In this episode, Soren interviews independent game developer Tyler Sigman, best known as the designer of HOARD and Darkest Dungeon. They discuss how his game design career was almost derailed by staplers, how a weird aeronautical engineer is a normal game designer, and why his finished air racing game was never released.
Games discussed: Pirates!, Below the Root, Backgammon, Age of Empires: Age of Kings (DS), Darkest Dungeon, Dragon Age Legends, Battles of Prince of Persia (DS), Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Sonic Rivals, Monster Lab, Sky Pirates of Neo Terra, HOARD, Raid over Bungeling Bay
https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/tyler-sigman-part-1
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Hey Soren and Tyler!
Just listened to this and was greatly amused by your Microsoft interview experience. I’ve been working at Microsoft for 10 years now and this type of stories are pretty common.
I haven’t conducted any interviews personally, but my guess is that the stapler question was testing your ability to think outside the box. And while there was no ‘right’ answer you were expected to brainstorm a couple of radically different approaches that might not even be practical.
For example you could analyze what kind of defects are the most common and whether there was a simpler, more specific test you could apply. Like if a common defect was a missing part then you could weigh the staplers to find it quickly. Or if some defective staplers would make a different sound when operated you could create some machine to use it and analyze the sound in an automated fashion.
However the current interview process in Microsoft is different and the questions should be more relevant to the actual position.
Keep making great games and podcasts!