Dive into the complete episode list for grokludo. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Title
Pub. Date
Duration
Game Economics, Player Interdependence, & the Oxytocin Opportunity - Ramin Shokrizade | grokludo 27
12 May 2026
00:43:19
Over 20 years ago, CCP Games released EVE Online, a massively multiplayer space game, promising huge fleet battles, and an open, player-controlled economy. But within months, that economy was headed for disaster.
This week's guest is Ramin Shokrizade, who later wrote about recommending an economic intervention that saved EVE Online. That story was later picked up by evangelists for Georgist economic theory, these are the writings of Henry George, who mainly talked about land tax, and held up as an example of proof that Georgist theory is correct.
This has become almost a piece of internet lore, where certain communities quote Ramin's recommendations as a success for Georgism. What I had never seen before, is Ramin's take on that.
We'll get that take today, and talk the open economies games used to have, before they were controlled by publishers.
Ramin has also written about the benefits of oxytocin, and dangers of excessive dopamine targetting, and I've actually been looking for someone to speak on this, especially because of some recent research which we'll get into later.
Enjoy!
Playing Empire Games With Descendants of the Colonised - Mary Flanagan | grokludo 26
28 Apr 2026
00:51:38
What do we talk about when we talk about 4X?
We think about abstract systems, resource management, efficiency, growth... But what about all the invisible things that go along with eXploitation, and eXtermination?
Mary Flanagan is a game designer, and academic, and the author of Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games.
The book looks at the history of board games and how they encoded the values of the time and place they were in. From ancient games, through to the explosion of complex strategy systems and 4X.
For those unfamiliar, 4X is a subgenre that typically involves large colonial empires. The 4 Xs are Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. In the fantasy of the game, we play the decider, not just moving resources around for efficiency, but also deciding the fate of those crushed under the boot of empire.
To better understand the other side of the story part of Mary's research involved sitting down and playing these games with descendants of the people who've been exploited and exterminated.
4X games are fun, I love them, they scratch that efficiency and optimisation part of my brain. This isn't about saying they're bad, or that players are incapable of separating games from life. It's just good to take a step back sometimes and analyse the underlying assumptions of things.
And, a large part of our Western civilisation, and indeed its values, are built on the flawed concepts of terra nullius, might makes right, and always being ashamed of the last colonial project, while denying the current one.
Mary joins us to talk about how these values are encoded in our games.
The Inconvenient Truths of 'Stop Killing Games' - Paul Kilduff-Taylor | grokludo 17
24 Nov 2025
00:57:32
Gaming has an end-of-life problem.
While we've made some progress in preserving games as cultural artifacts, new questions have arisen about when it's okay for publishers to end support for their games, and what that means.
Paul Kilduff-Taylor is an indie dev and publisher with multiplayer games such as Frozen Synapse under his belt, which I've been playing since 2011.
In a subject area that's been sorely lacking in nuance, Paul has been trying to communicate some inconvenient truths about the complexities of end-of-life support.
You can find Paul's recent blog post on Stop Killing Games here: https://modecollapse.substack.com/p/stop-killing-games-will-become-an
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:28 - Remembering Frozen Synapse 05:35 - Stop Killing Games 10:44 - Govt regulation vs industry self-regulation 28:26 - How liable should publishers be 32:50 - Middleware solutions 41:00 - Can any legal language capture everything we need? 44:15 - Regulators in Australia 48:37 - Paul's hilarious press releases
The Game Club's Cheat Code for Community - Guy Blomberg and Shay P Leighton | grokludo 16
17 Nov 2025
00:53:16
Guy Blomberg and Shay Leighton have started a book club. It's called The Game Club, because it's not really about books, it's about games. But it's not really about games, it's about friends.
With loneliness on the rise, these two excel at bringing people together. Blomberg has been behind several conventions such as PAX and DreamHack, as well as GIG, the Games Industry Gathering. Leighton is a community organiser who gives talks to unions, activists, and more.
