One Life Left's Podcast

It’s the last day for GDC X One Life Left presented by Gamasutra 2017 and we are all very sad, but luckily we have a sofa full of guests to cheer us up.   Today we talk pitches, perfecting vocal performances, and why there is blood on the walls and wine on Kris’ shoe.   Thanks to all our lovely guests, viewers and listeners. See you next year!   On the show were: Brian Upton, Game On The Rails Jon Ingold and Joe Humfrey, Inkle Tony Gowland, Ant Workshop Glen Gathard, Pinewood Studios Sarah Elmaleh, Freelance Voice Actor Stephen Barlow, Freelance Voice Actor James Parker, Ground Shatter Anisa Sanusi, Frontier Chris Wilson, Cardboard Sword Barbara Lippe, Entrez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GDC X One Life Left presented by Gamasutra is joined by more brilliant guests for our show today. It’s Thursday, so the cracks are beginning to show, but we still managed some great networking. Tune in to find out which business deals we brokered on the sofa today. On the show today were: Mike Jungbluth, Volition Ryan James, Naughty Dog Rhodri Broadbent, Dakko Dakko Andrew Maximov, Naughty Dog Grace Carroll, Creative Assembly Matt Lees and Paul Dean, Shut Up and Sit Down Nic Tringali, Bithell Games Teddy Diefenbach, Square Enix Robin Arnott, Independent Colin Northway, Northway Games Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris, The Tiniest Shark Michael Lee, Schell Games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GDC X One Life Left presented by Gamasutra is live from the show floor, talking to more amazing guests and, for the first time ever, smelling their games. Tune in tomorrow for more sensory experiences. On the show today were: Rebekah Saltsman, Finji Kert Gartner, kertgartner.com Rayna Anderson, Eidos Montreal Itay Keren, Untame Tanya Short, Kitfox Games Richard Rouse, Paranoid Productions Herman Narula, Improbable Martine Spaans, Tamalaki Publishing Lisa Brown, Independent Jenn Sandercock, Inquisiment Alex Fleetwood, Sensible Object Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GDC X One Life Left presented by Gamasutra is live on the conference floor and we are Twitch streaming together for the first time! We’re joined by some incredible guests who chat carousels, cash and the coldest GDC on record. Tune in again tomorrow for more. On the show were: Gemma Thomson, Kaludoscope Richard Lemarchand, USC Holly Gramazio, Matheson Marcault Mark Cooke, Shiny Shoe Kenny Young, AudBod Grant Shonkwiler, Shonkventures Shawn Allen, NuChallenger Emily Short, Spirit AI Soren Johnson, Mohawk Games Hannah Bunce, BBC Tanya DePass, I Need Diverse Games Brandon Sheffield, Necrosoft Games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re easing ourselves into GDC week with a low-key hotel room recording, but there is nothing low-key about our brilliant guests. Adriel Wallick fills us in on how Train Jam went, Rami Ismail from Vlambeer talks to us about his talks this year, Unity’s Kerry Turner tells us what it’s like being on a booth. We’re also joined by The New Yorker’s Simon Parkin, Shailesh Prabhu from Cape,  Mediocre’s Henrik Johansson, and Runa Haukland and Henriette Myrlund from Splash Jam. If that’s us at low-key, imagine where we’ll be by the end of the week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the final One Life Left of the season, before we go into our cocoon and emerge as One Life Left X Gamasutra for this year’s GDC. Unfortunately Simon didn’t obey our rules and went into hibernation earlier than expected due to a cold. This also probably means that Simon will be Patient Zero for this year’s Con Flu. One Life Left is always ahead of the game. Our Super-Special Guest this week was the always-excellent Matt Sheret. Some might argue that he actually doesn’t have much to do with videogames and he was only on the show as he was in the area and answering our calls. But he’s actually very big in VR (our alternative title for this episode was Lawnmower Matt). We also spoke about the hot topic of gender in Pokemon and gave a typical One Life Left response, found out which Batmen Ann identifies with and tried to remember where our Blackberry Playbooks were. And we give more info about our New York and San Francisco Marioke parties, the gist being: Get there early. Cheerio and see you in America! T

This week’s show sees two BIG Marioke announcements. The first is that we’re doing a Marioke gig in New York on 24th February (we would put 24/02, but it would just confuse everyone who is going there). It promises to be a great event and not just because Simon won’t be there. The second Marioke announcement involved our Super-Special Guests, Henry and Chris. They’re in a band that play live backing tracks to people singing songs. But hang on, don’t we have a side-project that changes the lyrics of karaoke songs to be about videogames? Is there some way that we combine these two aspects and make a Marioke with a live backing band? And perhaps we could make it a fundraising event for Resonance FM (the best radio station ever)? The answer to all these questions is YES. Other than our amazing announcements we further developed our relationship with Lewis Schaffer, had a cameo appearance from Producer Chris and Ann confirmed that smoking is cool. She’ll probably have to speak to HR over the week about this. Ch

It’s just the lads tonight as Ann had a migraine. And being a kind, trusting team at One Life Left we take her at her word and don’t try to work out where else she could be - at least for the first half-hour anyway. We also failed to have a Super-Special Guest in the studio. But luckily that meant we could talk to David Heslop about videogame tv via Skype. David told us how difficult it is to get videogames on television (usually through a SCART lead or HDMI cable) and how frustrating that is considering the many opportunities that games offer children’s tv. Normally Ann being away causes issues with the news, but luckily Ann came to the rescue. There was also a bit of Parkinson chat, Simon told us what it’s like to be a big deal on Twitter and Ste nearly broke his NDA. Ouch. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/dtHeslop Tracklist: 1. Hide Your Tigers - Decaying Tigers http://chipmusic.org/Hide+Your+Tigers/music/decaying-tigers-lsdj 2. Enders Crusade - Xenocide http://chipmusic.org/Enders+Crus

One thing we always forget to check before each show is if Simon’s workplace proximity acquaintance John believes our Super-Special Guest for this week’s show is excellently named. Luckily this week we remembered and we can confirm that week’s SSG - Jake Tucker - has a John-Approved name. Jake is currently writing for Rock Paper Shotgun, but has also been involved with Videobrains, which Vice described as TED talks for videogames. He’s also created a game called 20something that is based on his personal experiences and is currently working on a new game that will presumably be based on when he was on the show. Either that or Ste persuaded him to make a cricket themed sequel called 20twentysomething. We also found out the difference between Itch and Steam, Ann made a slight mistake in her news that Ste and Simon were far too gentlemanly to point out, had a debate about Outrun (that was easily solved) and had features from Rob Beer and Sega Badawi. Cheerio! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/_jaketucker

It’s difficult when you have a decision to make and both options are fantastic. On one hand we all had an invite back to Lewis Schaffer’s where we would have discussed how great both of our shows are and possibly someone would have understood Simon’s t-shirt reference. On the other hand we had a show to make and produce. And if we didn’t make the show would Lewis have invited us to his place? Luckily there was an additional factor to bear in mind when making our decision as videogame legend Mev Dinc was on the show. We covered loads of topics from the 8 bit computers up to the present day, but it was good to find out the easiest way to port Enduro Racer from the Spectrum to the Amstrad, how/why First Samurai was possibly the most pirated game on the Amiga and what it was like to be one of the main people to make Ubisoft the success it is today. We also found out that Ste has come up with some merch ideas (which might mean we finally have a chance of monetising our brand), Ann went on a walk (but forgot to p

It’s the first show of a new year (4AL* if you’re keeping note) and all the team is back. Ste returned from his overseas holiday to the Caribbean and Ann came back from Spain. Jamaica? Yes, otherwise she’d be hearing from our HR director. To ease us into the new year, we got a guest in who is always willing to talk to us on numerous topics. Well, as long as that topic is the game that his company has recently released. It’s David McCarthy from Cygames! He managed to make all our questions relate to Cygames’ latest release Shadowverse, except for when we asked if Shadowverse was made by magicians. Shadowverse is Hearthstone meets Magic The Gathering and is played by 15 million Japanese people everyday, and 15 million people can’t be wrong (Insert EU Referendum reference here)! We also found out if Ste has become bloodthirsty now his Mum says he can play violent games (Sub please check this), what DAU stands for, what Simon has recently ordered to put at the bottom of the canal and what is frustrating Ann. Se

It’s a Christmas special with lots of surprises so we don’t really want to spoil them in this intro (although the links bit does give it away a little). We guess we can tell you that Luke Williams from Bossa Studios was in to talk a little bit more about Worlds Adrift and what it’s like making a game where people are generally nice to each other. But any more information will affect your enjoyment of a show that is different to our usual ones but just as great. Cheerio and Merry Christmas! Team OLL x Links: https://twitter.com/eternz https://www.worldsadrift.com/ https://twitter.com/plentyspace https://twitter.com/teenytinylisa https://twitter.com/CharlesCecil https://twitter.com/notken https://twitter.com/mattsheret Track list: 1. Ding Dong Merrily on High - Robby Duguay https://robbyduguay.bandcamp.com/ 2. Go Tell It To The Mana - Robby Duguay https://robbyduguay.bandcamp.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s Super-Special Guest is John Vega who works at Curve Digital as a business developer. Luckily as Simon was away, there was no conflict of interest in the interview section. Unluckily as Simon was away, there were lots of questions we could ask John about working with Simon. We found out what it is that a business developer does, what the success rate of the game pitches Curve receives is like and how we can improve our chances of getting our game published (probably by not asking personal questions about Simon). Little Acre is one of the first games that John biz devved and it should be out now! John told us a little bit about what made him interested in the game and also that Lord Sir Charles Cecil had a small role in proceedings. That must mean it’s going to be great, or that a goat has been put into the game somewhere. Ann proved her news hound credentials by uncovering the new name for Super Mario Run and also a new price point for the app. This news may be related to Ann’s new glasses which

It’s a Christmas miracle: Simon’s back! He did forget to bring Sega Badawi or a Super-Special Guest with him but made it up by managing to get Skype working in our studio. This meant that we managed to get Gary Plowman on the show as our Super-Special Skype Guest. Gary spoke about his ZX Spectrum Code Club book, which is a good stocking filler for all family members (depending on the size of the stocking). Incredibly Gary has managed to get a Basic version of Flappy Birds working on the Spectrum which we’re already excited about coding. Gary allowed two thirds of Team OLL to reminisce about typing in programmes from magazines and books - along with the typos and misprints that caused the whole programme to fail. Anyway, with Gary being our inaugural Skype guest it now opens the whole world to being Super-Special Guests. So if you live in a non-Brexit country and still want to be involved in One Life Left then let us know (offer also open to UK residents who just don’t fancy coming to London). We spent last

Once again it’s another episode without Simon Byron and Sega Badawi. Actually, we’ve never seen Simon and Sega in the same room. Could they be the same person? We’ll try to find out by next week. But anyway. This week’s episode started with a remixed version of the OLL theme due to a dodgy cd, luckily it wasn’t a portent of future issues to come as the show had absolutely no problems (assuming we remembered to edit them out). At least we started to make inroads into a special relationship with the other One Life Left (not that one). And Ste set a new world speed run for Braid. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Stella Wisdom from the British Library. She was in to talk about her Off The Map competition which combines actual historical documents with actual interactive games. We found out about how it got started, what the theme for the next set of games is and about the Wordplay festival, which recently took place at the Library. And we didn’t make any sssh jokes. We’ve become so professional recently (a

