Author: Dylan Martin

Tech writer at BostInno.com.

How Indie Games Get Made Returns With the Story of Swimsanity

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 4 Nov 2021

The brothers Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah of Decoy Games. — Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah of Decoy Games.

How Indie Games Get Made has launched! Or it’s back — if you knew about the podcast last year when we released the first episode! The most important thing to know: We are here with 37 new minutes of narrative nonfiction audio about brothers Khalil and Ahmed Abdullah and the 10-plus-year journey it took them to release their passion project, a multiplayer underwater shooter called Swimsanity. If you want to learn about how to play the game, we suggest you go here.

You can listen to the new How Indie Games Get Made episode in the embedded player below. Or you can click one of the links under the player to listen using your favorite podcast app.

Tags Decoy Games, Swimsanity

Dev Diary

Is Starting a Podcast During a Pandemic a Good Idea?

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 15 Feb 2021

A photo of Maquoit Bay in Brunswick, Maine. — From a recent hike we did along Maquoit Bay in Brunswick, Maine.

The answer isn’t the same for everyone, but for me, the answer to the question of creating a podcast during a pandemic morphed from “hell yes!” last summer to “maybe? maybe not?” over the last few months.

How Indie Games Get Made

How Indie Games Get Made Premieres With the Story of Scarlet Hollow

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 12 Oct 2020

Abby Howard and Tony Arias Howard of Black Tabby Games. — Abby Howard and Tony Howard Arias of Black Tabby Games.

How Indie Games Get Made is here! Yes, that’s the name of our new podcast, the successor to BosBattle, and we have launched with our first story about independent game developers: how unique circumstances led professional cartoonist Abby Howard and entrepreneur Tony Arias to create their first game together, a horror-tinged, choice-driven visual novel called Scarlet Hollow, which launched a Kickstarter earlier this month. You can play the first episode on Steam and Itch.io for free.

You can listen to the first episode right here (we will be releasing a full transcript of the podcast soon to make this as accessible as possible):

Tags Black Tabby Games, indie game development, indie games, Scarlet Hollow, Tony Arias, visual novels

Dev Diary

Have a Good Indie Game Dev Story? A Podcast Awaits

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 31 Aug 2020

Since we got the news out a month ago that BosBattle is over and we’re starting a new narrative nonfiction podcast in its place about indie game development, I wanted to make a clear call to action: We are looking for indie game developers who want to share the ins and outs of how they made a game, through the magic of audio storytelling.

Tags New Podcast

Dev Diary

What Happened to BosBattle and What Happens Next

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 31 Jul 2020

Stephanie and Dylan at the Empire State Building in New York during the last vacation we had in the U.S. before the pandemic.

It’s been nearly two years since we published an episode of BosBattle, a podcast that was dedicated to Boston’s video game industry, and we kind of just disappeared without saying goodbye or explaining why we stopped.

Tags BosBattle, New Podcast

BosBattle

#6: The Deep End Games’ Bill and Amanda Gardner on the Trials of Creating a Narrative Thriller

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 31 Jul 2020

A screenshot from the 2017 narrative thriller video game Perception, developed by The Deep End Games. — A screenshot from the 2017 narrative thriller game Perception, developed by The Deep End Games.

It’s been nearly two years since we published an episode, so we’re back with the sixth and final episode of BosBattle. But don’t worry, we’re working on a new podcast, a non-fiction narrative show that’s all about how indie games get made, and the geographical focus will go way beyond Boston. Read more about that here.

Tags Amanda Gardner, BioShock, Perception, The Deep End Games

BosBattle

#5: MIT’s T.L. Taylor Talks About Studying Esports and Streaming For a Living

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 19 Nov 2018

MIT Professor T.L. Taylor and her book, Watch Me Play, Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, now available from Princeton University Press.

If you enjoyed our conversation with Proletariat Inc.’s CEO about the intersection of video games and live streaming last episode, we have a treat for you today.

Tags Esports, MIT, Streaming, T.L. Taylor, Twitch

BosBattle

#4: Proletariat Inc.’s Seth Sivak Discusses Making a Battle Royale RPG

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 15 Oct 2018

A screenshot of Proletariat Inc.'s battle royale RPG, Spellbreak.

Remember when we briefly talked about venture capital-backed video game studios in Episode No. 2 with The Molasses Flood? For episode four, we talked to one! More specifically, Seth Sivak, who is CEO and co-founder of Boston-based Proletariat Inc.

Tags Proletariat, Streaming, Twitch

BosBattle

#3: BostonFIG’s Caroline Murphy & Oleg Brodskiy on Building Indie Game Communities

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 17 Sep 2018

Ahead of BostonFIG Fest 2018, Boston’s premier indie game festival that happens on Saturday, Sept. 29, we talked to Caroline Murphy and Oleg Brodskiy, two organizers of BostonFIG, which originally stood for Boston Festival of Indie Games.

Tags Boston FIG

BosBattle

#2: The Molasses Flood’s Gwen Frey & Forrest Dowling Talk Life After BioShock

Post author By Dylan Martin
Post date 17 Sep 2018

Joining BosBattle for episode No. 2 are Gwen Frey and Forrest Dowling, former Irrational Games employees who started The Molasses Flood, a Boston-based indie game studio behind the wilderness survival game The Flame in the Flood.

Tags Ghost Story Games (Irrational), The Molasses Flood