Mechanics with Numinous Games’ Amy Green

In this episode, Lisa talks with Numinous Games’ Amy Green, a game designer and writer who got her start as a journalist. The two talk about Amy’s journey to game development, how Numinous approaches using different forms of input in their games, and what the studio has been working on since the acclaimed That Dragon, Cancer was released. Lisa and David debate which input they feel is more impactful in VR, voice interaction or hand tracking, and they read some of your gaming resolutions for the new year.

For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.

Transcript

Mechanics with Numinous Games’ Amy Green

In this episode, Lisa talks with Numinous Games’ Amy Green, a game designer and writer who got her start as a journalist. The two talk about Amy’s journey to game development, how Numinous approaches using different forms of input in their games, and what the studio has been working on since the acclaimed That Dragon, Cancer was released. Lisa and David debate which input they feel is more impactful in VR, voice interaction or hand tracking, and they read some of your gaming resolutions for the new year.

For more information, follow @OtherGamingPod on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/thatothergamingpodcast.

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Lisa Brown Jaloza:

Hi, and welcome back to That Other Gaming Podcast, where we take a look behind the scenes of virtual reality, online gaming, streaming, and more. I’m Lisa, a Tech Comms Manager at Meta and recovering academic.

David Jagneaux:

And I’m David, also a Tech Comms Manager at Meta, but Lisa is my boss, so let’s put that out there. I’m a full-time nerd and lifelong gamer, obsessed with the future of video games. What have you been playing this week, Lisa?

Lisa:

I’ve actually been playing Life is Strange: True Colors.

David:

Oh, I hear a lot of good things about that one.

Lisa:

Yeah. So far, so good. Really fun to see all of the different characters. The animations are spectacular. The facial expressions are just phenomenal.

David:

Yeah. I love the art style.

Lisa:

It’s interesting how much it really pulls you in and gets you to emotionally connect with the different characters.

David:

From what I’ve heard, the game is basically what if empathy were a superpower?

Lisa:

Right. At the risk of any spoilers, it gets into some ethical dilemmas as well. Like if someone’s really suffering, is it better to leave them alone and let them work through that pain or—

David:

Right.

Lisa:

What if you could take it away? Is that something that you can and should do, or is it better to let people process their grief in their own way? How about you? What have you been playing?

David:

I’ve been going in VRChat pretty much every day for the past about week and a half. And that’s just been so fun. There’s this amazing world in there called Spider Lair where someone has created this apartment, kind of in the middle of Manhattan. You can look out the window and see city lights and stuff. And then inside the apartment, it’s decorated all Spider-Man stuff. And then you go downstairs and there’s a wall of comic book covers. And each one you click on, it changes your avatar to that comic book—

Lisa:

Oh, very cool.

David:

Spider-Man. And so it includes every costume you can imagine. You can be Gwen, you can be Venom. It’s incredible what people do in VRChat. I mean, there’s just so much intricacy that goes into it. It’s such an impressive thing to visit. Outside of that, I actually started playing Unpacking, so that’s—

Lisa:

Oh great.

David:

I took your recommendation, and it’s not stressful like I thought. It’s actually kind of relaxing. I love zooming in on all the pixel art. I’m a big pixel art fan, so I just love looking at the details and it’s cool. I like it.

Lisa:

The attention to details is really spectacular. And even one of the book covers, I’m pretty sure it’s actually a real book that I have in—

David:

I’m sure.

Lisa:

Storage somewhere. It’s all about typography, but yeah.

David:

Of course, you would have that book. Yeah.

Lisa:

Guilty as charged. Today’s episode is all about mechanics and input. We’re taking a look at AREA MAN LIVES, an upcoming VR title from Numinous Games where you use your own voice to interact with various characters. So what do you think? What’s a game you’ve played with a really interesting or standout mechanic?

David:

It’s interesting that you bring up using your voice as an input. There’s this amazing Skyrim VR mod that lets you respond to NPCs by reading the dialogue out loud.

Lisa:

Oh wow.

