Tynan Sylvester - Designing Games, A Guide to Engineering Experiences (GDL ep07)

A regular "book-club" style podcast where Joe Baxter-Webb [Indie Game Clinic] chats with a range of guest co-hosts about the books we think game developers should read (or at least know the gist of!) You can get most of the books we cover while supporting IGC and smaller businesses than Amazon by going to https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/indiegam... IGC Patreon:   / indiegameclinic   00:00 intro OVERVIEW 01:34 situating the book in our collection 07:55 signposting cultural politics 10:30 book's structure & approach PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS 17:33 engines of experience 20:30 events and anticipation 23:09 emotion and human values 27:50 an interesting take on "flow" INTERESTING AREAS/CHAPTERS 30:30 challenge & mastery 34:12 flexible meanings of "narrative" 40:34 decisions types & intensities 47:05 strategy design & balance 50:18 predicting your opponent ("yomi") 55:38 game theory & griefing 01:01:40 some other chapters/topics PRODUCTION / PROCESSES 01:03:20 the market and the specificity of game appeal 01:02:45 processes and planning 01:07:40 knowledge, research, and evaluating ideas 01:09:00 the dependency stack 01:13:00 collaboration, sensitivity and the Rimworld controversy 01:31:05 what we're reading next time The theme song was produced by show host Joe Baxter-Webb. The Ludonarrative Dissonance jingle was "Carvings" by Blood of Geruda, licensed from Epidemic Sound. RELATED TOPICS: Misattribution of Arousal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattr... Game Theory & (ir)rationality: https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2025/... Swagless Games: https://www.polygon.com/code-vein-2-s... Jeff Vogel GDC talk about serving a market gap:    • Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way   Tynan Sylvester GDC talk on the idea reservoir:    • RimWorld: Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impo...