Enthusing and Kvetching with Alx Preston

Everybody's Talking at Once

ETAO Podcast, Episode 06.

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/etao.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/etao-podcast-06-201312261.mp3
Alx Preston, Lead Designer of Hyper Light Drifter, stops by to discuss how limitations foster and enable creativity, how videogames could learn a thing or two from Ernest Hemingway, and how growing up with a treatable-but-undiagnosable illness has left him with zero patience for glib, oversimplified views of life, the universe, and everything.

(“The stars don’t care about your love life” is about as succinct a philosophical position as I’ve ever heard from anybody, about anything, ever).

We talk videogame violence (and how it’s different in God of War III than it is in the new Tomb Raider). We talk minimalism (and how it’s not necessarily the same thing as simply working within constraints). We talk games-as-art-or-whatever (and why Alx is still genuinely angry at Roger Ebert). And we talk Kickstarter, and the joys and perils thereof.

Also, Alx explains why he adores A Link Between Worlds but cannot abide Skyward Sword, and then he flat-out tells me to go buy a 3DS.

I still haven’t bought a 3DS, but I’ve thought about it a whole lot.

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• Here’s that video that got posted the morning that Alx and I talked.

• Colombia’s pretty fucking cool, in case you’re wondering.

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“All The People Say” (and other assorted silliness) by Carpe Demon.
“Body and Soul” by Django Reinhardt.
“What Am I Here For?” by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

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