David:

It’s so cool. I mean, because Skyrim VR is already such an immersive game and then all the mods that you can use just make it even more. And there’s this other game that came out about seven years ago at this point, which is weird to think about. It’s not a VR game. It’s called In Verbis Virtus. You play as a mage and it’s a lot of puzzle-solving, but all the spells you cast by saying them into your mic. So you have to remember what the different spells are, because you have to actually say them—

Lisa:

Yeah.

David:

For it to cast them.

Lisa:

And then there’s another game that you turned me onto actually called Before Your Eyes.

David:

I love that game. It was my game of the year last year, personally. My favorite game all of last year.

Lisa:

Yeah. I saw on social.

David:

It’s a game where every time you blink, like physically blink using your webcam, it advances the story forward. And so you live out the life of someone through their eyes. There’s actually some really difficult moments. It’s a very emotional story, very sad. I cried. I played the whole thing on stream too. It was very emotional. It took about two and a half, three hours. And near the end, there are some moments that you want them to linger. And so you try not to blink.

Lisa:

Right.

David:

And then you eventually do have to blink and it goes forward. So it’s just a beautiful game about how fleeting life is and it kind of asked a question of what would you do differently if you could relive certain moments in your life. It’s an amazing game. It’s so good.

Lisa:

Yeah. I was going to say it definitely sounds like a commentary on, like you said, how fleeting life is and can be. And especially as you get older and if you have kids, that idea of you blink and you miss it—

David:

Yeah.

Lisa:

I definitely have to give that one a shot. And then another game that both of us have played, Emily Is Away. The typing mechanic—

David:

Yes.

Lisa:

In that game is just fantastic. One that it plays with a lot of interesting things. It’s an unusual mechanic for a game, unless you’re playing an actual typing game. But also the fact that no matter what keystrokes you type, you can’t impact the words that come out.

David:

Right.

Lisa:

So you do have some degree of agency in the game in that you can choose kind of what direction you go to and you have options to choose from, but you’re not able to really impact the actual words. And again, interesting commentary on real life and the way that text-based communication just sometimes can get away from you and fall flat. Yeah. God bless emojis, right?

David:

Yeah. There’s a lot of cool games out there, and AREA MAN LIVES is definitely one of them.

Lisa:

Yeah. I can’t wait for that one to come out.

David:

Speaking of, I am so excited about our guest this week, Amy Green, writer and co-creator of That Dragon, Cancer, which is another very emotional, brilliant game in its own right. It was nominated for and won a bunch of awards, including Best Gameplay and Most Innovative at the 2016 Games for Change Awards. And it’s a really special one.

Lisa:

Definitely. And we had a chance to dig into the development process behind AREA MAN LIVES, which again is due out for VR this year. We also talked about her background in journalism and how that informs her work today, which as you know, David is a fellow former journo, it’s always nice to connect with someone with a similar background. So let’s cue that up now. 

Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Really, really appreciate you taking the time. To get us started, if you can just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background for listeners who may not be familiar.

Amy Green:

Sure. Thanks, Lisa. I’m honored to be here and just to chat with you today. My name is Amy Green, and I am a game developer out in Colorado, kind of in the middle of the country, which is, I always think, kind of a funny place to be a game developer. We’re like zebras out here. You run into us here and there, but not that often. And let’s see my history. I’ve been making video games with Numinous Games for the last, I want to say six or seven years. The first project that I worked on with Numinous Games was kind of an autobiographical game called That Dragon, Cancer. And that was a video game that was about our son, Joel. And he died from a brain tumor. And that video game was kind of just almost a poetic exploration of what it’s like to kind of live in the shadow of death for as long as we did, and to try to retain hope in the middle of that. And faith also, I think. It was also kind of an exploration of kind of our journey of faith in and out of that period of our life. So yeah, that is probably the video game that people are most aware of that our studio has worked on. And then ever since then, we’ve just been making more video games, more kind of creative experimentation, worked on several smaller things, but AREA MAN LIVES, that’s coming out soon, is the video game that I think has the most of my heart and kind of design sensibility mixed into it, especially since That Dragon, Cancer.

Lisa:

Tell us a little bit about AREA MAN LIVES and kind of the backstory there. I know it originally was under another title. I believe it was Untethered for a while and it was shelved for a little bit before it went back into production. So what can you tell us about that?