Using the standard book club model, The Game Club sends members an interesting game every month with prompts, for people to meet up and discuss. So far, so normal, but behind it all is extensive research into loneliness and community building, and I had a few discussion prompts of my own, about how a hobby with automatic guild invites and elo matchmaking can ditch the mantra of "alone together", and simply be together.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:33 - Why don't we play together anymore? 03:52 - Our cognitive limits for friendships 09:35 - How important is it to meet in person? 11:30 - The health benefits of friendship 16:09 - What makes the friendships high quality 18:25 - We don't play the same games anymore 21:48 - The technical limitations of a game club 27:26 - The quiet part 30:15 - Articulating why you hate something 31:30 - Having tough conversations 37:09 - How male friendships differ 40:00 - How do we replace missing institutions? 44:22 - Size limits on chapters 45:56 - The AI companion space 50:30 - The next business venture 51:09 - Joining The Game Club
How to Experience Games as Art - Tracy Fullerton | grokludo 15
10 Nov 2025
01:01:35
Tracy Fullerton is head of the renowned games lab at the University of Southern California, and is on the Board of Directors for Square Enix, and Games for Change.
For years, her book Game Design Workshop has taught pixel pushers that finding the fun is a process, not a vision. And her students include the makers of Journey, Threes!, and Outer Wilds, among others.
Her new book is called The Well-Read Game, and she joins grokludo to talk about a deeper way of playing games, building on things like reader-response theory, and arguing that it can not only be adapted to games, but in some ways, games are even more of a natural fit for a reading, than a book.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:07 - Why well "read"? 05:45 - The importance of journaling 09:36 - Games as art 18:12 - A new way of playing games 28:00 - What games are best for readings? 36:14 - What games have a variety of readings? 40:53 - Leaving out info to encourage interpretation 49:40 - Creating a suitable space to talk about games 58:21 - Advice for creating book clubs for games
You can find The Well Read Game here: https://www.thewellreadgame.com/
Mechabellum Evolved Autobattlers, but One Problem Remains Unsolved – Wen You Ge | grokludo 14
03 Nov 2025
00:57:16
Wen You Ge, also known as Bearlike, leads the team working on Mechabellum, the premier 1v1 autobattler. These games give you NO control over the battle. It's all about setting up your troops beforehand, with smart positioning and synergies, and watching it play out.
Autobattlers were catapulted to fame with Autochess, and its variants, such as DOTA Underlords, Teamfight Tactics. These games were compelling, but flawed. An overreliance on randomness meant sometimes you'd face the exact same opponent multiple times, with the exact same boards, but with different winners, due to the roll of a die.
Mechabellum takes autobattlers in a more deterministic direction. It's balanced, skill-based, and competition-worthy. But that type of thing doesn't just happen. So today Bearlike talks about the interesting design problems they had to solve to move the genre forward, and one big problem they haven't solved.
00:00 - Intro 01:22 - Mahjong, Poker influences 08:30 - RnG in autobattlers 15:57 - Positional play vs numerical modifiers 17:10 - Add a ball 19:45 - The moment when it all came together 23:45 - Agency vs randomness 31:04 - How unit techs solved multiple problems 36:00 - Mechabellum's unsolved problem 42:30 - The purpose of buildings in Mechabellum 47:40 - How different elo levels respond to changes 50:09 - Battle Aces' big bet on micro 56:03 - Bearlike's music review
LLMs in Games - Infinite Stories, or Infinite Hype? - Chris Simon | grokludo 13
27 Oct 2025
00:53:59
Chris Simon is a technologist who's given talks about AI, specifically LLMs, or Large Language Models such as ChatGPT.
AI is going to be an increasingly big topic in games. From things like art generation, code generation, to chat moderation, to dynamic difficulty systems, and all the way to engineless games that use a neural network to generate images based on user input. And there are many more.
So it's a topic we'll probably return to, but one of the biggest ways people are using LLMs is in story generation and dialogue. The idea here is that one could chat to an NPC indefinitely, or let a robotic Dungeon Master do all the work.
