One Life Left's Podcast

After an Ann-sized absence (or Ann-sence) last week we welcomed the return of our HR director and person who reads the full news story (and not just the url). But what did she get up to in Iceland? How deep did the conspiracy go? And how were eggs involved? This week's Super-Special Guest did not bring any eggs, but he is a Cooke! It was Robbie Cooke from Rebellion who was on the show to promote what some are calling 'the best PS VR launch game' - Battlezone. It's an official VR version of the old Atari wireframe game and sounds really good. But we were more interested in how Rebellion bought the IP rights from Atari and how we could use it to improve our own standing in the videogame world. We were also excited as the day after recording we were going to find out if we had won our second GMA. While you wait with baited breath to find out the result, keep listening to hear what Simon's son uses the most sophisticated of voice recognition technology to do, find out the latest local news from Sega Badawi and

After a wonderful time at the Slush Play conference in Iceland, Ste successfully made it back to the studio. Ann didn't and neither did Ste's top. Unfortunately Simon was also going through sports jet lag due to the baseball and also because of him 'be'ing Alex Hunter. Yes, it's hard to believe but a game has finally knocked Star Wars Battlefront off. Perhaps it'll be joining Simon's Wii at the bottom of the canal before too long. Our Super-Special Guest is James Long, who created a game that is Top Secret. It is based on Edward Snowden and the events leading up to him releasing his leaks. Perhaps we've said too much just by having James on our show, but we think we can tell you that it is a real time email game where you react to actual emails that were sent out at the time. And we provide clear evidence that you can monetise your brand on One Life Left through Simon, sorry 'Alex', buying the game on air. And, if we haven't made it clear enough, the game's name is Top Secret. We also had some Confessions o

We regret to inform you that we haven’t found a use for the coin sound effect in this week’s episode. This is due to a surprisingly high level of competence from ourselves, which will never last. Iceland will be the main beneficiaries of our incompetence this week as Ann and Ste are going over to the Slush Play conference to do a Sigur Ros and Pollaponk based Marioke and to eat their body weight in Pipp chocolates. Ann is also going to be playing detective over there, hopefully she’s got a good jumper sorted out for it. Martho Ghariani from Oasis Games was this week’s Super-Special Guest. He’d just flown in from New York and boy were his arms tired! Oasis Games is a Beijing based publisher who is bringing five Playstation VR games from China over to the west over the next few months. We heard about the developing console market in China and tried to learn even more about how VR will change the videogame industry. Perhaps with all our knowledge we’ll become the first-ever VR podcast? (Actually this is A Good

We suppose we should start with the major news this week. Resonance FM now has beer mats. It is this promotional machine that has got us another GMA nomination in the category that keeps changing its name and has currently decided that it is Best Radio/Podcast Team. As we call ourselves Team OLL we're quietly confident that a team full of lads will win it again. Actually, that wasn't the big news was it? The big news is that Ann is back. The annual winner of the GMA for best newsreader (well she would be if they held it) is off her sickbed and back into the studio. Although she might still be a little ill as halfway through the show she identified as a millenial. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Lupine, who is often a presence at our Marioke events. He didn't have any games or items to promote so we just spoke about Marioke and tried to get him to confess to any nefarious activities. So a standard show really. This week's returning features were Rob Beer's Confessions of a Part-Time Gamer and Sega Bad

As is standard with the second episode after a break One Life Left is an Ann down. But if you're the HR director what is the correct process for sick leave? How long do you talk about it on air? And how do you cover radio's best videogame news reader? The answer to that last question is how Ann feels: poorly. Our Super-Special Guest were actually Guests as we welcomed James Parker and Tony Gowland into the studio. After we anointed them as The Last Shadow Puppets of Videogames we spoke to them about Binaries, which is coming out on consoles after being a big hit on the PC. We asked them how Binaries has changed on its transition to the consoles, the problems with setting a difficulty level and also how Lemmings 2: The Tribes helped shape the new version. After a break Sega Badawi returned with the latest local news and we have (sit down for this) a new feature. Rob provided us with his confessions of a part time gamer, hopefully our lack of replying to his email last week won't stop him from sending more fe

