User:Thijshijsijsjss/Gossamery/Designer Notes

• Listen to it here

Designer Notes is 'a podcast on why we make' in which Soren Johnson (known for being the lead designer on Civilisation IV at Firaxis and founding indie studio Mohawk Games) interviews various people from the games industry.

I've listened to many episodes of this podcast. I find it is a great place for finding new insights, getting inspired, and grounding the game making experience. Here, I will highlight some key episodes for me.

Episode 84 - 85: Zach Barth

• Listened to: October 2024
• Listen to it here (part 1) and here (part 2)

Zach Barthes is a game designer known for founding Zachtronics, who are in turn known for games like SpaceChem, TIS-100, Infinifactory and Shenzhen I/O. These are all 'puzzle games', though Zach barth would stress that they really aren't: they are constraint games with an infinite solution space.

Barth, I find, is a very nice person to hear talk. He's very clearly passionate about the games he makes, and he's quick to acknowledge his shortcomings as a designer. This is funny, as he did put out a book on game design: ZACH-LIKE (more so a compilation of behind-the-scenes documents from Zachtronics). I really like the worksheets that are used to design the puzzles.

In this episode, Johnson and Barth talk about modding, open sourcing game code and, cruacially, manuals. Zach jokingly states it's a way for them to avoid tutorialising their games. However, there seems to be more to it. For example, Shenzhen I/O's manual (here on GitHub)) is diegetic, contributing to the narrative (it even starts with a visa application form). Such a tone can really lift a manual from a chore to an extension of the experience (similar to KTaNE's). Johnson calls this:

[...] an aesthetic experience that I thought would've disappeared at this point

SpaceChem puzzle worksheet

Manual page from Shenzhen I/O

Episode 87 - 88: Caroline Marchal

• listen to it here: part 1, part 2
• listened to on April 19 (part 1) and May 19 (part 2) 2025

Discusses coming to games from poetry, games as episodic tv and as cinema, branching narratives Heavy Rain and As Dusk Falls.

Some interesting notes:

• how (important is it) to communicate that there is branching? Interviewer Johnson notes that for Heavy Rain, he felt like he experienced some odd event in the story and only then came back to replay to see if it was actually a branching narrative. I recently had a similar experience playing Signs of the Sojourner -- only in the final 'chapter' did I realize there were different endings. (Though in Signs of the Sojourner, choices are obfuscated by an rng-based card system)
• balancing the distribution of people choosing certain branches: maybe 50/50 is not desirable. A positive end will be seen as the 'true ending' and will make people inclined to chase that, they might think 'did I make the right decision'.