Amy:

So originally we released AREA MAN LIVES as a game called Untethered. It was available on Google’s platform because they had a VR headset for a little while that they were bringing to market and people got into.

Lisa:

The Daydream.

Amy:

Yes. Yeah. So it was first released as a Daydream title, and we planned on creating four episodes of Untethered. So we had this whole story mapped out, and we released two of the episodes. We were about halfway through working on the third and had a lot of fun plans for the fourth. And then Google kind of decided to pivot a little bit with their technology and where they wanted to invest funds. So we paused production. That was, I think, about four years ago. And we have spent the time since then kind of noodling on it and thinking about it, and we kept coming back to it and we kept looking for ways where we could revive Untethered. And I actually think that AREA MAN LIVES has really been served by that process because very rarely do you get to sit with a work long enough and think about it long enough to start to see new potential in it, to start to uncover little hidden gems in the storylines.

So as we had this opportunity to bring it to a much wider audience on the Oculus platform—we really got to reimagine what it would look like and we decided we’re not going to do episodes anymore. We’ll just do one game. And we actually added a lot more puzzle pieces to it, which we’re really excited about. So we have always thought that the fun is in the storytelling and we still believe that, but we also thought, “Oh, it’s fun to pull them into the storytelling and give the player a little bit more agency as they kind of figure out through a bit of a narrative puzzle, what they should be doing and when and why.”

Lisa:

And I know AREA MAN LIVES has sort of an interesting mechanic. What can you tell us about that?

Amy:

So when you first play AREA MAN LIVES, you show up and you are kind of dropped into a radio station and you are a filling DJ. It is your very first day on the job. And almost immediately you are asked to read a script over the air. And so as you speak in the game, the characters speak back to you and the game kind of responds to you. So we use speech detection throughout the game, so that you’re a character in the game who can just talk out loud to the other characters, and the other thing that happens is you kind of gradually figure out as you’re playing that someone is wanting your help. So then you have some decisions to make about what you choose to do and whether or not you choose to help that person. So I think the main innovative mechanic that we’re doing is that speech detection, that you just get to speak throughout the game, but there’s a couple other layers of just fun mechanics mixed in there also.

Lisa:

Which is really unusual. I think with virtual reality, it’s so often seen as a predominantly visual medium and sound isn’t taken into account as heavily. And then when it comes to mechanics, the hands are what people seem to gravitate towards, whether that’s just through gestures or actual hand tracking and getting rid of the controllers altogether. But we haven’t seen very much with voice interaction to date. Why do you think that is?

Amy:

I’m not sure. I think sometimes once we have a piece of tech, everyone wants to use it. Well, our studio has never leaned as hard into that as some studios do. So just because you give me really, really cool hand controls that are as responsive as we’ve seen in the industry, doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the direction we’ll always go. I mean, you certainly have a lot you do with your hands in the game. It’s not like you never use your hands. Man, you put on a headset and visually it is totally immersive.

Lisa:

Right.

Amy:

You just get caught up in that world completely. And one thing I love about using your voice in a game is that your voice is also totally immersive. There’s nothing interfering between my voice and the experience and I like that. So while we still have lots of fun with the hand controls and do a lot of goofy, silly, kind of zany things with them, because the mood of this game is very quirky, I think that the more meaningful interactions tend to happen where you just speak and someone speaks back. So we’ve always been a studio that focuses a lot on intimacy. And so that was very true in That Dragon, Cancer. And while that’s the kind of game people expect from us, this game is fun and silly and super weird, but I think that intimacy stays. Voice is kind of how we found the way to capture that feeling of intimacy, even in a game that’s a lot of fun.

Lisa:

We touched on this a little bit, but I know with That Dragon, Cancer, it was really kind of in the sort of Games for Change Awards’ “Serious Games” sort of rubric. Curious how you think about where those more serious games fit into the overall landscape versus something that’s a little quirkier and more playful like AREA MAN LIVES?

