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Probably Designed

Author: Harry Dean Hudson

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A podcast about designing for randomness, and designers who use, abuse, or manage chance and variance in their work.

The podcast explores systems and design that are built around chance.

While the podcast isn't exclusively about games, game design spends a lot of time in this space.

Beyond games, conversations with other kinds of designers: composers and instrument designers who use random elements, speed and no-hit runners (who design routes to minimize variance), various engineers, process designers (who have to manage the random behavior of humans), etc.

I'm Harry Dean Hudson, a lifelong math, games, and systems nerd. I'm a hobbyist game developer and I'm passionate about play and games.

I have a masters degree in Communication and Digital Media from the University of Washington, where I focused on games as communications media and the interaction of digital media and intellectual property.

9 Episodes
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We Love Uncle GCB

We Love Uncle GCB

2025-11-1151:19

In this week's episode, I had a conversation with Gabe Carleton-Barnes. Gabe is actually an old friend of mine, and this conversation is a little bit different from what you've heard so far on the podcast because Gabe isn't a game designer.Gabe is a professional Magic the Gathering player. So we've talked a lot about collectible card games, drafting, and these sorts of things, and I thought it'd be really interesting to get a high level perspective from a player. So our conversation spanned a bunch of topics from drafting, to deck design, but mostly from a high level player's perspective.LinksGCB Tournament record on MTG Elo ProjectSickening Dreams and PsychatogGCB - The Beauty of Bad CardsHistory of Psychatog decks on YouTubeSecond Sunrise (Eggs) and Valakut in Pro Tour RTRTranscript is here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-we-love-uncle-gcb/
In this week's episode we have a conversation with Fabian Fisher. Fabian is a game designer and developer here in Germany, and he's worked on quite a few games. Some highlights are Crimson Company, Hyperdome, and his most recent game Rack and Slay, which is a roguelike billiards game. Fabian has also done a ton of writing. I recommend you check out his, his website, Ludokultur.de. I'm really excited to bring you this episode with Fabian because I think that he's a really interesting person and he's also really kind of a pillar of community for game design.Fischer Game DesignLudokulturKeith Burgun GamesRack and SlayProsperous UniverseCrimson CompanyThe BazaarMosa Lina
This week's episode is a continuation of our conversation with Dan DiIorio of Luck Be A Landlord and Maze Mice, and Brian Long, dev and designer of Ballionaire. Our conversation kicks off from my, at this point, repeated take about roguelike deck builders and board games, and leads us somewhere in the zone of the vibe-y-ness of PUBG. Luck Be A Landlord on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/14...Ballionaire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/26...Dan's Blog: https://blog.trampolinetales.com/Brian on Moby Games: https://www.mobygames.com/person/2910...
This week we have a really interesting conversation for you. It's a three-way conversation with myself, Brian Long, the developer and designer of Ballionaire, and Dan DiIorio, the designer and developer of Luck Be A Landlord and Maze Mice.There's an interesting backstory here. Brian is someone that I've known for a long time and someone that I've talked to quite a bit about games and game design. And I knew from our conversations that he was a pretty big fan of Luck Be A Landlord. So I thought this might be a great opportunity to get the two of these smart developers in a room together for a conversation.So that's what we did. The next two episodes are my conversation with Dan and Brian. I try to get out of the way as much as possible and let the conversation flow between the two developers. We talk a lot about the design of Luck Be A Landlord and Ballionaire in this episode, and I hope you enjoy.Luck Be A Landlord on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1404850/Luck_be_a_Landlord/Ballionaire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2667120/Ballionaire/Dan's Blog: https://blog.trampolinetales.com/Brian on Moby Games: https://www.mobygames.com/person/29101/brian-long/Indie Game the Movie: https://store.steampowered.com/app/207080/Indie_Game_The_Movie/Transcript here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-luck-be-a-ballionaire/
For this week's episode we drifted a bit from the show's MacGuffin and had a slightly different conversation. I spoke with Julian Schumacher, the developer of The Quizard's Domain who goes by Calm Pewter Games. The topic of our conversation was multiplayer–designing and developing multiplayer experiences for player interaction and how player interactivity influences design.You can find more from Julian/Calm Pewter out in the wild:The Quizard's Domain on Steam: The Quizard's DomainCalm Pewter GamesCalm Pewter Discord: https://discord.com/invite/QHbbDuUCa7Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/calmpewter.gamesYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CalmPewterGamesNot Julian, but a huge influence: Sakurai's Game Dev Wisdom on YouTubeNext week we'll be back to our conversations about randomness and chance. We have the first episode of a two-part conversation with Dan DiIorio (Luck Be A Landlord, Maze Mice) and Brian Long (Ballionaire). But for today, enjoy this conversation about people.
This epside is the second of an epic two part conversation with Eddie Cai and Kev Chang. Eddie is the lead designer at Pengonauts who released Star⭐Vaders earlier this year. Kev is the director of Box Dragon Studios in Sweden. Their game, As We Descend, went into Early Access at the end of May.You can find both games on Steam.A transcript of the episode is here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-eddie-cai-and-kev-chang-part-2/Pengonauts: https://pengonauts.com/Star⭐️Vaders: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097570/StarVaders/Box Dragon: https://www.boxdragon.se/As We Descend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769830/As_We_Descend/
This epside is the first of a two part conversation with Eddie Cai and Kev Chang. Eddie is the lead designer at Pengonauts who released Star⭐Vaders earlier this year. Kev is the director of Box Dragon Studios in Sweden. Their game, As We Descend, went into Early Access at the end of May.You can find both games on Steam.A transcript of the episode is here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-eddie-cai-and-kev-chang/Pengonauts: https://pengonauts.com/Star⭐️Vaders: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097570/StarVaders/Box Dragon: https://www.boxdragon.se/As We Descend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769830/As_We_Descend/
Links from the episode:Ezra's Itch Page - https://ezra-szanton.itch.io/Mr Magpie's Harmless Card Game - https://giantlight.itch.io/mr-magpies-harmless-card-gameFergus Ferguson's portfolio - https://fergusdraws.com/Rebel Jester Studios - https://www.rebeljesterstudios.com/Petricore - https://petricoregames.com/Input / Output Randomness Article - https://ezraszanton.substack.com/p/output-randomness-game-designersIsaac Shalev's Article - https://www.kindfortress.com/2018/10/03/design-patterns-random-loops/UFO 50 (with Party House and Devilition inside) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/Dorfromantik (Digital and Physical) - https://www.toukana.com/dorfromantik
Welcome and Intro

Welcome and Intro

2025-09-0501:23

Just a brief intro to the podcast. Welcome to the show!
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