Chris Simon says it's not so simple. And I'm kind of glad he's the first person on grokludo to talk about AI. Because just as many games and NPCs will use the enterprise models as a foundation, all our future AI chats will use this interview as a foundation, about the hidden costs of AI in games.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:45 - Epistemological statements 06:12 - Can LLMs tell infinite stories? 16:42 - Are locally hosted LLMs ethical? 18:00 - Harmful human reinforcement training 21:30 - Inherent biases in LLMs 24:45 - Jailbreaking - intentional and otherwise 30:00 - The Sycophancy Problem 33:10 - How biases could seep into games 39:40 - The silly and the tragic ways to break LLMs 42:00 - Human brains vs neural networks 48:48 - Who wants a regression to the mean?
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Creating Counter-Strike, Leaving Valve, & Starting From Zero - Minh Le | grokludo 12
20 Oct 2025
00:29:52
Minh Le, also known as Gooseman, is best known for creating the world-conquering Counter-Strike. It started out as a small Half-Life mod, and now sells out the largest stadiums around the world as one of the greatest esports of all time.
In 2006, Gooseman left Valve to make Tactical Intervention. Since then, he's worked on Rust, Black Desert Online, and now he's got a new game, Alpha Response, marrying his traditional semi-realism with co-op PvE heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead.
I never miss a chance to talk to Goose, and since we've talked before about tracking the genealogy of game mechanics on this podcast, I also wanted to quiz him on the industry's trend towards static recoil patterns in gunplay, which Counter-Strike popularised.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:15 - Alpha Response 03:06 - Challenges in retaining players 06:39 - Stop Killing Games 11:31 - Taking inspiration from Left 4 Dead 17:18 - The style of game Gooseman likes to make 19:10 - Playing and watching modern CS 20:50 - FPS moving towards static recoil patterns 25:35 - Leaving Valve, making artistic leaps
Alpha Response is in Early Access now on Steam, and you can get it now.
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Playing God with Galactic Cellular Automata in Stars Reach - Raph Koster | grokludo 11
13 Oct 2025
01:31:55
Raph Koster has helped forward our understanding of game design for decades.
He's the author of A Theory of Fun, a must-read for game designers. He was lead designer on the pioneering MMO Ultima Online, and led the creative team on Star Wars Galaxies.
Now he's back with a new MMO called Stars Reach, built on 3D cellular automata system that simulates everything in the galaxy. The game's not out yet, and already the stories emerging from this kind of simulation are hard to compare with anything else.
So strap in, we're going pretty deep into game design theory - that's what grokludo is for! - and in the second half, we cover what to expect from Stars Reach.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:05 - Most games are copies of others 02:58 - What videogame designers can learn from board games 06:18 - Separating mechanics from aesthetics in policymaking 13:00 - Different kinds of randomness 16:05 - Kriegsspiel, Ur, and other early games 25:50 - Do modern games satisfy modern compulsions? 31:20 - Games criticism focusing on aesthetics 34:55 - The art game movement of the early 2000s 39:15 - Using ludo-narrative dissonance as a tool 43:20 - The Pascal's Wager in A Theory of Fun 47:20 - Don't get Junglist started on Dark Souls 50:15 - Do game design lessons line up with cognitive psychology? 56:00 - Studying government styles for MMO design 59:40 - The "designer's dream game" trope 1:05:50 - Stars Reach's cellular automata system 1:13:13 - Sustainability despite player terraforming 1:18:30 - Solving the problems of biology 1:21:50 - Terraforming and PvP 1:24:20 - Scaling the galaxy with adaptable sectors 1:27:45 - The dangers of fire and water
A Theory of Fun: https://www.theoryoffun.com/
Stars Reach: https://starsreach.com/
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Owning Game Mechanics? Making Sense of Nintendo's Patents - Kirk Sigmon | grokludo 10
06 Oct 2025
00:47:26
Kirk Sigmon is an attorney at Banner Witcoff , and an expert in patent law.
He joins us this week to make sense of the wild, and complicated situation in which Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are posturing towards US litigation against Pocketpair, the maker of Palworld. Litigation in Japan is already underway.
In the process, Nintendo has secured patents for game mechanics that look a lot like what we've already been playing for the last 30+ years.
