Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Lydia, Stephen, and Mark
  • 4.7 (41)
  • VIDEO GAMES
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

The podcast where nice gamedevs talk gaming and game development. Nice!

  1. MAR 5

    "We need more train service in this country." What We Did On Our Winter Break (2025-26)

    Your nice hosts had an eventful time off from new episodes, but now they're back! So yeah, this is a long one... What The Show Did on Winter Break (2025-26) Boot the Dispute - a thing that solves your problems! YouTube Art & Fear Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking David Bayles and Ted Orland Lydia's Website Glom Nice Games Club What Each of Us Did On Winter Break (2025-26) IDGATC Global Game Jam 2026 Global Game Jam The first recorded character exploration of Henle, Lydia's D&D character, written over a year before the campaign started. Lydia finally started acting on the feedback the Nice Hosts gave on the memory mechanic she developed for D&D 5e Untitled Memory Mechanic Webinar | Whose Game Is It Anyway? Live Learning Game Design Improv YouTube Junction Jam interest form Star Trek: The Cruise Blippo+ The 50 best games of 2025 Polygon The 12 Best Video Games Of 2025 Kotaku The best games of 2025 AV Club The 25 Best Games Of 2025, Ranked Inverse The Besties game of the year 2025 is... The Besties Baby Steps leads 28th annual IGF Awards nominations Chris Kerr Game Developer The New York Game Awards 2026 Winners Have Been Revealed! Philip Watson CGMagazine

  2. 1D AGO

    Tabletop Special

    While Mark is off on a Star Trek cruise, the rest of your nice hosts invite Lydia's husband Ian Peters to discuss tabletop games, specifically RPGs! We've split this supersized episode and topic into three different acts for your listening pleasure. 0:01:58 Holistic Connection of Theme and Mechanic Blades in the Dark Evil Hat Productions GURPS: Generic Universal RolePlaying System Steve Jackson Games Thirsty Sword Lesbians Evil Hat Productions Dialect: A Game About Language and How It Dies Thorny Games 0:33:41 Dice Call of Cthulhu RPG Chaosium Inc. Does a crit always mean success? Molaschi Reddit Dread the RPG The Impossible Dream Kids on Bikes Hunters Entertainment 1:00:28 Flexibility Lydia had talked about tabletop mechanics in her Untitled Memory Mechanic Nice Thinking episode Untitled Memory Mechanic Citizen Sleeper Jump Over The Age Steam

  3. FEB 26

    Reinventing GDC (with Mark DeLoura) [Nice Replay]

    #417 Reinventing GDC Interview 2025.11.27 After the discussion, DeLoura turned the tables on your nice hosts and asked a question of his own. It didn't fit into the episode, but we saved it and put it up as a Patreon exclusive bonus segment! Mark DeLoura's decades-long career in games includes roles ranging from Nintendo engineer to White House senior advisor. A longtime and passionate developer advocate, this year he's been tapped to help reinvent the industry's largest annual gathering, GDC. DeLoura outlines the changes coming to this year's conference, defines what "festival" means in the context of GDC, and previews the ambitious goals for its future. But your nice hosts also raise concerns about the elimination of the lowest-priced passes, the accessibility of new programming, and the critical issue of attendee safety now that more official GDC events serve alcohol. Whether you have or are planning to attend GDC, are one of its critics, or just want to know more about how the industry creates and manages its community, this episode is a must-listen. Your nice hosts will be at GDC 2026, March 9th - 13th, 2026 in San Francisco. Look for our annual GDC special episode(s) then. Mark DeLoura on Bluesky Mark DeLoura on LinkedIn HITLab - Human Interface Technology Lab  -  University of Washington Game Programming Gems  -  Mark DeLoura Dr. Miguel Luengo-Oroz (MalariaSpot) - Online game & crowdsourcing & malaria  -  The International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases ,  YouTube About FoldIt Video games owe a lot to President Obama's administration  -  Brian Crecente ,  Polygon Mark DeLoura also co-hosts a podcast! His weekly gaming news/discussion show, Boss Rush, is available on YouTube! After the discussion, DeLoura turned the tables on your nice hosts and asked a few questions of his own. It didn't fit into the episode, but we saved it and put it up as a Patreon exclusive bonus segment! Reinventing GDC The annual Game Developers Conference is changing  -  Michael McWhertor ,  Polygon Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity  -  Wikipedia Black Hat - Upcoming Events GDC Passes & Pricing  -  Game Developer Conference Seattle Indies SLICE Calling partners for GDC 2026!  -  Game Developer Games Industry Gathering Female Game Devs Open Up About Harassment And Drink Spiking At GDC  -  Ahmad Hassan ,  RespawnFirst Amir Satvat's Games Jobs Resources

  4. FEB 19

    "I’m intrigued by big door." Emotional Effects of Music; A New Foe Has Appeared! [Nice Replay]

    #393 "I’m intrigued by big door." Roundtable 2025.06.12 Mark rushes through the introduction to talk about his two rush projects, one of which, Blippo+, was announced on Sunday during the PC Gaming Show! You'll hear more about that next week, but until then, Lydia talks about feeling seen in Anime, Stephen laments that his filmmaking class has not only ruined movies for him, but also music, and Dale does a good job editing out Lydia’s coughs. Blippo+, coming to PC and Switch this fall! You Need To See FMV Cable TV Simulator Blippo+  -  Wesley LeBlanc ,  Game Informer Emotional Effects of Music Stephen McGregor Audio A New Foe Has Appeared! Lydia Symchych Misc.

