One Life Left's Podcast

One Life Left is back to present the official GDC podcast with our good friends Gamasutra. We thought we'd take it easy with our first show by having a relaxed recording in a hotel room, but what we ended up with was a bumper show packed full of more people than we've ever had on before.    Join us as we talk to TWENTY-SIX (26) amazing guests, hear from developers new and old, chat about game jams and game collectives, discuss how to #network, and get into the big debate about how to pronounce the HTC Vive.    On the show were:     Charles Cecil - Revolution Software Martin Kvale - Independant Tim Garbos - Triband Joel Nyström - Ludosity Hannah Flynn - Failbetter Harry Tuffs - PixelTrickery Lottie Bevan - Failbetter Martine Spaans - Tamalaki Game Publishing Jonatan Van Hove - Independant Matt Boch - NYU Sarah Brin - Autodesk Simon Parkin - New Yorker/Gamasutra Brandon Sheffield - Necrosoft Games Rami Ismail - Vlambeer Grant Shonkwiler - Epic Games Dave Evans - Playcanvas Brian Francis - Gam

This week's episode is a Denmark special. And in order to celebrate Denmark we got the programmers of James Pond, 3D Construction Kit and the amazing International Rugby Challenge in to talk about it. Oh. Wait. We were thinking of Domark, not Denmark. Luckily our SSG booker didn't make such a mistake and, after Sandi Toksvig and Sofie Hagen refused to return our non-existent calls, we got Jacob and Simon from Gameswing on as our Super-Special Guests. They were there to talk about their new (and first) game Stikbold, which is coming out on XBox One and PC on 1st April and on PS4 a few days afterwards. We asked them about how the game developed from its early start as a Dodgeball game at the Nordic Game Jam to its expertly published current state. We also found out that we really don't like the word sunsetting, fingernails being left in the studio or not being allowed booze on trains like they are in Denmark. This is our last episode before we go to GDC (which will be podcasted) and when we return we will be t

Welcome to episode 280 in One Life Left's quest to understand how Twitch actually works. This week's person trying to show how the video streaming service actually helps people understand videogames is Sam Murray - Coceo from Senshudo tv. He tells us about how he avoids all kinds of handers - both front and back kinds and possibly even side ones - to provide an unbiased set of reviews using Twitch. As well as that he got us annoyed because we never actually got any bribes when we worked at videogame magazines. OR MAYBE THAT'S WHAT WE WANT YOU TO THINK. More importantly, as it was a Leap Day, Ann had the pick of three men to choose to propose to. Or would the patriarchy hold her back (again)? Simon's son had learnt a new swears and Simon learnt what his wife gets up to when he's not around. Sega Badawi dropped some local news on those assembled, we had some Conker chat that didn't involve K-Stew and we figured out how Tomorrowland affects reviews. It was a good show. Cheerio!Team OLL x Links:https://twitter

Psst, don't tell anyone, but this week's show is a gossip special. Unfortunately we don't quite know what this actually means, so we're not actually sure if any real gossip gets spoken during the show. If there is it's almost certainly scurrilous and without foundation, which is our favourite type of gossip (it usually involves conkers). Our Super-Special Guest was Dan Simpson, who is a videogame poet (which sounds like a great idea for a feature - hint hint Craig The Rage). We asked Dan how he got into poetry, what proportion of indie developers like poetry immediately and also if there is anything that Kieron Gillen isn't prepared to introduce. Dan also created a crowd sourced poem for the National Museum of Scotland which sounds like something we'd do, if you replaced 'poem' with 'karaoke song' and 'National Museum of Scotland' with 'pub'. We also found out what Belgium was like, turned down the London Games Festival, Ann went around the studio and Simon's wife isn't going cheese tasting. Sega Badawi pro

It takes a lot to be someone that Mike Bithell wouldn't be prepared to kiss. This week's Super-Special Guest - Tony Gowland from Ant Workshop - is just that person. Could it be because Tony has managed to make a game with a genuinely interesting idea and that has made Mike jealous? If anyone knows anything about jealously it's definitely One Life Left. If there were no jealousy in this business then we'd have a lot more GMA awards. Anyway, Tony's game is called Binaries, it's out on the 4th April and he was only too happy to tell us the main colours of the game. And in Binaries knowing the colours is actually a key factor in the gameplay. Honestly, it's like our apparently stupid questions are actually incredibly clever. We also found out why Tony changed the name of the game and what's it's like to be championed by Mike Bithell. John Life Left tried monetising his feature whilst Sega Badawi still did his purely for the benefit of news. In addition Ste gave some useful advice on running a Kickstarter, as we