There's patent activity relating to mounts and the quick-switching of mounts. There are patents about throwing an object to capture a character. And very recently, a new patent was secured that covers the summoning of a character.
This is a complicated and niche field, so we first cover some basics of patent law, before getting into the dirty details of what's been called "by far the most aggressive patent enforcement any game maker ever attempted against a rival."
00:00 - Intro 01:42 - What good patent law looks like in games 05:58 - How often do mechanics get patented? 07:50 - Nintendo pursuing patents after Palworld's release 14:00 - Reading patent claims is torture 16:34 - Nintendo curving patents towards litigation 23:22 - Patenting a summoning mechanic 26:35 - Limited resources at the patent office 30:53 - Where has patent law done well, and where poorly? 33:30 - The Inter Partes Review system 37:24 - Why not pursue litigation on the art style instead? 41:48 - Attack on the mod space as "prior art"
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Measuring Distress Against Loot Box Spend - Aaron Drummond and Jim Sauer | grokludo 9
29 Sep 2025
00:41:45
Aaron Drummond and Jim Sauer are associate professors at the University of Tasmania, and recently released a paper looking at loot box spending measured against distress, when normalising for disposable income.
The two have studied a range of issues in games, such as the effects of violent games on aggression, and the impacts of gaming on learning. But when they started researching loot boxes, things were very different.
Find Aaron and Jim's study here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.231264
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 00:46 - Do loot boxes cause distress? 04:16 - Skinner box systems in games 12:00 - Disposable income and "whales" 18:39 - Why loot box research isn't just a moral panic 26:24 - The limitations of current research 31:47 - Violent games blamed regularly in killings 35:51 - Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards intertwined 38:40 - Final words
Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy!
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The Loot Box Lab Mapping Policy vs Practice - Leon Xiao | grokludo 8
22 Sep 2025
01:12:49
Leon Xiao is an Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. After doing his PhD in loot boxes, he's released papers charting the loot box regulation landscape, and measuring compliance.
Coverage of his work has been picked up by mainstream media such as the BBC and the Guardian, and GamesIndustry.biz publishes his yearly loot box state of play report.
Today Leon gives us a zoomed out view of loot box research.
In the intro I mention Leon's thesis, which comprehensively covers loot box regulation and compliance. You can find that here: https://osf.io/preprints/thesiscommons/af8ev_v1
The last Loot Box State of Play can be found here - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/loot-box-state-of-play-2024-another-trip-around-the-world-of-regulation
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 00:48 - Leon Xiao's program 03:47 - Gaming Disorder and older adults 07:30 - What do we know for sure about loot boxes? 11:30 - Loot box movements to be aware of in 2025 18:10 - Low compliance to industry self-regulation 32:43 - Gambling aesthetics vs gambling mechanics 50:26 - "The science isn't in yet" 56:20 - What could researchers do with industry data? 1:04:42 - Comically obtuse disclosure of loot box odds 1:08:32 - Should we all complain to regulators?
Thank you all!
Make sure to subscribe here and at grokludo.com for updates!
The Strategy to Stop Killing Games in the EU - Ross Scott | grokludo 25
21 Apr 2026
01:54:50
Ross Scott is the face of the Stop Killing Games movement, which seeks to ensure games don't completely die when a developer or publisher ends support, but rather, there's an end of life plan in place that makes it reasonably playable -- after which, a compliant gamemaker has no more liability.
Following a massive petition campaign in the EU, Ross recently spoke at an EU parliament hearing, in which many in the room were positive about the movement. It's possible that policy around not killing games will be included in the EU's upcoming Digital Fairness Act, expected to be formally proposed later this year.
After that point, the EU parliament and Council can make amendments, and there's sure to be some industry lobbying.
Ross Scott joins us this week to talk about the strategies of navigating EU politics, the discourse around the movement, and some of the more technical concerns, such as games that rely on middleware and 3rd party services, each with their own distribution licences.
Manipulating Players for Good? - Ejnar Hakonsen | grokludo 7
19 Aug 2025
01:04:55
Ejnar Håkonsen has studied the light and dark sides of player manipulation. He’s designed matchmaking and pay-to-win systems himself, and he’s theorycrafted in pay-to-win games with top-ranking whale guilds, to understand the strategies they use.
