Minions of the Fickle Muse

I've been thinking lately of doing a post where I talk about various podcasts I listen to, but right now I want to point out a particular episode I listened to today.

Three Moves Ahead is a great podcast about strategy gaming, and this week they had designer Chris Taylor on. He's done a number of different games, most of which are off the beaten genre path, including the greatest love/hate relationship of my gaming life: Total Annihilation.

The episode goes into a number of different things: Near the beginning they go into the faux-3D graphics of TA (which fooled many people into thinking it was true 3D rendering, and I thought for a bit was the most amazing sprite-system I'd ever seen; neither was correct), there's some more about programming trickery in the middle, and much of the end goes into something of a meditation on the state of the gaming industry, including the fact that it's possible to get a great amount of money on Kickstarter—if you're deliberately resurrecting an old property. If you're doing something new, not so much.

Episode 203 is here.

And while I'm talking, I'll mention episode 99, "War in the East", which has one of my favorite moments in the show.