Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

Update: Unlimited Hyperbole is no longer available. There are two episodes preserved by the Thief community on Youtube which are linked in the episode index, however other episodes have since been lost to time.

This week Unlimited Hyperbole talks to Brendon Chung, the designer of Atom Zombie Smasher and Gravity Bone, about his favourite game and the very definite effect it had on him as both a fan and an independent game developer.

Released in 1998 by Looking Glass Studios, Thief: The Dark Project has been repeatedly hailed as not just one of the first true stealth games, but also one of the best games ever made. Looking back, Brendon discusses both what makes Thief such a triumph of world design and how it shaped his own games more than a decade later.

Unlimited Hyperbole is a weekly podcast about videogames and the stories we tell about them. The show is divided into seasons of five episodes, each with a topic that’s used as a prompt when interviewing special guests. This season we’re talking about “My Favourite Game” – but for more information about the podcast itself, read after the jump.

So.

Making these podcast hasn’t usually been as smooth a process as it hopefully appears. There’s been all manner of technical issues and mad struggles to get each one released. One of the biggest issues I’ve had though has been in trying to hold myself back enough in the interview to get a usable recording at the end. The upcoming Episode #5, for example, took over two hours to record just because the guest and I kept getting sidetracked or arguing over specific points.

That wasn’t the case when interviewing Brendon, however. Not only did I agree with his choice of game and all of his points, but he was so articulate throughout that he answered nearly all my questions in just his opening sentence. The conversation was a pleasure as a result, but I couldn’t shake the feeling afterwards that the journalist in me should have been more confrontational…

Ah well. If confrontation is what’s called for then I can always take my grievances out on my audience, shamelessly saying how important each tweet, forum post and review is for the show. Clicking the ‘Share’ button in the widget above is the best way to do all of that. See how easy I make it for you?

In the mean time, I’m going to be starting work on the second season of the show shortly – so if you have any feedback about what you’d like to hear, I’m open to that too.

Thanks to Harriet Jones, Paul Goodhead, Joe Percy and Sasha Muller