Amy:

Sure. I always think of it like film genres. I do not know anyone that only wants to see romantic comedies every time they go to the movies or who only wants to see high-paced thrillers. Most people may have a favorite genre, but they also are pretty well-rounded about the kinds of experiences they want to have. And so I think that within games, there’s so much room for us to expand our genres a little bit and we tend to think of our game genres as the mechanics involved. But I can see as the medium grows that we may begin to think of our genres more in terms of the type of experience it is, how it feels to us. I mean, we are the first ones to admit that That Dragon, Cancer is a tough game to play. You are investing a lot of yourself emotionally when you choose to play it.

And it’s really, I think, a tough decision to sit down and say, “Yes, today is the day I want to have that particular experience.” When people do, I believe that they’re rewarded by investing that time into it, but it’s not the game you would play casually with your friends or just pick up on a Friday night because you wanted something fun to do.

Lisa:

Right.

Amy:

So AREA MAN LIVES is something that I think is, that’s a much more casual experience, much more lighthearted. And I think that there’s a lot of people that while they may have their favorite type of games, they also get really intrigued by a game that does something a little bit new and a little bit surprising, even if it’s not maybe their typical gameplay.

Lisa:

That’s really cool. And this is your first foray into virtual reality, is that right?

Amy:

We have done some other projects in virtual reality, but this is our first, I would say, really full-fledged game. So we took a scene of That Dragon, Cancer and released it in VR. That was a game that always felt like it had VR sensibilities, even though it wasn’t in VR. So we put one scene in VR. And then we did work on a game as contractors for another company and they were doing a game about teaching Spanish in VR. So that was our other VR title. And that was a lot of fun to work on. We kind of got to be creative. That one also actually we used speech detection with, and so players could practice their Spanish by speaking out loud.

Lisa:

So how would you say that your work in virtual reality builds upon your work on more traditional, flat-screen gaming? And then in what ways is it a departure from what’s come before?

Amy:

I would say that it builds upon that feeling of intimacy. So we always feel like if we can honor the players’ presence and care about what they care about, that that is the most important thing we can be doing as game designers. And so I think virtual reality just takes that to the next level where caring about their presence in the game is the whole thing about designing in VR. I would say it’s a departure from our previous work in that there’s just so much more to explore in this game. That Dragon, Cancer was intentionally a very linear narrative. Part of what we were trying to say in that game was just, “Come along on this journey with us and feel what it felt like when we experienced this.”

And a lot of what it felt like was, “We wish we had better choices. We wish we had more choices. We wish we could do the right thing to save the day.” And we couldn’t. We never could. And so it was important for us that the player feel those same limitations that we felt, and in games, that is really powerful because you’re so used to having choice and you’re so used to being able to make a meaningful choice that when that’s restricted intentionally, you really feel it. In this game, we felt all kinds of license to explore how can your choices matter, how can they change your outcome. My husband and I are very philosophical in our game design. And so as we design, we like to ask these questions, “Boy, how much does it matter what I choose each day?” Because we ask that about life in general, I think it’s really fun to explore those concepts within gameplay, where you go, “Does every choice you make matter?” Maybe not.

Do you know which choices you made mattered? Not always. But do you find, as you replay and explore, that some of these choices are very important and they do matter? And that’s maybe a little bit of the puzzle involved also is what do I need to do, what matters and what doesn’t, and how do I kind of navigate to where I think things should go? So yeah, that’s definitely the departure for us, just exploring more of those variations, those multiple endings, a lot more player agency than we have been able to explore before.

Lisa:

Yeah. That’s really interesting how that idea of exploring player agency kind of scratches at this other, like you said, philosophical issue of the act of playing a game and sort of the player as co-creator along with the game designer and the writers and the programmers in bringing the actual project to life. I’m curious, what’s next for you guys after getting AREA MAN LIVES out the door?

Amy:

Our studio has been toying on the side with a really fantastic game in VR that we’re excited about. We tend to be known for our storytelling and for our intimacy and for those kind of meaningful experiences. But this game that we’re kind of working on little bits as we can steal time is really a mechanics-first game. And it’s a VR platformer and it’s just so fun to play. People get into it and they love it. They can’t get enough of it. And so that’s something that is probably next. It has never been able to take very much of our time because we’ve been very, very focused on this. But I do think that after we release AREA MAN LIVES, that’ll be something that we start to pursue a little bit more and explore and build out in bigger ways. We’re pretty excited about that also. I mean, especially because it is a very different step forward for us also. And I think as a studio, we like to do something we haven’t done before with every project. We like for there to always be something new that we haven’t done before.