It's always good to have gaming royalty on the show so we were happy to have Lord Sir Charles Cecil CBE on as our Super-Special Guest this week. He showed his experience by managing to get the most plugs ever within the first minute of his introduction. You don't run a software company for 25 years without developing some good promotional skills. And next month Revolution Software will indeed be 25 years old, so we took an audio tour through the history of Revolution discussing classics like Lure of The Temptress, Beneath A Steel Sky and their little known game called Broken Sword. Charles also spoke about if the point and click game is still dead, announced a special version of Broken Sword that's available next month and also defended videogame journalists against ("The Hateful Eight" - ed). Not only that but he managed to offend Simon as well, which was bound to happen at some point. The bromance is over. John Life Left and Sega Badawi provided us with some features (and we're always open to new ideas fo

Sorry about the lack of a show last week, two thirds of Team OLL were ill but luckily we were all back to seventy percent full health, except for a microphone that was rather crackly. Poor microphone. This week's Super-Special Guest was the tea demanding Alex Fleetwood, who came in the show to show off Fabulous Beasts, which Ann has decided is "a mix of Pokemon and Jenga". We ask Alex about how his Kickstarter going and get a live update on the Power of OLL on sales. Alex also confirmed that Fabulous Beasts will definitely be ready by November. Unless it's delayed. John Life Left made a return to our features section, along with Sega Badawi. Simon Parkinson incurred the wrath of Scanters, Simon had the latest news whispered through a door by Lord Sir Charles Cecil and Ste made a cricket bat on his computer. We're also incredibly close to confirming our GDC Marioke Party and Ste is doing a Reads Like A Seven event on 11/02. Why not attend both? Cheerio!Team OLL x Links:https://twitter.com/fabbeastshttps://t

A long time ago Ste and Simon were in a crew with David McCarthy, who is this week's Super-Special Guest. They did fun things together like inventing video blogging, but it all got ruined when David got married. Because Ste and SImon alienated everyone there with a really bad best man speech. It was awful, imagine our comedy night in Nottingham but with even less jokes. Sorry, fewer. Anyway, David is back he's working for Cybird in Japan and he might be prepared to tell us something about the new game that they're working on. At the very least he'll be able to help us work out our system for measuring how much a half wit is worth. David also attended Pocket Gamer Connect on the morning of our show, which is where our fifth joke #networking was invented so we have a mini-celebration in its honour. We also confirmed how much a micro transaction is worth, Ann didn't have a driving lesson and Ste was genuinely shocked by a bit of Ann's news. Listen out for the gasp of disbelief! Sega Badawi provides some more l

One Life Left has been hip to all the latest trends in video games ever since we got a cyber razor cut in order to play on our Super Nintendo, yet the streaming fever has passed us by. We did have a spell last year where we tried to Twitch regularly, but all it ended up with is us getting a funny gif of Scanters that we auctioned off for Resonance FM (who you should donate to if you get the chance). However, we're always willing to learn new things, particularly if they contain the key phrase 'monetise our brand' so we got Super-Special Guest and Twitch Superstar Katt Strike in the studio! Katt told us all about streaming and how it ended up with her getting a new PC and a new job. This then lead into a debate on if streamers are replacing traditional reviews and then managed to inadvertently prove a point in our traditional reviews section. We confirmed that we will be attending GDC this year, Simon knocked over a bin, Ste opened Jack Bike-Show's post and Ann was touched by Lewis Schaffer. And Simon. More

One Life Left has started 2016 as it finished 2015. Well, Simon did as he's still playing Star Wars Battlefront. Ste stopped reading his emails over the break and Ann was at a wedding. And we had Christmas, obviously which was a strong seven out of ten this year. We thought that OLL Warm-Up act and excellent comedian Lewis Schaffer had bought us a present for our first show back and were really touched, but it turned out he'd just left a bag in the studio. Maybe he'll get us something for Valentine's Day? Mike Bithell took the opportunity to be our first Super-Special guest of the year so he could tell us about the Vita release of Volume, which should be out by now. He was also given the chance to let us know which of five ideas he'll be working on as his main project for 2016, but he saw through our attempts with a straight bat. We did manage to speak about Bithmas which just keeps getting earlier and earlier in the year, and Mike's possible holiday to Disneyland in February. Ste told us about how he's fin

