was released on PlayStation Network, and the other night was the first chance I had to get to it. I was a huge fan of Flow, I loved Flower, and I've been looking forward to Journey ever since I knew about it. While I was playing, several people asked what my opinion was, and I knew that there was absolutely no way I could even begin to address the topic over Twitter. Hence, this entry.

Here's the wrap-up of our talk with Braid designer Jonathan Blow!

Inside, we discuss games publishing, the constant stream of "sword dude" games, and where gaming is going...

Welcome back again! Here's Part Four of our fantastic discussion with Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid.

In this piece, you'll hear more about Braid's shifting story, we discuss fulfilling our own artistic expectations, and we get into his new game, The Witness!

We are back, baby, with Part Three of our (now) five part interview with Jonathan Blow. In this episode, we get more into trickery in game design, what is "fun," and design by committee.

Welcome back to the second part of our interview with Jonathan Blow, creator of the indie smash Braid and the upcoming The Witness.

In this episode, we begin the discussion of what it means to spend our time playing games. Paramount to this: our discussion of "achievements" and how they feed into creating structures that presuppose challenging design.

Welcome back to State of Play with Brandon Bales!

Here's the first part of our interview with Jonathan Blow, creator of the amazing indie hit Braid and the upcoming The Witness!

In this episode, we dive into Mr. Blow's history in the industry and into the genesis of Braid, one of the breakout hits of the new Download Renaissance.

In a cinematic action game, the player needs to keep moving forward because the intent of the game is to both tell a story and excite the player. Viewed as a question of design alone, difficulty that forces several replays of any section is undesirable because it gates progress and converts the game into a movie that is merely very inconvenient to watch.