Singing Dunes and Wandering Creatures, with Max Arocena

Everybody's Talking at Once

ETAO Podcast, Episode 37.

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/etao.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/etao-podcast-37.mp3

Max Arocena (a.k.a. Colorfiction) hangs out on his porch, amid a rising squall of crickets, to discuss 0°N 0°W (a.k.a. Zero North Zero West), his carefully crafted new dream-’em-up. We discuss the rich possibilities of games without gameplay as such, the incomparable surreality of roadtrips, and the odd connections between working at an architecture firm—Max’s old job—and creating spaces in video games. Max also talks through the process of making 0°N 0°W as a one-person team, the game’s kitchen-sink approach to graphics techniques, and the emerging, divergent places of VR and the Switch in our game diets.

We also discuss the beauty of making one program you can run on your computer that won’t phone your data home, game engines as philosophies of creation, and the inescapable woes of version compatibility.

And dreams. We talk a lot about dreams.

———
• Here’s that gif that shows the world popping into existence as it becomes visible to the player.

• Get your asses to national (and state!) parks, my fellow Americans.

• Singing dunes, man.

• The Kingkiller Chronicle, singular. Just the one.
———
“All The People Say (Season 2)” by Carpe Demon.
“Ionosphere Delay” and “0°N 0°W” from the 0°N 0°W Soundtrack by Colorfiction.

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