Lisa:

And then you’re a really active speaker, right? You’ve done a TED Talk and you’ve spoken at Games for Change and a lot of other shows. Where do you find the time and how do you find inspiration for all of these various talks that you give?

Amy:

I love speaking and I have always loved speaking. It took me to later in life to discover that I really loved game design and loved telling stories specifically in this medium, but I always knew that I loved writing, I loved speaking, and so those invitations that we get sometimes to go speak at a conference or to come talk to a group are probably some of my husband’s and my favorite moments of year. So they feel like kind of the highlight and the reward for the work that we do. And a lot of the time, honestly, people have asked us to come and speak about That Dragon, Cancer.

Lisa:

Right.

Amy:

That in particular is very meaningful to me because anytime I get to talk about my son, Joel, and just spend some time intentionally reflecting and remembering our life with him, that always feels like such a gift that they give me. I think sometimes there’s just projects that we’re working on that feel like, “Oh, I just want people to know about this thing and to understand that it exists.” One of the other things we’re doing as a studio is we’ve started something called the Playability Initiative where our goal is to create really a community of game developers that care about accessibility.

And as part of that, we’re creating a one-button game for kids, and we were specifically inspired by kids in the spinal muscular atrophy community. So our goal has been to create a one-button game that they could play just with the very tip of their finger if they had very limited mobility or it can also be played with your eyes, it can be played through a puff straw. That’s another piece of something that is an ongoing thing and something we love to go talk about and just get people excited about because we’ve seen in the industry that the more and more people care about accessibility in games, the better games we all start to make. And to me, it’s so integral to considering our player.

Lisa:

Yeah. And I think a lot of people who are much smarter than I am have written and spoken pretty extensively on how inclusive and accessible game design is just good game design, that the more that you open it up to other players, the better off it is for everybody really. So that’s a really fantastic initiative. That’s exciting. 

What is it that originally drew you into gaming? And what was your background before you sort of found yourself as a writer and game designer?

Amy:

I went to school for technical journalism, with kind of a broadcast news emphasis. So I did a lot of video editing and interviewing. So that was kind of its own process of finding a story within a world. You might interview someone for 20 minutes and only as you edit do you start to find where that story really comes together. Originally my husband and I were kind of thinking video and film and that was really our focus. And then we had a whole slew of kids. And honestly I spent a decade or more just home with them and doing some writing on the side and some little creative endeavors on the side, but all just kind of part-time things. And then it was only as my husband got into making video games that I started to kind of peek up and pay a little bit more attention.

And originally I would just kind of give him some ideas, and it really took him creating That Dragon, Cancer about Joel for me to get really invested. So somewhere in the middle of that project, it began to have my heart. And I went from just casually participating to making sure I was on every design meeting to help think through, “Okay, what did that feel like? And what’s the right mechanic? And how would we express that well?” And it was by the end of that project that I was finally able to say, “You know what? I’m a game designer. This is who I am and I care about it and I’m good at it.” But it took me working on that project for two years before I could really own that title and understand how much I enjoyed it. And I would say even this year, I work on books in my spare time, I still have the other creative endeavors, but at some point maybe even within the last few months I realized, “You know what? I just love writing and designing games.”

I’ve always been better at writing dialogue than long, lengthy just descriptions anyway. And it means I never have to write descriptions. I could just focus on the dialogue and my brain tends to want to explore every possible permutation of a problem anyway. I learned this year that I have ADD, but what is great about that is when we’re thinking through storylines, it helps me think through, “Okay, what’s all the repercussions of this and how could this work?” So my brain is just really well-suited to this kind of narrative exploration that’s a little less linear and a little more thinking about a problem from all angles. So it kind of took me understanding that I had some neurodiversity there to really understand why I enjoy this type of work. And that has kind of helped me shift a little bit where I’m maybe less longing for success in some other medium of storytelling and more and more going, “I think this is what I was made to do, was to pick games and to explore stories in this particular way.”