Summer break is over, but One Life Left is back, Back, BACK! And it's been a long hot summer, being a three-button Monday. So what did we do over the holiday? Simon walked past Hugh Dennis, Ann had too much coffee and Ste did something that may get mentioned during the show. We also guested on other podcasts in an attempt to become videogames answer to Sean Paul/Ludacris. Except in most cases we were too hot for release, we blame the three undone buttons. And in a break from our break-returning tradition we had a Super-Special Guest this week. In fact we had a real Scanters' Choice between comedy's Robin Ince and Failbetter Games' Hannah Flynn. The criteria we had for this week's SSG was how long they would be prepared to talk about Fallen London coming out on Android and about the forthcoming release of Zubmariner - the expansion to the amazing Sunless Sea. Oh, and their name had to fit the title for the episode that we had already chosen. We should get Robin on later in the series though. We also spoke to

Sorry for the lack of a show last week, but it was in order to get you fully prepared for our summer break. Yep, we're off for all of August and will return to air on the 5th of September. So this means that we wanted to tie off our loose ends like Clive Anderson* before we go off to America / watch cricket / look for Pokemon / all three. Now if you recall, one thread that has been through all this season of OLL was David McCarthy's forthcoming soft/hard launch of BFB Champions Global Kick Off. And for this thread to be fully tied off we got David back in the studio to tell us about how it is going to be what experts (us) call "The Pokemon Go of football games". Well, Cybird are soft launching it in different countries like what Pokemon Go did so we feel safe enough to make that comparison. Tomorrow (as in Wednesday 28/07) we're doing a special Pokeoke at the Loading Bar, which is a Marioke but only about Pokemon. It's going to be a one-off special so bring your pikachu jumpers, your best singing voice and a

With Simon having booked the day off to do something special Team OLL was at a loss at how to replace him. Luckily Doncaster’s premier top-light entertainer and former market stall holder Derek Williams was passing by so he was willing to offer his help at no extra cost. Well, apart from the constant promotional considerations for his various side-projects that Derek took the opportunity to advertise at every gap in proceedings. But we highly recommend all of Derek’s side projects, as well as his above, below, front and back projects. Another project that we highly recommend is Dreadbit Games’s Seraph and – no! But yes! – we had the creator of the game Daniel Leaver on the show to promote it. Seraph is a skill based acrobatic shooter inspired by a film starring Christian Bale, but not that one where he shouted at the film crew (that inspired how we treat people on The List when we’re at GameCity). Daniel showed us what the sound effect for slowing down is and also explained what he does at Dreadbit (2% direc

It’s not often that Team OLL get to name an episode of the show after an obscure phrase in Amiga Power and – to be honest – we’d have rather not had the opportunity this week. Trust us, once you realise what this episode title refers to, you’ll never look at Ste the same way again. And it’s a shame as up to that point we were all getting on terribly well. Except for the incident before the show when Ste bumped into Simon coming out of a hotel. Apparently Simon was booking our Super-Special Guest into a room. This is the kind of treatment you can expect if you come onto our show and are not a tank. And our Super-Special Guest this week came all the way from Lithuania so the hotel was needed. It was Tomas Sakalauskas from No Brakes Games, who came in to not share a hotel room but to talk about his new game Human Fall Flat. In the game you just control your hands (unlike Joe Hart) and use them to move around the level. It’s been a hit on the mythical website called YouTube (that we still don’t understand) so as

After a week of depressing news there was only one thing that we could do: Get the Guardian's Keith Stuart on the show and gently bully him. Except we didn't even feel like doing that, so we just talked to K-Stew about his book, A Boy Made Of Blocks, that is coming out soon. Oh, apart from the time when Stew-buryness let us use his Twitter, like in that show that Katherine Ryan does on itv2. We also delayed the selling of our Marioke tickets for Develop in Brighton for gloomy reasons. However, we decided to start selling them during the show to see how the economy has bounced back since the events on Thursday. And we got to hear how the establishment is coping with the changes as Lord Sir Charles Cecil rang in (even though he should've known that we were on air). Actually it was a fairly interactive show this week. We had the latest news from Sega Badawi, did a live rendition of the Doctor Who theme and also played Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival via flow chart (which appears to be the best way to play it). Wi

