Big one this month, somehow!
New From Me
As promised in the last newsletter, the Dialed Indie podcast is officially live! In case you missed it, this is my brand new gamedev interview podcast, where I get developers of various disciplines to chat with me about their jobs, career paths, the things that inspire them, and whatever else we may get into over the course of a couple hours! Here’s the show’s main page, with a link to the RSS feed and all the major podcatchers. The show will return next week to give me a bit of breathing room!
Following Artistic Dead-Ends with 2Mello: Musician 2 Mello inaugurates the show to share what drives him creatively and discuss his process, including what it's like to work on different kinds of projects, working with & against people's expectations, and the lifelong journey of crafting his signature style.
Fandom Freaks Forever with Adrienne Bazir: In Stars and Time developer Adrienne Bazir joins the show for a long chat on character writing, fandom, a lil' bit of shoujo, and proudly making "tumblr games"!
Production, Pointing, and Clicking with Dora Breckinridge: What IS a producer? Riddle me that with a side of browser game history, please! Dora Breckinridge, release manager at Strange Scaffold and producer at insertdisc5, gives us the scoop on all that and more!
VGBees
Episode 110: This is when the Xbox layoffs officially hit and we spent some time going over the numbers, and touching on the especially hard-hit ZeniMax Media (Bethesda, id, etc.) as well as confusion around the spun-off studios. Pretty grim one all-around this time, even though we knew it was coming, with an extra hit from IOI shuttering their Istanbul studio, also a result (though indirect) of Xbox’s ongoing collapse.
Episode 111: The stank continues but at least Niki showed us a new dog they’re fostering, Iris, and we talk for a bit about… blood? There’s more information coming out of the lesser-known insides of Xbox, such as the Latin American ID@Xbox team being sunk. The CWA does their usual posturing in the wake of mass layoffs while Bethesda jangles some Fallout-shaped keys to try and distract a bit from the shitshow. And lastly, a bit of gossip if you’re nasty, as the God of War TV show surprise recasts their lead after an injury…
Episode 112: Things are quite light on news this week; the EU approved EA’s sale to the Saudi Arabian PIF and Unity 7 was announced, but that’s about it, so John spent some time slandering Splatoon Raiders before immediately purchasing it. Then it’s on to Poinpy, Left 4 Dead 2, Paragnosia, Deltarune, and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, as well as Niki’s budding interest in Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine. Oh, and lots of questions!
Episode 113: Another questions-heavy week when all the news is so standard: Xbox is losing money, Tencent is bad at doing business, and it turns out that there Splatoon game is pretty good. John tries to get us to discourse a little about Super Mario Sunshine but Niki is NOT having it. I started the new, hotly anticipated point-and-click adventure game Endacopia and I’m very intrigued so far! And hey, go Sox!
I also “wrote” a bit of a parody of one of Aftermath’s Hater Week articles, “Do Not Buy The War Crime N64.”
As a footnote, I’ve started kinda-sorta updating my Backloggd (which I’ve apparently had for like six years??) after a friend mentioned it to me! Whenever I review a game on the site, including as part of the “Games Played” articles, I’ll update Backloggd with my rating as well as a snippet from the review and a link back to it. I also may sporadically write reviews or throw ratings up for other and older games if I feel like it. Shoutouts to past me, who carefully wrote down and recorded all my various streaming escapades, including every single game I played.
Song of the Newsletter
That’s gonna be “A Pesar De Ti y De Mi” by Mon Laferte for her b-side album, Femme Fatale Vol. 2. This album pair is massive at 34 whole ass songs, but by golly, this woman can sing. If you like vocal jazz, R&B, and/or alt pop, they’re both a tremendous time. “A Pesar De Ti y De Mi” is the lead single of Vol. 2 for good reason, perhaps her strongest ballad performance from an emotional and vocal standpoint (as far as studio versions go, anyways). Ugh!!!
News & Recommendations
Not really news or recommendations, but I’m technically soliciting some of the latter, so…? I’m gonna throw my Ko-fi tip jar in here, alongside a call to subscribe to VGBees if you haven’t already. These both give me money! A VGBees sub has a higher minimum at $9.99/mo, but you do support more people and get stuff for it; namely, the ability to ask questions on each episode of the show via the hive-questions channel in the VGBees Discord server. When it comes to my Ko-fi or Twitch subscriptions, you don’t get nothin’. Not inherently enticing, but I, like you, prefer when this kinda stuff is as free as possible. I’m putting all this out there because I’m pushing a year of unemployment now without much of anything in the way of promising leads, and I unfortunately don’t qualify for benefits either. Hey, it’s rough out here, c’est la vie. If you’re curious about free ways to support me, leaving a comment on VGBees’ YouTube videos as well as 5-star reviews on podcast platforms are — I hate to say it — real methods of support that people do ask for for real reasons. Messed up if true…
I’m making an effort to be on WUHIT (John VGBees’ weekly stream) more often and I’ll see about getting back to regular streaming and/or YouTube Let’s Playing in short order as well, so if there’s anything therein you’d particularly like to see, let me know. Dani and I have also been toying with the idea of starting a sports podcast… I’m not always sure we’d have enough to talk about, and we’re certainly new fans with an amateur understanding of several of the sports we enjoy (for the record that’s MLB, WNBA, PWHL, and NHL… maybe AUSL? Oh, and Dani likes professional wrestling). At the same time, I feel like people would find value in a sportscast led by two good ole southern lesbian ladies, even and sometimes especially if we’re new to the sports in question. Feel free to leave a comment on any of this here on the article page or on Discord or Bluesky or something!