Years ago, he designed a multiplayer system that used manipulative practices for positive ends. It used commendations in kind of a genius way to reduce toxicity by weaponising a player’s ego against them.
He recently posted a Reddit thread about it which effectively open-sourced the design and had enormously positive feedback, which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1m86pfb/my_job_is_to_psychologically_manipulate_gamers_as/
Although the game studio had to pivot away from that core design and the system was never implemented, game designers have been expressing their desire to implement similar systems.
Today, we talk to Ejnar about how his "friendship engine" system works, and how we can take that system in new directions.
If you're a game maker and start using this or a similar system, let Ejnar know! His LinkedIn is found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ejnarh/
If you want to read the article mentioned about rolling with top-ranking whale guilds and how the maker of a pay-to-win game lost much of its community, here's the link:
Apologies for the audio issues in the early part of the podcast, I switched to my backup mic at around 8 minutes in.
Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:37 - Ejnar's history in hypnosis 07:53 - Joining BetaDwarf 11:19 - Getting investors to think long-term 16:14 - Why game designers intuit psychology 20:50 - How Ejnar's frienshipping engine works 32:15 - The parallels between hypnotism and game design 36:17 - The Brilliance and Perils of Heroes of the Storm 41:10 - Blizzard's shortsightedness in cancelling HOTS 42:15 - What kinds of loot box are toxic? 50:33 - A database of friends, PvP, and too much social proof 57:44 - How Russia's invasion and covid affected development 59:28 - The next steps for this system
An Open-Sourced Funding Model for Indies - Rand Fishkin | grokludo 6
10 Apr 2025
00:42:40
Rand Fishkin is an icon in the SEO space who recently started a game studio and is making a new indie game, Snack Bar at the End of the World.
Rand’s open-sourced method for indie developers seeking investment is mainly about leveraging your network, whether large or small, to get the funds needed to make a game. It doesn’t matter if you have millionaire circles or just normal friends, school alumni, family, etc – the system aims to be adaptable to your situation.
You can find these documents and a write-up here: https://sparktoro.com/blog/snackbar-studio-raised-2-15m-using-sparktoros-funding-model-and-were-open-sourcing-the-docs/
You can also follow Snackbar Studios and Snackbar at the End of the World at: https://snackbarstudio.com/
Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:56 - From SEO to making games 06:10 - Including a message without being on-the-nose 10:37 - Sim-City’s systems vs Nimbyism 13:44 - Open-sourcing Snackbar Studio’s investment process 18:04 - Contra the belief that marketing is icky 25:20 - Rand-style analytics in the games market 31:37 - Do the best games rise to the top? 35:40 - Rising above the noise on games marketplaces
As always, you can subscribe to grokludo.com or right here on Youtube for more!
Loot Boxes vs Consumer Law - Maarten Denoo | grokludo 5
30 Oct 2024
00:34:23
Maarten Denoo has been active in the Belgian gaming scene as an academic and journalist for years, releasing papers that cover loot boxes and the progress of policy around gambling in games.
This episode covers the recent research around loot boxes, and gets a frontline view of Belgium's loot box ban, as well as uncovering a possible new avenue of attack: Consumer law.
0:00 - Intro 0:52 - An overview of loot box research 5:18 - Maarten's loot box study 9:37 - The problem with equating gambling and loot box research 11:54 - The nature of chance 16:58 - Pushing responsibility onto players 20:10 - New definitions for loot boxes 21:40 - Consumer law as a new tool versus loot boxes 23:46 - Non-compliance in Belgium's loot box ban 33:07 - The content ecosystem around gambling in games
Remembering Kotaku AU - Seamus Byrne, Mark Serrels, Alex Walker, David Smith | grokludo 4
23 Sep 2024
01:17:07
Kotaku AU has closed. To me and many others, it held a special place in Australia's gaming history. So this is part memorial, part group therapy session, part insider discussion for everyone else's understanding, in which I've gathered former editors of the site to talk about its beginning, middle, and end.
