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Dev Game Club

Join hosts and game industry veterans Brett Douville and Tim Longo as they explore older titles to talk about the influences those games had and what we can learn from them even today.
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Now displaying: November, 2025
Nov 26, 2025

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a new series on 2001's Pikmin. We set the game in its time and then spend a lot of time talking about putting Nintendo's spin on the RTS on a console. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
The first few days

Issues covered: a well-trod year, some MMO history, the GameCube at LucasArts, playing PC vs console, playing PC RTSes of the time, history with Pikmin, keeping an eye on Nintendo making and entering genre spaces, making a thing on controller first rather than jamming in a KBM game, Tim talks about his favorite controller again, inspirations, being embodied in the world vs the god's-eye view, the simplicity of the ship pieces and setup, Nintendo's open world game, meteors vs meteoroids, the puzzle RTS, making the environment more of the enemy than the creatures, lightly building an army, trading pikmin for time vs the heavy pieces, task-based challenges, spreading your army but limitations due to movement and level design, the Forest's Navel, moving to avatar-based RTSes and MOBAs, wanting to play the prototypes, forks in strategy games this year, the simplicity of verbs due to Olimar's centrality, limiting your verbs due to the controller, the cognitive overload of the PC RTS, diversions into Valve, where we're playing, letting go of accuracy and min/maxing, chunky buttons.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Calvin & Hobbes, Reed Knight, Halo: Combat Evolved, GTA III, Silent Hill 2, Ico, Civ III, Anachronox, Animal Crossing, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Devil May Cry, MGS 2: Sons of Liberty, Final Fantasy X, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Super Smash Melee, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, Jak & Daxter, Game Boy Advance, Advance Wars, Max Payne, Black & White, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, Matt Firor, Zenimax Online Studios, Shigeru Miyamoto, Eternal Darkness, Baldur's Gate II, Andrew Kirmse, StarCraft, Blizzard, Halo Wars, Ensemble Studios, Microsoft, Homeworld, Paul Pierce, Haden Blackman, Behind the Magic, Starfighter (series), Republic Commando, Nintendo64, Warcraft (series), Legend of Zelda, Super Mario 64, Splatoon, Metroid Prime, Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, GoldenEye, Nintendo Switch, Deadly Premonition, Blade Runner, Alien, Star Wars, X-Files, Twin Peaks, Breath of the Wild, The Witcher III, Assassin's Creed, Command & Conquer (series), Company of Heroes, Orcs Must Die, Dynasty Warriors (series), Calamity Nolan, Satoru Iwata, Peter Molyneux, Populous, Total Annihilation, DotA, Valve, IceFrog, Chet Faliszek, Wii, Chris Hecker, Outer Wilds, Far Cry 2, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia. 

Next time:
More Pikmin (or possibly something else)

Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp 
YouTube
Discord 
DevGameClub@gmail.com

Nov 19, 2025

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we add to our Portal and Portal 2 discussion with an interview with Chet Faliszek. We cover tons of Valve time. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Podcast breakdown:
0:45 Interview
1:09:15 Break 
1:09:45 Outro

Issues covered: text-based football, all the early computers, programming for the first time, committing fraud, the first zombie game and losing it all, campaign finance reform, getting an opportunity to practice your shtick, selling gray market games, dissing games you're selling, going back and forth with Valve, petting the dog, thanking yourself for being awesome, the Crab Cracker, walking out, diving in on a team, thinking everyone is smarter than you, iterating on Team Fortress and finding its identity, archetypes/stereotypes, multiplayer silhouettes, game lineages, iterating dialogue systems, pushing against the need for a story and being challenged, not having QA and dealing with cert, avoiding the bureaucracy, picking the vibe, negativity with a replacement, symphonies vs rock and roll, DNFing the bugs, a split code base, supporting the player story, playing with friends vs strangers, replaying the game in different roles, tasks vs moving through a space, having three of everything, moments that stick with you, wanting to play the game, getting roped into Portal 2, splitting responsibilities and not commenting on the other, living a little outside the space, playing couch co-op via over the Internet, game face and social cues, being excited about the song, bodies in the space, shipping all the time, shipping hardware and making an ecosystem, iterating and learning, letting the community support and learn from a game, a great storyteller, the logistics of starting up a company, helping each other out, islands, shifting strategy to console. 

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Erik Wolpaw, Valve, Bossa Studios, Vertigo Games, Kimberly Voll, Stray Bombay, The Anacrusis, Heath Kit, Stratomatic Football/Baseball, TRS-80, Timex Sinclair, Vic 20, Commodore 64, Amiga, PET, Nintendo, Brandon Lee, Project Zomboid, Zombieworld, Open Secrets, Old Man Murray, Computer Shopper, Myth: The Forgotten Lords, Ultima Online, UGO, Penny Arcade, Pointless Waste of Time, Jason Pargin (aka David Wong), Team Fortress (series), Day of Defeat, Half-Life (series/episodes), Scott Lynch, Gabe Newell, Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios, Mike Booth, Portal, Overwatch, Elan Ruskin, Crystal Dynamics, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, World War Z, Brad Pitt, Counterstrike, Reed Knight, Jay Pinkerton, Mark Laidlaw, Ellen McLain, The New York Times, The National, Thom Yorke, Kim Swift, The Sock Puppet, Steam Link, A View to a Kill, Far Cry 2, Spelunky, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time:
TBA!

Links:
Exile, Vilify... with sock puppet

Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp
YouTube 
Discord 
DevGameClub@gmail.com 

Nov 12, 2025

Tim is traveling this week, so we are reaching into the Discord Game Club interview archive. This time around, BioStats and Calamity Nolan interview N0isses, who talks about his streaming, music, music streaming, and lots of other stuff. We expect to return next week.

Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp 
Discord 
DevGameClub@gmail.com

Nov 6, 2025

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we finish our series on Deadly Premonition. We talk a bit about the main story, the life sim, how we get around and more before turning to takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
To Ch 21 (Tim) and only Ch 8 (Brett)

Issues covered: Cry-baby Timothy, pre-show announcements, the game coming more quickly at the end, prime time television and Twin Peaks, describing an actual puzzle, the feeling of a web of connections between people both surface and hidden, the Ingram twins and their grandfather and Kaysen, dialogue with characters on their life sim paths, having the spatial awareness of the town vs not in television, you get to live in the town, the limitations of the driving model, wanting a simpler driving model, having conversation while the character is being driven instead, an unpolished gem, when time pauses vs when it will advance and keeping you unsettled, dealing with open world games with day/night cycles and running into the time problem, being unclear what other games this inspired, a different kind of mature, leaning into the quirk (and your constraints), stunt comedy, not getting enough of this sort of game, integrating the player into the town, inspirations with a twist.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Video Game History Foundation, Rocksmith, Twin Peaks, David Lynch, Mark Frost, Resident Evil, Yakuza (series), Breaking Bad, The Last of Us, Nick Offerman, Gilmore Girls, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, L. A. Noire, Mars Attacks, GTA 3, Shenmue, Dungeons & Dragons, Tolkien, Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, Artimage, Cult of the Lamb, Angie Nash, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.
 
Next time:
Discord Game Club interview with N0isses

Links:
N0isses Twitch channel 
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network 
Apply for Defeating Games


Twitch: timlongojr and twinsunscorp 
YouTube 
Discord 
DevGameClub@gmail.com 

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