How I Made That Blake Hester

My guest this episode is Andrew Schimmel, associate producer for Built By Snowman. Snowman is probably most well known for its mobile snowboarding games, Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey. But in September 2019, Snowman hit the ground running with the launch of Apple Arcade, releasing two new games with the debut of the platform — Where Cards Fall, developed in tandem with The Game Band, who recently put out the viral success Blaseball, and Skate City, made in collaboration with Agens, an independent developer based in Oslo, Norway.

I sat down with Andrew to talk about the latter, how Snowman got involved with making Skate City, his personal relationship with skateboarding, and how hard it is to launch a skateboarding game on a touch screen. I ended up learning a lot about Apple Arcade as a service, what it's like to launch a game during skateboarding's mini-renaissance in the game industry, and how being hit by a car changed Andrew's career path forever.

I hope you enjoy our chat.

https://skatecitygame.com/

Support HIMT: https://www.patreon.com/blakehester

My guest this episode is Ty Galiz-Rowe, the founder and editor in chief of the website Uppercut Crit. Uppercut is, quite easily, one of the coolest and best sites in video games right now, going the extra mile to amplify diverse writers and writing, and advocate for freelancers and making sure they get paid.

I've kind of looked up to Ty for a while, and really admire the way they use their platform to fight for the things they believe in this industry. It was an honor to sit down and chat for a while about where Uppercut came from, why diversity in the game press is so important (and why a lot of sites are dropping the ball in that regard) and what's next for the site.

Support HIMT: https://www.patreon.com/blakehester

Theme song: https://3dblast.bandcamp.com/track/beyond-nostalgia

A unique benefit of doing this show is getting to interview my friends and ask them all the questions I've always wanted to ask them about their life and job.

My guest today is Leo Vader, the now-former video editor at Game Informer and someone I've actually known for a long time without ever knowing too much about. Leo and I both worked as interns at Game Informer in the summer of 2016 and have actually hosted a podcast called Game Query together for several years now. But outside of the stuff we've made together, I never knew how he got into making videos, how he ended up getting a job at Game Informer, and most importantly now, why he left that quote-unquote dream job to go out on his own.

So after years of friendship, I finally sat down with Leo and asked him all the questions I'd wanted to ask him over the course of, well, years of friendship. It ended up being a remarkably more touching and candid interview than I expected as Leo told me about what working at Game Informer meant to him, how the company's very public layoffs last year affected his mental health, and what it's really like to leave a dream job.

I hope you enjoy our chat.

Support HIMT: patreon.com/blakehester

Leo's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/SenorAwesome

Theme Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1HzfSdHgnSPMwS8jgFa4Ls?si=Fe4ss9R-R6CwZe-pBXA1WQ

Welcome to the first episode of How I Made That, a show about the people in and around the game industry, and the things they make.

My first guest is Matt Leone, features editor of the pop culture site Polygon. In January 2017, Matt published a story called Final Fantasy 7: An oral history, and it kinda felt like the game industry stood still — at least for a day, as everyone stopped to read this thing. Over the course of two years, Matt interviewed 30-or-more people with a hand in the making of this historic video game. The online version of the story featured multiple mini-documentaries, dozens of original photographs, required a few different trips from San Francisco to Japan, and clocked in somewhere around 30,000-plus words. It's a massive, meticulous story about the creation, release, and aftermath of one of the most important and beloved video games of all time.

I wanted to talk to Matt about the creation of this piece, and what it was like spending three years writing one story. We ended up talking about a lot more, though, such as how, according to him, it didn't actually take three years to write, the ups and downs of 1UP.com, and how he got his start writing about video games through birthday cards.

Support HIMT: https://www.patreon.com/blakehester

Theme song: https://3dblast.bandcamp.com/track/beyond-nostalgia