Mark Serrels and Alex Walker had the longest tenures as editor of Kotaku AU, and David Smith was editor during its final years. Seamus Byrne started as editor of Gizmodo, and later became publisher of Allure's tech suite.
The baseball has never been more inside -- but through that kind of insider discussion, hopefully there's an increased understanding of what made Kotaku AU special, and the current environment of dying games media. (And dying media in general)
Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:11 - How Kotaku AU started 09:35 - Mark Serrels' introduction to Kotaku AU 14:50 - Bringing on more writers 16:23 - Bringing on Alex Walker 21:30 - Seeing Kotaku AU end & the implications 28:10 - Campaigning for an R18 rating for games 31:23 - Mentorship and getting the right people 35:25 - Seamus' journey with independent media 40:32 - Kotaku AU's challenges towards the end 50:00 - Mark's favourite posts 52:00 - Readers bringing Mark gifts 54:48 - Kotaku AU's special place in media 1:00:30 - Our favourite unhinged posts 1:08:30 - What the world should know about Kotaku AU
Games Are Outpacing Classification Systems - Margaret Anderson | grokludo 3
18 Jul 2024
01:13:13
Margaret Anderson became Director of the Australian Classification Board in 2013, a time when it still made opaque decisions and wasn’t prepared for the tidal wave of gaming content that would come in the following years.
She talks to grokludo about declassifying the classifications as it were, and dealing with the multiple challenges that games created as a fast-moving technology that vastly outpaces the laws written to regulate it.
On the way we cover Australia’s debate over whether or not to have an R18+ rating for games, the quagmire of loot boxes and gambling content in games, and some fun stories about what it was like at the Board in these big moments.
Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:00 - How games are rated differently 12:00 - The R18 Rating Debate in Aus 14:58 - What Margaret wishes people knew 20:37 - How classifying games works 25:08 - Publishers changing games after classification 28:47 - Diversity is the Board’s strength 34:30 - Watching disturbing content 38:40 - Funniest thing the Board was blamed for 41:08 - Margaret hates the C word 43:45 - Defending anime to the Aus Senate 46:43 - How do we get meaningful change on loot boxes? 56:31 - What responsibility do industry bodies have around loot boxes? 1:00:20 - An idea for ratings based on types of fun 1:05:08 - What Margaret misses about the board 1:08:03 - Today’s Classification Board 1:09:08 - Prisoner’s Aid NSW
The latest Digital Australia report by Jeff Brand: https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/DA22-Report-FINAL-19-10-21.pdf
Prisoners Aid links: prisonersaidnsw.org matesonthemove.org
Follow Junglist at @TheJunglist
grokludo.com to subscribe and get emails!
Where Studios Go Wrong - Paul Tozour | grokludo 2
15 Apr 2024
01:09:12
Paul Tozour is saying exactly what the industry needs to hear right now. Backed with data from his 2015 study titled The Game Outcomes Project, he's fictionalised the data in his new book The Four Swords: A Parable of Leadership, Video Games, and Dead Dragons.
Tozour goes through his lessons for studios, publishers, managers, and creatives, able to definitively describe what leads to a successful studio and point to the data that proves it. In this moment of post-largesse layoffs, these lessons are even more important.
And there are plenty of wacky stories from his time in gamedev to boot!
The Game Outcomes Project Part 1: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-game-outcomes-project-part-1-the-best-and-the-rest The Game Outcomes Project Part 2: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-game-outcomes-project-part-2-building-effective-teams The Game Outcomes Project Part 3: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-game-outcomes-project-part-3-game-development-factors The Game Outcomes Project Part 4: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-game-outcomes-project-part-4-crunch-makes-games-worse The Game Outcomes Project Part 5: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-game-outcomes-project-part-5-what-great-teams-do
Paul's series on decision modeling: https://intelligenceengine.blogspot.com/2013/07/decision-modeling-and-optimization-in.html
The Four Swords: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195019998-the-four-swords
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Follow Junglist at: twitter.com/thejunglist
How Morality Bars Influence Your Choices - Malcolm Ryan
19 Mar 2024
00:25:21
Malcolm Ryan from Macquarie University speaks about his study that shows how suggestible we can be if a game's morality meter tries to nudge us in a certain direction... provided certain conditions are met beforehand.
