The AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences

Adam Orth chats with legendary game developer Mike Mika of Digital Eclipse. Together they discuss his long career developing titles across multiple console generations; finding his creative spark at a young age and developing his first game on a store kiosk Commodore 64; the profound influence Atari had on his life; and how game preservation is an opportunity to share the human stories behind the games we love. 
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Alexa Ray Corriea chats with actor turned game developer Abubakar Salim. Together they discuss his career including how he got his first gig in games with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Origins; wanting to make his own game and starting his own studio; the lessons he learned from working with Ridley and Luke Scott that he applied to game development; how he wanted to tell a story of grief with his first title, Tales of Kenzera™: ZAU; and what the business side of games can learn from film. 
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Alexa Ray Corriea chats with writer Evan Narcisse. Together they discuss his work across video games and comic books; how starting as an outsourcer helped him get his start in the industry; how outsourcing let him observe game development practices across many different studios; how his game Dot's Home explores historical practices that made home ownership difficult for minorities; and what the games industry needs to do to provide avenues into development for people from marginalized backgrounds.
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Trent Kusters chats with Ironwood Studios' Alex Dracott and Seth Rosen about their hit sci-fi first-person driving survival game, Pacific Drive. Together they discuss their journey including their work on AAA games; what led to them creating their own studio and the hurdles they had to jump through to get started; the origin of Pacific Drive and what inspired them; and how the premise of a driving survival game allowed them to implement original ideas and add new levels of immersion.
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Trent Kusters chats with Hunter Bridges and Dave Padilla from Evening Star. Together they discuss their studio's debut title, Penny's Big Breakaway. Additionally they discuss their journeys into development and how the openness of developers helped get them started; how working with SEGA helped them prepare for future projects; the importance of documentation and avoiding knowledge silos; how developing their own engines influenced the type of studio they built; and how playtesting with a younger audience helped their development of Penny's Big Breakaway.
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Alexa Ray Corriea chats with Senior Narrative Director at Insomniac Games, Jon Paquette. Together they discuss the craft of writing and working together on a writing team; how writers and designers collaborate to craft gameplay systems that fit within a game's narrative; and what it takes to create a dual protagonist story like that of Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
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