Normally the last episode of the year is one where you reflect on the year and how it went. We tried to do this at the beginning before Ann's news, but then decided that our mix of great chiptunes, amazing guests and poor jokes were how we brought in 2015 so they'd be the best way to see it out. And we did it in style - Ste was back from Copenhagen, Simon brought in a board game and Ann wore a special Christmas outfit. Our Super-Special Guest this week was Sean Wenham- the creator of The End of The World. We always thought that would be Parkinson. Anyway, Sean's game was inspired by a break up that he had three years ago so we asked him if it's good to wallow in misery, how the search function on the Android store works and what his wife thinks of the game. Sega Badawi had some local news, along with a clip that sounded slightly familiar, Simon apologised for something that isn't actually on this episode and we announced that Kieron Gillen will be djing at our Christmas Party. YOU MUST BUY A TICKET NOW. Ch

Ste was in Copenhagen this week. Luckily, unlike that time Ann was away we didn't have to remember to get anyone in to do the news. Unfortunately we had to rely on Simon manning the desk and Ann not telling him to press the 'dump' button which meant around seven seconds of the episode was lost. And - most annoying of all - it meant we missed out on hearing this week's Super-Special Guest Tom Cole, research student at Goldsmiths and member of The Intelligent Games Games Intelligence Programme. We did only press it the once so we were able to find out how we can broaden and deepen (but not lengthen) emotional engagement in videogames, which games best do this, which games best do this that Simon isn't annoyed by and we also heard about the Adventure X festival that Tom is running this weekend (assuming you read this as soon as the podcast is uploaded).   And with Ste being away it meant that we had a gap in the market for a young up-and-comer to guest host, but unfortunately we gave it to Keith Stuart from the

This week's show was a little bit weird. Firstly, this week's Super-Special Guest Jon Hare said that we were part of the videogame industry. Obviously he hadn't read the results of this year's GMAs. Secondly, Jon provided us with an actual EXCLUSIVE!!! first play of the remix/demo version of Goal Scoring Superstar Hero to put on the show. We thought the only EXCLUSIVES!!! we could reveal were the colour of the game. And in case you're wondering, the main colour of Jon's new game Sociable Soccer is green, unless it's snowing in which case it's white. We spoke to Jon about the development of Sociable Soccer, how Simon isn't the World Champion of it, but did manage to score the second ever headed goal and tried to work out the secret bit of coding to make our own version of Sociable Soccer. Ann was at a hen do in Copenhagen over the weekend, Simon and Ste were at a Chvrches gig whilst Sega Badawi just stayed in the news room to catch up on the latest events. We also heard from the mayor of Royal Leamington Spa

Ann is back from being Big In Japannnnn because she drank all of their alcohol. This meant that we've had the full team back in the studio for the first time in ages. It also meant that Ste didn't have to worry about trying to figure out who would do the news. Although he didn't really have much time to worry about it last week if we think about it. Our Super-Special Guest this week was our third most famous guest ever. This obviously means that he has as little to do with videogames as possible, and is not Simon Parkinson or K-Stew (they're still fighting it out down at the bottom). Oh, we'd probably say who he actually is at this point. It's Iain Morris, co-creator of The Inbetweeners. We found out how videogames helped inspire The Inbetweeners, if mentioning Pro Evo Soccer on a TV show gets you any freebies and what it's like to break Ricky Gervais' back (presumably it made him humble). Ann told us that she was learning to drive, Ste scared all his cats away on Neko Atsume, Simon learnt that his son had

Due to Ann being in Japan, Ste being in India and Simon drinking in the afternoon there was no show last week. Luckily Ste and Simon managed to make it into the studio this week in order to provide you with some gaming related entertainment. However, would we remember to inform you as well as entertain through our acclaimed news section? Errm, sort of. We did remember to book a Super-Special Guest and this week's SSG was Gareth Williams from Premier PR. It was probably for the best that Ann was off this week as last time Gareth was on the show he deeply offended her and the show was literally unbroadcastable. We spoke to Gareth about what it was like to be the proto Guy Cocker on CNN, how PR is different to journalism and who has the best idea for a video game? Sega Badawi remembered to do some local news and we had a new feature from one of MCV's 30 under 30. And we sort-of announced our Christmas Party without actually confirming the date or where it would be held. But we're sure details like that won't h