Even when players think they're ignoring the morality meter, the results say different!
Read the study here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15554120211017040
Play the game, The Great Fire, here: https://moralityplay.itch.io/the-great-fire
Ryan et al's paper on the four-component model of moral psychology can be found here: https://press.etc.cmu.edu/file/download/924/b557cd42-6151-4ecf-a8f8-d2c18bdfd27c
Follow Malcolm Ryan's work at Morality Play: https://moralityplay.org/
Follow Junglist: twitter.com/thejunglist
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ADHD, Dopamine, and Rats Pushing Levers - Clinton White | grokludo 24
14 Apr 2026
00:56:05
There's no doubt that the modern world is very different to the one we evolved to thrive in. But that mismatch might be more pronounced for the neurodivergent mind.
Dr Clinton White has an upcoming book, Fast Mind, Slow World, which expands on the theory that at the group level, it was evolutionarily advantageous to have a small proportion of the group as neurodivergent. Whether that be ADHD, level 1 autistic, or whatever.
But modern life has different demands. How do those with abnormal attention fare in the attention economy? That includes games and loot boxes, but also social media, and everything else.
Clinton joins us today to talk about the ADHD brain, dopamine seeking, and more.
Making Arcade-Only Indie Games for a Withdrawn World - Nikita Mikros | grokludo 23
07 Apr 2026
01:10:37
Nikita Mikros is an indie developer that decided to focus on arcade games. And I don't mean arcade-style games on PC and console -- I mean physical arcade cabinets.
His most famous game is undoubtedly Killer Queen, a 5-on-5 arcade cabinet with retro pixel art graphics, in which your bees have three win conditions to defeat the other team's bees.
Killer Queen is a sensation, and it's been called the revival of arcade... It's only two dollars for all ten people to play at once, which has built a strong culture of people bringing in others. It's easy to shout a whole group. And it's spawned a dedicated esports scene as well.
Nikita joins grokludo to talk about Killer Queen, game design in general, and some of the new projects he's working on.
Kriegsspiel and the Prussian Pioneers of Wargaming - Jon Peterson | grokludo 22
27 Mar 2026
00:48:38
Jon Peterson is the author of Playing at the World, a deep dive into tabletop gaming leading up to Dungeons & Dragons, which just released its 2nd edition.
Jon is a fantastic source of knowledge on all things tabletop, and has personally traveled to several museums to see and translate wargaming publications dating as far back as the 1600s. I took the opportunity to quiz him about Kriegsspiel -- a wargame that Prussian officers used as a training tool in the 1800s.
As Jon illustrates, it's more than just interesting history; Kriegsspiel is a giant whose shoulders support many modern gaming staples.
How Gaming Habits Affect Life, Sleep, and More - Nick Ballou | grokludo 21
20 Mar 2026
00:47:17
Nick Ballou researches gaming habits and their effects on quality of life. He recently released a study with an unprecedented amount of data collected about gamers' play habits, and in addition to showing us his findings, the database is now open for anyone to use.
Some of the main early lessons include a confirmation that time spent gaming has no bearing on quality of life -- nor does it affect quality of sleep. In terms of study participants, there was a high representation of gamers identifying as ADHD/Autistic -- echoing the estimate of of our previous guest, Tony Attwood, who speculated that the gaming community would have a higher representation than the general public.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:30 - Does time spent matter? 08:12 - Neurodivergence higher than expected 10:30 - Building trust with publishers 16:50 - Self-determination theory and games 20:20 - BANG (Basic Needs in Games) 30:00 - Gaming habits and demographics 32:20 - Cultural differences in datasets 35:00 - Gaming habits and sleep 41:20 - Future research, open data
Find the Open Play study here: https://nballou.github.io/open-play-demographics/index-typst.pdf
Nick's website: https://nickballou.com/
Nick's study on BANG: https://zenodo.org/records/18370608
The Evolution of Play as Our Learning Superpower - Peter Gray | grokludo 20
15 Dec 2025
00:57:00
Why do we play?
