Remap Radio

The great fear is that AI will replace tons of jobs, including journalists, which makes the decisions by Vox Media, The Atlantic, and others to actively partner with AI companies all the more puzzling to Patrick, Rob, Janet, and Cado. It neatly lines up with confusing (and wrong?) comments from Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann about AI that Sony have since retracted. We also consider news that Steam won’t let you transfer owne...

Few things are more important to a story-driven game than the writing. This becomes even more paramount when you hand over decisions to the players. Join the developers of Citizen Sleeper, Times & Galaxy, and Slay the Princess as they provide insight into the process of writing and player choice.

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We open in a familiar place, with Rob, Patrick, Cado, and Janet talking about the ongoing tumult in video games media, after hearing IGN has acquired a bunch of new websites. Rob also gets a chance to ruminate on what a rumored Total War: Star Wars game might look like, before he discusses the fascinating, if understandably polarizing, Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga with Patrick. We also chat about Crow Country, racing wheels,...

Who’s the puzzle master now? It feels like it might be the people in the accounting department, after hearing about Square Enix going multiplatform and Xbox sales slumping. Patrick, Cado, Rob, and Janet break down the week’s news, alongside in-depth discussions of Animal Well, finally finishing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, the surprising response to Homeworld 3, and more.

Discussed: Animal Well 45:50, Final Fantasy VII Rebir...

The biggest news of the week, obviously, is Sony’s fight to add PSN to Helldi…no, wait, it’s actually Nintendo confirming the next Swi…huh, no, it’s Microsoft shutting down Tango Gameworks and creating a (new) existential crisis for the Xbox brand. Phew. But Patrick, Rob, Janet, and Cado are here to unpack it all, including thoughts on Indika, Manor Lords, and Little Kitty, Big City. We also spend a shockingly long time ta...

Recently, Patrick journeyed into his own backyard to pay a visit to the Chicago-based Stern Pinball, creators of the upcoming John Wick pinball game. Besides playing John Wick, Patrick had a chance to spend time talking with Stern Pinball lead software engineer Tim Sexton about what it means to make pinball games in the modern age, the ongoing evolution of technology inside today’s pinball games, and how the heck someone b...

What to make of Square Enix canceling $140.8 million of in-development games? How exactly is (or isn’t) Microsoft going to capitalize on Fallout-mania? Remember when Razer tried to sell people a bogus RGB-filled N95 gamer mask? All this and more on Remap Radio, as Patrick, Janet, Rob, and Cado break down the news, plus thoughts on Pools (a spooky video game), Another Crab’s Treasure, Stellar Blade, Manor Lords, and the rar...

Hope springs eternal at Remap Sports HQ, with the one-two punch of QB Caleb Williams and WR Rome Odunze providing Rob and Patrick with a sense of optimism about the future. Please do not remind us of this conversation a year from now. Elsewhere, we discuss the shifting winds on the public financing billionaire toys like sports stadiums, the wild NBA first round of the NBA playoffs, and how gambling and obnoxious advertisin...

We start by digging into the shockingly hopeful news that the FTC has declared non-competes illegal, before trying to make sense of Embracer splitting itself into pieces. Elsewhere, Patrick and Janet have been playing—and trying to make sense of—Tales of Kenzera: Zau, a new Metroidvania centered on grief. Rob, meanwhile, just keeps playing Balatro, while Cado has been taking out cultists in the puzzle shooter (??) Children...

It’s time to pour one out for our friend and colleague Austin Walker, whose own game studio recently joined the ongoing wave of layoffs in the video game industry. Patrick, Janet, Cado, and Rob unpack the strangeness of this particular layoff and why people responded so sharply to it, before taking a deep breath and talking about the recent Nintendo Indie World event. We also talk about loving the Fallout TV series, Pepper...

Recently, Remap has been watching a lot of Godzilla. To better understand him, Rob and Patrick are joined by Sean Konrad, visual effects supervisor on the recent Apple TV+ show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, to talk about the state of the visual effects industry, what it means to scale a creature like Godzilla, and much more. Konrad was an artist on the spectacular Godzilla (2014), and has worked on movies like Guardians of ...

Dead Space was cool, right? Who wouldn’t want Dead Space 2? Rob, Patrick, Janet, and Cado react to the game of telephone about if/when Dead Space 2 was ever in development, before reacting to Destiny’s big announcements and some cool indie news, like Prince of Persia: The Rogue. Elsewhere, Janet and Patrick have been playing Botany Manor, and, of course, more Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. They also dig into your questions re...

Jacob Geller joins Rob, Patrick, and Janet to discuss Microsoft's new "new AI assistant" and how we expect AI to be deployed to make everyday experiences easier and definitely less frustrating. Plus, Jacob's publishing a book with Lost in Cult, and we talk about the two Stellar Blades: the one that's being treated as a reactionary victory, and the character action game that actually exists.

0:33 - How a Game Lives

11:22...

It’s time to celebrate a great achievement: Dragon’s Dogma 2 has become discourse. Patrick, Janet, Rob, and Cado return from afar—GDC, PAX East, and even Disneyland—to discuss the latest details on Ken Levine’s Not BioShock Game, Judas, and what’s happening over at Sega with Relic, union contracts, and more. We also chat about the games we played at both PAX East and GDC, and Rob reveals he’s surprisingly into both Rise of...

Duncan Fyfe has written a review of Jordan Mechner's family memoir, Replay. It's a terrific piece, but also one that adds a lot of background detail on Mechner's career as a game designer. In this wide-ranging discussion, Rob and Duncan discuss Duncan's article, and their own understanding and regard for Mechner's work.

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Rob and Cado sit down for a quick episode before PAX and end up shooting the breeze for over two hours about Musk's embrace of the absurd Sweetbaby witch hunt, layoffs at IGN and the challenges of unionizing in the face of a declining media ecosystem, Ron Howard's classic journalism adventure The Paper and what it means to have institutional capacity. Then Austin and Patrick talk Dragon's Dogma before Rob and Cado return t...

In-between a surprisingly lengthy aside on Best Buy’s Geek Squad, the Remap Radio crew discusses Insomniac’s abandoned multiplayer Spider-Man game, Warner Bros. coldly erasing Adult Swim games from Steam, the formation of a huge new games union, and more. Elsewhere, while Patrick remains parked in mini-game city in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, he has seen the (gaming) light with Moonlight on his PC. We also discuss the more...