Last week we had a Marioke event at GameCity. It involved lots of drinking and singing. Nothing unusual there. But we've not seen Ann since, and some sources are saying that she ended up in Japan. Is she going to be the new Kojima? As Ann was missing, we needed to make sure that her replacement was completely ethical and - most importantly - a man. So we got GameUnder, renegade gamer and former president of Electronic Arts to come in and do the news. We also got Henry Hoffman from Fiddlesticks and the most stylish man in games in as a Super-Special Guest. He told us his origin story, his new game Hue, his experimental VR game Aboard The Looking Glass and made an EXCLUSIVE! announcement that he probably shouldn't have made and we shouldn't be mentioning in CAPITAL LETTERS. Sorry. We're also sorry that there won't be a show next week, it's all Ste's fault for going to India. Oh, and we're sorry for the spoilers that GameUnder might do during his news. While we're at it, sorry for mentioning TFI Friday during

As ever, we start the show as we mean to go on. With the highest level of professionalism, and by swivelling. Although some members of the team might not be giving the usual percentage of effort that our listeners demand. See if you can work out who it is! The Super-Special Guest for this week is Stefano Petrullo from Renaissance PR, who are not to be confused with Resonance FM. Stefano told us all about how Simon caused Stefano to split with his then-girlfriend, how doing PR for indies is different to the major publishers and general tales about being in the PR world. We spoke a little about our Marioke event in Nottingham GameCity this Friday, Ste promoted his live Checkpoints recording this Thursday and Kieron Gillen let us down (again). Sega Badawi provided us with some local news but more importantly we talked about sausages in games. Oh and we decided which of the journalistic Sons was better: Ellison or Parkinson. Cheerio!Team OLL x Links:https://twitter.com/iltrullohttps://play.google.com/store/ap

One thing we've learnt from TV Talent Shows is that the journey is important. And this week's guest, Kerry Turner, had a very special journey to get here. By which we mean that she nearly ended up at Portsmouth. Luckily she made the right connection and we got to talk to her about Make Play Code and how teaching women how to code is a lot like The Ring or like making a skirt. It sounded so good that Ste and Simon had to come up with some cunning plans. We had GameUnder and Sega Badawi providing some features with a new Super-Special Guest Reviewer making his debut. Not only that but we turned Pip into a tv star, started our own awards ceremony and decided on how big Ann wanted her blanket. And we didn't really mention the GMAs. They just don't deserve being in our house. But they know what they can do to improve things for next year. Cheerio!Team OLL x Links:https://twitter.com/MakePlayCodehttps://twitter.com/reallyfancyhttp://www.makeplaycode.com/ Track list:1. Gepsjors - Nessyhttp://chipmusic.org/gepsj

There's no Simon this week as he was in Hawaii preparing to drink illicitly in airports. And because of that we sort-of forgot that we needed to book a Super-Special Guest. Luckily, our favourite Rising Star Philippa Warr took time out of her busy schedule watching DoubleFist win the esports World Cup to come and help us out (we might have got some of the World Cup info wrong). Somehow a reference to Kanye West lead to a really sophisticated discussion about pricing in games. Which makes us wonder about where next week's D-12 Discussion Point will lead to, or perhaps talking about Nelly's plaster will give us a new insight about healing in games. We also discussed all of our chances in the forthcoming Games Media Awards, received some actual post (some wanted, some unwanted), heard some Local News and Ste told us about how he did a curler. Fun times. And our GameCity Marioke event has been announced, see below for the link but if you're lazy it'll be on Friday 30th October at Spanky Van Dykes. Cheerio!Tea

For the first time this season we finally had all three presenters hosting. In order to commemorate this we all hosted the show standing up. This means that you need to be standing up to listen to this show in order to show us the respect we deserve. As we know that this will cause you some discomfort, we have decided to have a break from doing the show next week. We are nothing if not protective of our listeners. This week's Super-Special Guest is James Parker from Ground Shatter. He told us all about his two (count 'em - two!) new games, Skyscrappers and Black and White Bushido. He told us why local multiplayer games deserve a comeback, which is just as well as that's what Skyscrappers is. Luckily Ann decided not to torpedo any of his ideas like she did with VR so both of the games should be coming out soon. GameUnder continued his sterling work for the videogaming public and Sega Badawi informed us of a local news story. We also found out that Ste has a dodgy back, Ann has dyed her hair and Simon told us