You know it's going to be a great episode of One Life Left if at least one of Team OLL starts the episode with a damp groin. And boy oh boy do we have a damp groin for you! (Shouldn't that be 'great episode'? - Ed) Ann has passed her driving test and we've persuaded her to become the next Mike Bithell. She's already become a bit upset with Kotaku so she's well on the way to achieving that goal. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Sean Cleaver from the world of freelance journalism and Hertfordshire. We asked him what it was like to cover E3 from the UK and interrogated him about why we weren't included in the guest list of content creators and influencers that attended the EA play event. We also tried to find out if Peter Moore still has his GTA tattoo, which got The Caretaker confused as he thought he was currently coach at Notts CCC. Sean is also planning on producing a gaming version of the (nngh) 5Live show Fighting Talk, which should be excellent providing one of Team OLL is on it every week. Marioke

The gang is finally back together. Although Ste was still shaken after the grilling he got from Chef Scanters in last week's episode. Luckily Simon was back to interview this week's Super-Special Guest - David McCarthy from Cybird and Japan via France. He could finally reveal the game that he refused to tell us about last season, but perhaps we shouldn't discuss it in this episode intro out of spite. Nah, that doesn't sound like us does it? It's BFB Champions Global Kick-Off (all the cool kids call it BGBCGKO), which is a football management game for smart phones. We find out what early noughties football game BFBCGKO is most like, when it is coming out, whether it is in a hard or soft launch form and also what BFB stands for. Other than a great quality football game at a decent price. Still related to football we all try to become voicemen in Dan Marshall's Behold The Kickmen. That is, if the Caretaker hasn't deleted our attempts out of the podcast out of spite. Nah, that doesn't sound like him does it? We

After a week off due to the bank holiday (which the caretaker forgot to tell us about) we came back at full strength. Er, except Simon was off to sunny Spain. And Simon is usually the one who books the guests. So who do we know that has a new game coming out (and two others in development) and has a golden spring on his microphone? Yes, instead of an SSG this week, we have a SS-Ste. We find out what our SS-Ste was doing ten years ago, spoke about his new game Chime Sharp, how stressful kickstarters are and don't get any exclusives. Once again, Ste has let us down. Away from our guest, we find that videogame fans annoy us and cheer us up in equal measures, say goodbye to Videogame Nation (and try to work out if they're on The List (High Def)) and Ste man-reviews Scanters as well as nearly becoming a Truther due to F-Zero. There's also Sega Badawi, who gives us some local news that was slightly more topical a week ago, but he forgot about the bank holiday break. We normally have three paragraphs for each epis

We're back from a mid-week trip to Nordic Game and managed to get Scanters successfully through customs, although she did come back with something that she got from a boat trip (congrats Ann - congrannts). Because it was so hot on Monday (unlike now) we had the window open, which means this week's show is naturalistic/noisy depending on your perspective/quality of headphones. There was also a dog in the studio before we went on air, which has now raised all kinds of questions that we need to ask of the people at Renaissance. This week's Super-Special Guest is - dilly ding dilly dong - Becky Jowsey from Gamehub. And also from Leicester, which hopefully means that the dilly ding dilly dong reference now makes sense. Becky's taken on the incredibly easy task to explain videogames to parents who know nothing about them. This has involved playing lots of games for very long periods of time, with over 150 data points needing to be investigated for each game. The times when you just needed to know graphics, sound,