  5. FEB 12

    Nice Games Jam: "Dinosaurs of North Dakota" [Nice Replay]

    #381 Dinosaurs of North Dakota Nice Games Jam 2025.03.13 The clubhouse gets Cretaceous this week; your nice hosts have been challenged to create a game about dinosaurs and their feeding habits. Prompt Make a game about the feeding habits of dinosaurs or of paleontologists, bonus points if all the dinosaurs are from the same era. Game type Design document Player count 1 Rules Cretaceous periodFlowering plants evolved hereEarly mammals here tooVelociraptors too!Different sized dinosaursName: Dinosaurs of North DakotaPlay as big (T-rex), small (dog-sized) and medium (triceratops)Survive a day as each of these creaturesOrder of playMedium first (herbivore)Big next (T-rex)Small last (scavenger)Then Paleontologist discovers (eats chicken with a PLASTIC fork)Where you die determines how preserved the bones are during the paleontology phaseIf you want more preserved bones you have to choose to not live as long (due to how the preservation works)GameplayPlay as the different creatures, the player chooses when that phase of the game endsCan also end after a certain time playedThen you swap to a new creature and play as them, choosing when to endWhen you get back to a creature, time has passed and things are different in the world (partly due to player influence from other creatures)Player knocking down trees might be knocked down in future scenes, eating a lot of plants may make the area sparse in the futureKeep playing as the different creature until enough time has passedAfterwards, play as a paleontologist and rediscover what you’ve doneRecord what you’ve done with the knowledge the paleontologist has (and not the player), so it won’t actually be accurate to the player’s playthroughBased on what the player’s done, it can affect what things the paleontologist will be able to say about the state of things after

  6. FEB 5

    Nice Thinking: "Fishing Minigame Collection" [Nice Replay]

    #405 Fishing Minigame Collection Nice Thinking 2025.09.04 Stephen Business is back! And he’s attempting to make a meme into a reality. The clubhouse attempts to answer these (and other) questions: How many fishing minigames is too many fishing minigames?Is it okay to shoot fish with lasers?Who are those teenagers with emo hair in the Bentley?Should Stephen make something on the Playdate?Why do people go fishing?Does anyone actually like fishing? You can wishlist 'Blippo+' on Steam!  -  Steam Fishing Stephen McGregor Gaming Lydia kicked of this topic with a comment an episode, maybe this one? Revisiting Your Games Fishing Minigame Meme  -  Reddit Lydia learned about noodling from this youtube channel  -  Bon Appetit ,  YouTube Feeding time at a Fish Hatchery is bonkers!  -  YouTube Lydia's nice list of games with fishing minigames Tales of Arise Pokemon Animal Crossing Stardew Valley Legend of Zelda (many) Skyrim Kirby The Forgotten Land Verdant Skies Spiritfarer Red Dead Redemption 2 Final Fantasy (many) Sonic Frontiers Far Cry 5 Hades

  7. JAN 29

    3D Workflows for Indie Devs (with Freya Holmér) [Nice Replay]

    #396 3D Workflows for Indie Devs Interview 2025.07.03 We welcome Freya Holmér back into the clubhouse to talk about 3D game development for independent game developers. We get into the specifics of the tools available for devs and why they work and don't work for different teams, but it's mostly an excuse to talk about Freya's new 3D modeling software. Half-Edge  -  Freya Holmér Shapes  -  Freya Holmér ,  Unity Asset Store Shader Forge  -  Freya Holmér ,  GitHub 3D Workflows for Indie Devs Game Design Tools UI / UX Valve Hammer Editor  -  Valve Developer Community PicoCAD  -  Johan Peitz ,  itch.io TrenchBroom  -  GitHub Crocotile 3D What’s the difference between OBJ and FBX? And when to you what  -  Reddit

  8. JAN 22

    "The things that create the geometry." What Happened With Future Club; Design Surface Area [Nice Replay]

    #391 "The things that create the geometry." Roundtable 2025.05.29 Your nice hosts all secured a Switch 2 pre-order... from a certain point of view. Then, Stephen examines the body, Mark attempts a vocabulary, and Lydia has recommendations. Chants of Sennaar  -  Wikipedia Nintendo Switch 2 preorders were a total mess — at first  -  Jay Peters ,  The Verge Missed out on a Nintendo Switch 2 pre-order? GameStop and Best Buy will have mo…  -  Demi Williams ,  TechRadar What Happened With Future Club 0:22:17 Stephen McGregor IRL Production Part-Time Hero Campaign Ending  -  Future Club ,  Kickstarter Design Surface Area 0:48:57 Mark LaCroix Game Design Rubber duck debugging  -  Wikipedia

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The podcast where nice gamedevs talk gaming and game development. Nice!

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