Lisa:

That’s such a cool story and how you kind of found your way to it in this circuitous way. So what’s your vetting process and kind of editorial process? Do you find that you have to sort of kill your darlings on a semi-regular basis as you look to find that sort of intersection of your interests?

Amy:

Certainly. Yes. There’s always ideas that we love and that we think are fun and interesting that just won’t make it into a game. I think we learned very quickly with That Dragon, Cancer that when we first started, we had three games in mind that we thought were all one game and just being willing to realize, “This is not the last thing I will ever make. It is not the last chance I ever have to say something or to give you an experience.” And then that helps to go, “Okay, then let’s drill down and edit away until we find the core of this game. And let’s trust that some of those fun ideas and interesting mechanics will have their own life to live somewhere down the road, somewhere in the future.”

I also think there’s so many little things within AREA MAN LIVES because it has been around so long, because it was Untethered first, because we had two episodes that then we kind of folded into this experience and then expanded beyond, that there are definitely directions the game could have gone that certain dialogue starts to point to and then they don’t really go in that direction anymore. It’s always just one-off simple little lines, something anyone might say in conversation, but I know that somewhere behind that was a branch of a story that we didn’t quite ever get to explore because it stopped fitting. But I love that those little hints of those things are there because, to me, it again kind of points at our lives, that there’s so much potential to explore and do and create in the world and you might have a million ideas and only ever get to pursue eight of them.

Lisa:

Right.

Amy:

And so I like the ways that games can kind of mirror what life feels like and sometimes this game does that a lot for us.

Lisa:

If people took one thing away from AREA MAN LIVES, what do you hope that would be and why?

Amy:

We really hope that people walk away from AREA MAN LIVES with a sense that connection matters, that choosing to be connected to one another is an important choice to make. So that is kind of the theme that we have kind of noodled around and kept in mind the whole time—that we all want to be seen. We all want to matter, but it’s when we choose to be connected, that we often find that we matter the most and that we feel the most seen.

Lisa:

Oh, that’s a really powerful message. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on or didn’t get a chance to cover that you really want to get in there before we go?

Amy:

I’m just so excited for people to get to come and live in a little tiny slice of my very weird imagination for a few hours of their life. I think that is probably the thing I’m most excited about in the world, that very, very soon, a lot of people will get to experience this thing that I have loved for about four years now.

Lisa:

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Really, really appreciate it.

Amy:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Lisa.

Lisa:

I really enjoyed my time chatting with Amy. It’s amazing how open she is and just that willingness to share her story.

David:

With a game that’s such a unique and immersive experience, just like That Dragon, Cancer, their previous game, it’s really telling and important to have designers and people on the team that are that willing to put themselves in the project like that. I think that really makes it shine more.

Lisa:

Absolutely. And now it’s time for Jaloza vs. Jagneaux where we each get one minute to make our case on a chosen topic.

David:

For this episode, we’re going to debate which form of input feels most impactful, voice interaction or hand tracking?

Lisa:

All right. And I guess I will go first.

David:

Do your worst.

Lisa:

So I’m going to go ahead and say hand tracking. One thing with voice interaction, it can be really impactful, but if you’re anything like me, can make you feel really self-conscious versus your hands. Some people talk with them naturally. Everyone uses them to interact with the world around them. So it’s just a little bit more intuitive and less self-conscious, less in your head about it, I think. Obviously for people who may not associate or self-identify as gamers per se, thinking my mom, other folks in the family, it’s a nice way around having to learn the control schema and it’s just something that you can jump into and experience a game or an app without having to wrap your head around some new control scheme.

David:

Well, I’m going to throw some hands too, but in a different way. I’m going to defend voice interaction and one of the reasons for that is you already have controllers. So in some way you already have something that lets your hands interact with the digital world, but most people have never really tried a game that lets you interact with your voice. And I think that that makes it really special because it’s something that’s uniquely part of you that you’re getting to put into the game world, whereas everyone that has the ability to have two hands to interact would interact in the same way. But your voice is a more unique, identifiable, personal part of you. And I think it’s really special to be able to speak to characters directly, to really feel immersed, and like you’re part of that world rather than just reaching out. And in VR, especially, you already have motion controllers, so it’s kind of already like you get hand presence in a way. So I think voice interaction’s more impactful and just a more special way to interact. 

Well, now you know what we think, so let us know what you think. Head over to our Facebook Group or on Twitter to vote on our polls of whether or not you think hand tracking or voice input is the more impactful form of interaction. And let us know what you think about the show as well on Twitter @OtherGamingPod.

Lisa:

Last week, we debated which fictional version of the metaverse would be more fun to live in, The Matrix or Ready Player One? You all weighed in and chose Ready Play One!

David:

Come on the guy has the most generic comic book name, Wade Watts. It’s like Peter Parker. It’s not even a real person.

Lisa:

It’s a nod to Stan Lee. You gotta respect that. And again, just the fact that it’s a book and a movie versus just a film franchise I think makes it a little special.

David:

Fair enough. It would be pretty cool to go to Planet Doom and do some fighting there. It would be pretty exciting.

Lisa:

Right? So over on the Facebook Group, David recently asked folks to share their New Year’s gaming resolutions. And we thought it would be fun to highlight some of those responses here on the show. Mark Cameron says his resolution is to buy fewer at release. “They just end up in my backlog and two months later are on sale. Got to stop spending $20 to $30 to own things on Day One.”

David:

Yeah, I feel that one.

Lisa:

Yeah, don’t we all?

David:

I could have wrote that myself.

Lisa:

And Aled Smith says, “I really want to start playing more small-scale or local-multiplayer, build up a circle of friends to play with.”

David:

Yeah. I feel that too, and I was talking to Aled. He actually has a few brothers that he used to play games with and one of them passed away and now the others have lost interest after COVID happened. So if you’re looking for people to play with, you should join the Facebook Group and hit up Aled and talk to people.

Lisa:

Yeah. And then another one, nice play on words here from Louis Lovey. His gaming resolution is, “1080p sadly, at least on my GTX 960.”

David:

Yeah. I’m very fortunate to have a PS5 and Xbox series X because 4K, it’s quite pretty.

Lisa:

Ah, chef’s kiss.

David:

Yeah. Before we go, I want to drop a live streaming hot tip for all my fellow content creators out there. In the past, I’ve talked about being consistent, but more specifically, I really think it’s important to develop a schedule and stick to it. What I mean by that is picking days of the week and sticking to times that you would stream at. A consistent time is important because people are creatures of habit. People typically scroll Facebook, get on the phone, around the same times every day, maybe after work, after dinner. So if you’re streaming at those times, when they’re already looking at Facebook, you’re more likely to get discovered. So that’s really important.

And one of the people I want to shout out that has a very consistent schedule, he streams multiple times every day, because he’s full-time so that’s a little different, but he is a Facebook Gaming Partner. He goes by the name of KingGothalion. He plays all different kinds of games, lots of new releases. He plays lots of games with the community. He has a really cool gaming dungeon that he plays in. You can see behind him with arcade cabinets and cool neon lights. So he’s a really cool guy. Definitely check him out.

Lisa:

That’s a really good tip. I think it’s easy to overlook how consistency is really key, especially if you’re just starting out in streaming or if it’s really more of a hobby for you, but really good point that you’re likely to build up more of a following if you can maintain that consistency.

David:

Yeah. It’s crucial.

Lisa:

Thanks so much for joining us on That Other Gaming Podcast from Meta. Remember, we’d love to connect with you on our Facebook Group and you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @OtherGamingPod.

David:

The show’s produced by LWC. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer and composed our theme music. Kojin Tashiro also contributed music. Jen Chien is executive editor. That Other Gaming Podcast is executive produced by Steve Gray and Juleyka Lantigua. Art by BJ Prema.

Lisa:

Thanks for listening.

David:

And vote for voice!

CITATION:

Jagneaux, David and Jaloza, Lisa Brown. “Mechanics with Numinous Games’ Amy Green.” That Other Gaming Podcast. Meta, LWC, January 20, 2022. 

Produced by LWC