Kickstarter | Polygamer

Polygamer #87: Tifa Robles and The Explorers of Azullucent

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Ken Gagne

Tifa Robles is the author of The Explorers of Azullucent, a young-adult fantasy novel currently on Kickstarter. Over 16 years in the making, this book features a trio of diverse female protagonists on an epic adventure of discovery. Tifa is no stranger to writing, being a regular contributor to the board game website Tabletop-Test. Her love for gaming continues as co-host GenCon’s TableTakes show and as founder and former organizer of the Lady Planeswalker Society, a community for introducing players to Magic: The Gathering.

In this episode, Tifa and I reunite after three years since her last appearance on Polygamer. We chat about how her book has evolved over almost two decades; the advantages of going the crowdfunding, self-published route; who she turned to for help with peer reviews, art design, and crowdfunding; how a degree in creative writing informs her non-fiction writing; how a minor in biological anthropology can be essential to developing empathy; the challenges and tricks to being a writer with dyslexia; and how she juggles it all with being a mom.

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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Polygamer #81: Cynthia Lowen, director of NETIZENS

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Ken Gagne

Cynthia Lowen is the director and producer of NETIZENS, a documentary that details the proliferation of online harassment faced by women. The film follows feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, attorney Carrie Goldberg, and businesswoman Tina Reine as they fight back against the online harassment that has threatened their careers and livelihoods. Lowen ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for NETIZENS in late 2016 and is now showing the movie on the film festival circuit prior to its general release.

In this interview, I chat with Lowen about what inspired her to make this film; why she chose to focus on gendered online harassment broadly and not just in online gaming; whether the past few years have made the Internet safer or more dangerous for women; the role that men and video games can play in solving the problem of online harassment; how NETIZENS compares with her previous film, Bully; her experience with crowdfunding; and when we can look forward to NETIZENS‘s wide release.

This interview was recorded on Friday, September 21, 2018, while Lowen was in Switzerland as part of the film tour. 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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:32 — 28.6MB) | Embed