board games | Polygamer

Mike Robles, social media manager for mental health non-profit Take This, is an industry veteran with many prominent studios on his résumé: including Microsoft, Wizards of the Coast, and Lone Shark Games. He helped build and support the Killer Instinct community when Rare’s fighting game debuted on the Xbox One, and he’s an frequent attendee at the Evolution World Championship Series, occurring this weekend in Las Vegas. Mike is also involved in the Magic: The Gathering community, helping onboard new players through the Lady Planeswalker Society, an organization founded by his partner, Tifa Robles. Mike and Tifa recently earned their first game design credits when they contributed to Widow’s Walk, the first expansion for Betrayal at House on the Hill, the popular board game from Avalon Hill. But his crowning achievement may’ve been interviewing Stan Lee on-stage at Emerald City Comic-Con 2015.

In this episode of Polygamer, Mike and I discuss how new gamers can be introduced to complex fighting games like Killer Instinct, and whether tournaments are best held online or off; why Street Fighter V launched with such poor offline support; how Mike and Tifa came to join Anita Sarkeesian and Zoé Quinn on the roster of contributors to Widow’s Walk, and why Dead of Winter is the board game currently occupying his time; how Mike’s role as "Mr. Tifa" has evolved at the Lady Planeswalker Society while he and Tifa prepare to welcome their first child; how Mike will juggle being a stay-at-home dad while working for Take This; how to connect a gamer friend with the mental health resources they may need; and what Stan Lee is really like off-stage.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, Spoke, Overcast, acast, Pocket Casts, Castbox, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Lorien Green is a filmmaker, documentarian, gamer, parent, and introvert. In 2009, without any background in video production, she set out to film a documentary about the growing popularity of board games. The result, Going Cardboard, was a success, setting her on the path to her current project: a documentary about the resurgence of pinball called Shoot Again.

In this episode of Polygamer, Lorien discusses how she got into filmmaking and pinball collecting and the technical know-how needed for both; the challenges of attending conferences, shooting interviews, and conducting director Q&A as an introvert; how she juggles these pursuits with her growing addiction to indie games on Steam; and how she’s raising her two children to be the next generation of geek.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, Spoke, Overcast, acast, Pocket Casts, Castbox, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:14:22 — 38.1MB) | Embed

Tag Archives: board games

Polygamer #47: Mike Robles on fighting & board games

Polygamer #13: Lorien Green of pinball documentary Shoot Again