We have two rules for our guests. No swearing. No banging. But, as you’ll find out on this week’s show, those rules do not apply to Team OLL. Obviously it’s because Simon wasn’t on the show so the rest of Team OLL felt we could break the rules. Worryingly this may mean that Simon is the responsible one of Team OLL. For instance, Simon is responsible for booking our Super-Special Guests and he came up trumps this week with Ben Nicholson from Cape Guy Games. Or should that be Ben Nicholson, who is Cape Guy? We tried our best to work this out, but as usual we got incredibly confused. We’re blaming the incredibly quick studio changeover from Lewis Schaffer’s Nunhead Radio - which we now have to a fine art and shall be teaching our techniques to F1 pit crews across the world. Anyway, Ben was on the show to talk about his new game Ski Three, which is a match three game crossed with an endless runner. We found out about who the game was aimed at and why that could have caused problems if it wasn’t good enough (luc

To paraphrase Adam and The Ants: Don’t bang. Don’t swear. Obey these two rules and you’ll do fine as a Super-Special Guest. And as Darren Wall from Read-Only Memory was on for his fourth appearance there’s no way that he would break those rules. Right? Darren was promoting Read-Only Memory’s latest book which is about the Bitmap Brothers universe. After a brief history lesson for Ann we started to find out more details about them and tried to determine if the Bitmaps produced the first ever cool games. And how did Woolworths play into their creation? Unfortunately Darren failed to announce the next book that he’s working on, but we give him some great ideas. Mostly involving us. Away from our SSG we named a bear (using a joke that The Caretaker made about a year and a half ago in a podcast description), Ste had a gym induction, Ann got a great gasp from one of her GOOD NEWS stories and Simon got distracted by the smell of the book. And Sega Badawi failed to get the GOOD NEWS ONLY memo. Cheerio! Team OLL x

The first OLL after bonfire night saw Team OLL one member down and slightly deflated after we got bored by fireworks. If only we knew what would happen in America on Tuesday!!!! (SATIRE) Anyway, with Simon away we forgot to do one of Simon’s Important Tasks. Luckily we didn’t forget to book a Super-Special Guest as Tom Cole came on the show to promote Adventure X - The Narrative Gaming Convention. Tom told us who had been announced as Super-Special Guests at Adventure X and it was an impressive list containing the European-Cup winning John Robertson (we might have got the wrong J Robertson). The band that will be playing at the event sounded a little familiar, but Tom managed to talk us around and there may be logistical issues regarding the fireside chat. And it’s free so what’s stopping you from going? Ste gave some incredibly useful advice for videogame journalists as well as being unbelievably happy about catching a Porygon. Ann is getting her photograph taken next week, Sega Badawi dropped some Local N

According to our bizarre way of numbering episodes we believe (excluding Ann Life Lefts, No Continues, GDC Specials, OLL Knights and LITERALLY UNBROADCASTABLE SHOWS) that this is our three hundredth episode. A number so special that we typed it out in words. And how did we celebrate it? The same way we celebrate every episode: By getting Ann to make Kieron Gillen cry uncontrollably through fear. And what better way to celebrate our special anniversary by getting Flavourworks’ Jack Attridge in as a Super-Special Guest? It was a rhetorical question, but there is no better way. We tried our best to get Jack to announce the game that he’s been working on, but he claimed that he couldn’t do it due to ‘contracts’ and ‘legal agreements’. So instead we found out why the entire Attridge family hates Heavy Rain, why he was filming Ste in the studio and why he keeps making his lovers cry. Jack is also trying to make games less external and more internal, which we think means he’s doing a reimagining of Microcosm from t

Sometimes we think we go a bit too obscure with the titles for our GMA-nominated podcasts. This one was inspired by our Super-Special Guest Gary Burchell, who is in the middle of creating the pirate game (but not the pirated game) Abandon Ship. See? It’s quite a clever title really. Gary told us all about Abandon Ship, which has been described as FTL meets Master and Commander and has been used by games journalists as an opportunity to do lots of poor puns. We asked Gary about what it was like to go indie, why he hasn’t put his name in the title and why water ships are better than space ships. It’s also the week after the GMA awards so we EXCLUSIVELY reveal if we won and who managed to avoid putting their name on The List. We also remembered an incident that we’d really like to blank from our memories. We also started a new news feature which every other GMA nominated podcast will be copying in the future and saw Rob Beer and Sega Badawi returning with their regular contributions. Ann made a special announc