Not only play -- why do we play more than any other animal, and for longer? Well into adulthood?
Raph Koster, who's been on the podcast before, brought out A Theory of Fun in 2006, which aimed to put an evolutionary psychology lens over fun. The theory, was that FUN is LEARNING.
But back then, it felt more like a theory. After 20 years of new science connecting fun and learning, it's starting to feel more like fact.
So I sought out Peter Gray, research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College. He's the author of the incredibly well-researched Free to Learn, as well as his Substack, Play Makes Us Human.
Peter has spent decades on the question of why we play, and how a playful state of mind is kind of a learning superpower. He joins grokludo now to talk about our evolutionary drive to play, as well as how these ideas weren't taken seriously for almost a century, and how we can use that info in designing our lives.
Find the book Free to Learn here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15843125-free-to-learn
Peter Gray writes on Substack here: https://petergray.substack.com/
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:35 - Is fun just learning? 08:37 - Mammals have the most to learn 11:28 - From Karl Groos to modern times 19:10 - Hunter gather play vs agricultural groups 29:35 - The Bartle Matrix and competition 39:48 - The kids are alright 44:33 - Does social media change things? 47:15 - Should we design games for more modern compulsions?
The Joy and Stress of Gaming With Autism - Tony Attwood | grokludo 19
08 Dec 2025
00:50:34
**Content Warning** This episode contains discussion of depression and suicidal ideation.
For those with autism, gaming can be a great boon. Where others see social barriers, the autistic mind sees the removal of those barriers. The symptoms disappear. In the words of this week's guest, "often when you play the game, you're not autistic."
Tony Attwood is an expert in Autism, and an adjunct professor at Griffith University in Queensland.
He ran a private practice for decades, specialising in Level 1 autism, formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome.
Among other books, Attwood is the author of The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome.
This week, Attwood joins us to talk about how those with autism experience games, the positives as well as the dangers, and how we can better design habits and games around it.
Timecodes: 00:00 - Intro 01:04 - Asperger's rolled into Autism 06:00 - The "lost generation" 07:35 - Girls and women harder to diagnose 09:38 - Media representations of autism 11:45 - Evolutionary advantages 15:00 - Emotion suppression 17:40 - Status, fame, and bullying 23:00 - Being manipulated by criminals 25:25 - Emotion regulation 28:30 - Gaming disorder 30:45 - Designing games to help people with autism 35:30 - Moderation & healthy habits 42:35 - Designing for high stress 45:25 - What Tony wished people knew
Follow on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/thejunglist.bsky.social
What the Core Elements of Game Design Teach Us - José Zagal | grokludo 18
01 Dec 2025
00:49:23
Jose Zagal is a professor at the University of Utah, teaching game design, and ethics in videogames.
In 2005 he put forward the Game Ontology Project, which attempts to break down games to its core elements, categorise them, and study them.
It's a process every science eventually comes to -- be it physics, chemistry, various fields of mathematics, philosophy, and language... Eventually you learn more by breaking it down and studying it piece by piece. Although Jose more readily compares this project to the psych ontology from computer science.
Today, Jose joins us to talk about the Game Ontology Project, and the more recent research it has led to, around goals in games, and ludo narrative dissonance, which occurs when there is a conflict between gameplay and its narrative.
Timecodes 00:00 - Intro 01:25 - History of the Game Ontology Project 11:05 - What does the ontology give us? 17:00 - Representational elements 23:48 - Game design is a bottomless pit 26:10 - Applying the ontology 30:45 - The GFI Framework and ludonarrative dissonance 46:45 - Solving the main example of ludonarrative dissonance 48:00 - The Nintendo Virtual Boy
The Game Ontology Project: https://gameontology.com/index.php/Main_Page
The MDA framework: https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf
The GFI framework: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346426218_GFI_A_Formal_Approach_to_Narrative_Design_and_Game_Research
Find the new book on the Nintendo Virtual Boy here: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5781/Seeing-RedNintendo-s-Virtual-Boy