It's not a new season of One Life Left if at least one of us can't make it to the second episode. And Scanters was very happy to take the hit for the team this episode to go boozing on the way to Oslo. It's a hard life being head of HR and News for Europe's leading videogame radio programme. Ann was so on top with her HRing this week by managing to arrange a news-reading substitute, although he did let her down slightly by having a bit of a Network moment. True newsreaders would never do that. Frederico Fasce from ETT was this week's Super-Special Guest. He gave a very good reason as to why he wouldn't be able to attend our next Marioke event, which meant that we were prepared to ask him about Game Happens - the Italian gaming event he runs with his girlfriend - and the work that he does for ETT. As a result we confirmed how intelligent we were and also learnt about how games are useful in psychological testing (we'd have needed more than an hour for us to do that one). We move into a fascinating sphere of

Hey everyone, we're back, Back, BACK. And you know that the show is going to be a great one when before it even starts two thirds of Team OLL gets kissed by Nunhead's own Lewis Schaffer. Although it doesn't help that we forget what number season we're on. But you know this as you can see it in the episode description. If you can't be bothered to scroll up, we've finally hit our teens. While we were away Ste watched cricket, Ann became a Twitch superstar and Simon went to PAX. No surprises there then. What was a bit shocking (after all the talk at GDC) was that Ste is into VR - how could he turn on us like that? Wait, he's using it to make a cricket game? Ah, all is right with the world. The Super-Special Guest this week is Simon Haynes, who is making Super Arcade Football. It's already in Steam Early Access and is an attempt to bring videogame football back to its fun arcade roots. We try to find how he has altered the rules of football to make it more fun as a videogame, what's it like to be a friendly riv

Well folks, it's the final day of GDC 2016, and what an amazing time we've had. We've spoken to dozens of guests, hosted two epic Marioke sessions, experienced more virtual realities than we ever dreamed possible AND learned how to pronounce HTC Vive. Incredible scenes.But before we go, join One Life Left, Gamasutra and super special guests Fred Wester from Paradox, Eric Zimmerman, Jesse Schell, Riot Games Kimberly Voll, Martine Spaans, Kanye Zone superstar Stephen Barlow, Robert Yang, Positech's Cliff Harris, Henrik Johansson from Mediocre Games, Dan Adelman, Robert and Peter Curry, and Anna Kipnis from Double Fine as we see out GDC in style.Cheerio!Team OLL x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stories! Awards! Pink Pants! Join One Life Left, Gamasutra and twelve more super special guests as we guide you through the ins-and-outs of GDC 2016. On today's show we're joined by Matti Larsson from Zordix, Joseph Humfrey and Tom Kail from inkle, industry legend Lorne Lanning, Steve Meretzky, Tadhg Kelly, Scott Brodie from Heart Shaped Games, Zach Gage, Chris McQuinn from DrinkBox Studios, Steve Gaynor, writer Chris Kohler, and Frank Cifaldi from Digital Eclipse.Cheerio!Team OLL x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's day three at GDC, and now the expo's properly underway it's time to find out if this VR stuff is any good. Luckily we've got a small army of super-special guests to help us work that out. Guests include Tommy Refenes from Team Meat, Ryan Burrell, educator Kerry Turner, Lee Perry, Robin-Yann Storm, FourbitFriday’s Tyriq Plummer, Jake Birkett from Grey Alien Games, Luuk van Aggelen and Bram Simonis from Pillow Games, Katie Goode of Triangular pixels and Gamasutra columnist Katherine Cross. Cheerio! Team OLL x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Show two from GDC, and the first from the convention floor! Join us and twelve super special guests as we talk about what's coming up this week, how many VR panels can fit into one lineup and we continue to ask the all-important question 'How do you pronounce Vive?'Featuring John Warner from Over The Moon Games, Andy Nealen from NYU, Tarn Adams from Bay 12 Games, Kongregate co-founder Emily Greer, Fullbright's Nina Freeman, Henrike Lode from Lohika, Romana Ramzan from Glasgow Caledonian University, Professor Mary Flanagan, James Portnow from Snow Cannon Games, composer Laura Karpman, and Mare Sheppard & Raigan Burns from Metanet Software Inc.Cheerio!Team OLL x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices