Kickstarter | Polygamer

Polygamer #75: Matt Baume of Queens of Adventure

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Queens of Adventure is a comedy-adventure podcast in which four drag queens slay their way through pencil-and-paper role-playing games. Adapted from the live stage show Dungeons & Drag Queens, Queens of Adventure has as its dungeon master Matt Baume, host of the podcast Sewers of Paris, director of documentary Playing with Pride, and returning guest of Polygamer.

On this episode, Matt provides an introductory lesson to drag and how it’s similar to D&D; how he’ll adapt an over-the-top live show of one-off adventures to an audio-only ongoing campaign; how designer James Morris is creating a role-playing campaign for drag queens that’s different from off-the-shelf modules, including using the language of polari; and the exciting stretch goals for the podcast’s Kickstarter campaign.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, acast, or TuneIn. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Polygamer #74: Joseph Bein of Out of Sight Games

Posted on January 17, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Joseph Bein is the president & creative lead of Out of Sight Games, developer of the audio game A Hero’s Call. The studio’s first game, A Hero’s Call was designed to be accessible by visually impaired gamers, including half of Out of Sight Games, who built their own game engine to ensure the game’s accessibility.

In this interview, Bein talks about what kinds of games tend to be more accessible to blind gamers; what developers can do to improve their games’ accessibility; whether or not the development tools themselves are accessible; talks he’s attended at the Game Accessibility Conference and GDC; why a future version of A Hero’s Call will have a visual component; and why he turned to Kickstarter for the game’s final push.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, acast, or TuneIn. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Polygamer #32: Matt Conn of Read Only Memories

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Ken Gagne

Matt Conn is the CEO of MidBoss, the studio behind Read Only Memories, a point-and-click adventure game featuring a diverse cast of characters. It is the first game from the same studio that produces the annual GaymerX (GX3) convention and the documentary Gaming in Color.

In this interview (originally recorded for the IndieSider podcast), Matt and Ken discuss why MidBoss chose the first-person adventure genre as a vehicle for social justice; who the game’s target audience is and what the reception has been from those quarters; what challenges are inherent to writing a script featuring diverse characters; and whether it is the responsibility of indie or AAA studios to include marginalized voices in their games’ casts.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, acast, or TuneIn. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Polygamer #31: Holly Green on Gameranx, Fry Scores & OCD

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Ken Gagne

Holly Green is the managing editor of Gameranx, a video game news, reviews, and feature site. Not one to limit her outlets, Holly is also an accomplished freelance writer for outlets such as Polygon, where she detailed her challenges with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Most recently, Holly published her first cookbook, Fry Scores: An Unofficial Guide To Video Game Grub, listing real-world recipes for fictional foods. After an initial launch as an Apple iBook, a successful Kickstarter allowed the book to be recently ported to the Amazon Kindle format.

In this episode, Holly and I discuss freelancing for one publication when employed by another; the ethics of being a game reviewer and Kickstarter backer; her photography setup for shooting food; the difficulty in translating among the various e-book formats; how gaming achievements prey on OCD; and how game developers can be more conscious of neuroatypical gamers.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, acast, or TuneIn. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Stage of Development: The human side of gaming

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Ken Gagne

When the Polygamer podcast was still in the conceptual stage, I thought it was going to be called Polygame. As I better defined the show, I realized the focus wouldn’t be on games, but on gamers: telling the stories of the people who make up this industry and community. Only a single letter in the show’s title made a big difference in what it’d be about. Sure enough, in the year since Polygamer launched, I’ve been honored by dozens of gamers sharing their stories with me and with listeners. It’s been wonderful to get out from behind the screen and connect with the people and passions that make this pastime so powerful.

One of the first guests was Russ Pitts, co-founder of Take This, a non-profit that helps members of the gaming community address mental health issues. For longer than Polygamer has been around, Russ has been helping other gamers tell their own stories, as in the “Human Angle” series of features on Polygon, a website he co-founded; or in the e-book How Video Games Are Made, which details the development of Defense Grid 2.

Now Russ has taken to Kickstarter to crowdfund a video series that tells the human side of gaming. Stage of Development “is a documentary series featuring human stories about real people. Some of them make games. Some of them play games. Some of them just happen to be caught in the crossfire. All of them are helping make the video game community one of the most vibrant and exciting collections of humans on Earth.”

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/russpitts/stage-of-development-indie-city-edition

The campaign is seeking $192,105 by September 16, on which day the first episode of the show will debut, funded by Russ’s own company, Flying Saucer Media. Early episodes will feature big names like John and Brenda Romero, or the team at Spry Fox. I’m hopeful future episodes will tell us stories of people we’ve not heard of before, companies and studios less well-funded, and those representing marginalized voices.

I’ve backed this project at the $45 level because Stage of Development is an important way to remind us that there are people behind the products and screens we spend so much time engaged with. When developers get harassed, they leave the industry; when gamers get harassed, they leave the community. Each departure leaves us with fewer games and gamers to enjoy our favorite pastime with. Acknowledging our shared humanity is a defense against that attrition.

Stage of Development isn’t about publicity; it’s about empathy. Anything that helps gamers recognize and appreciate the human element of gaming has my vote.

UPDATE (Aug 4, 2016): The original Kickstarter for this project was canceled in August 2015 and relaunched August 2016.

Polygamer #11: Ryan Green & Josh Larson of That Dragon, Cancer

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Ken Gagne

That Dragon, Cancer is a game that represents the experiences of the Green family as they lived with and cared for Joel Green, who was diagnosed with brain cancer at 1 year old. Through a variety of metaphorical first-person scenarios, the game recreates what it was like to know and play with Joel, take care of him in the hospital, and receive prognoses from doctors. It is a heart-wrenching game that gives us the opportunity to live a situation we hope to never encounter in real life.

Although Joel passed away in March 2014 at 5 years of age, development of That Dragon, Cancer continues, including a currently-in-progress Kickstarter. In this interview, Joel’s father Ryan Green and the game’s co-creator, Josh Larson, share their memories of Joel and discuss who they made the game for, how they settled on the abstract art style, what the reaction has been to their crowdfunding campaign, why they’re launching on Ouya, and what’s next for the team.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Mixcloud, acast, or TuneIn. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05:56 — 34.2MB) | Embed