Finding Games: Who's Next?

We’ve spent the last few days looking back over the first twelve episodes of the Finding Games podcast, but Sophie’s recorded a whole load more - so we thought you’d give you a preview of who’s in the pipeline!

In no particular order, here’s a selection of other people who we’ll be hearing from before too long…

Nathan Blades, a TTRPG podcaster, streamer and occasional designer, whose episode is currently available over at Patreon, and will be available to everyone else after Christmas.

Tom Mecredy, a writer and editor who’s worked for historical miniatures company Warlord games, and is currently designing a TTRPG based around mercenary companies in the Italian Renaissance.

Steffie de Vaan, an author and developer of roleplaying games and short stories with credits on a number of big-name RPGs.

Bez Shahriari, a tabletop games designer, developer, artist, streamer, reviewer and just general legend of the gaming scene.

Sara Elsam, a games journalist, broadcaster and voice actor who’s featured in The Guardian, Eurogamer, BBC and Dicebreaker.

Juliana Moreno Patel, one half of The Wild Optimists, a game design duo who created the wildly successful Escape Room In A Box and several other immersive gaming experiences for big clients.

What a line-up! Right, I need to get on with wrapping some last-minute pressies and figuring out what a colly bird even is. But that’s not all we’ve got going on with the blog this week - check back on Christmas Eve for a special treat :)

Finding Games Retrospective: Episodes 9-12

It’s the last day of the Finding Games retrospective! We’re only going up to episode 12, as that brings us up to the past three months - at which point it stops feeling like a retrospective, doesn’t it?

If you’re just catching up, this started on Friday with a glimpse at the previous unreleased Episode Zero, then carried on with rundowns of Episodes 1-4 and Episodes 5-8.

Episode 9 holds the record for longest time between recording and release, as the interview happened before our long, unplanned hiatus! Sophie sat down with local industry buddy Zach Cox, indie TTRPG designer / publisher and master of 💿🐴. (That’s discourse, to the rest of us. Don’t ask.) We’ve watched Zach build a small indie publishing empire over the past couple of years, and his passion and dedication are utterly admirable and enviable. In the year since this podcast was recorded, he’s achieved so much more - just take a look at SoulMuppet Publishing, and buy some books!

In episode 10 - double digits, woo! - Sophie had a chat with Ross Connell, another Nottingham local who’s made a big name for himself since we’ve known him! I first met Ross at a local games night that I was helping to run, and he’d already been running a successful blog that interviewed board game artists. He was one of the earliest members of the Industry Collective (and one of our most regular meetup attendees!) and he’s since started working full time as a photographer and community manager in the board games industry, as well as running a top Instagram account and streaming solo games through lockdown. He’s basically just an all-round lovely person.

Episode 11 was a milestone for us, as it’s the point where Sophie started editing episodes herself. Previously, she’d recorded everything, then handed it over to me (as I had some very rough experience in editing podcasts, from my days at Mantic Games). Since Episode 11, I’ve been able to enjoy the podcasts alongside the listeners, and Finding Games has really become a Sophie solo project. This episode saw Sophie catching up with AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, who was the Editor-in-Chief of Girls Game Shelf (which sadly closed in November, but is still a fantastic resource!), and was in the process of organising the Shelf-a-pa-Luza online convention.

We’re wrapping up our retrospective with Episode 12, in which Sophie spoke to tabletop gaming polymath Victoria Caña, who leads a team of game designers working on Magic: the Gathering during the day, and is an award-winning indie game designer by night. Check out Cat Quartet Games to see more of her work!

And there we are! We hope you’ve enjoyed this look back at some of our older podcast episodes. If you’d like to help us continue making these episodes, you can help us out on Patreon - or, just as helpful, you can spread the word about Finding Games and give it a rating on iTunes.

Tomorrow, we’re going to have a quick look at some of the people who Sophie’s interviewed for upcoming episodes of Finding Games - see you then!

Finding Games Retrospective: Episodes 5-8

It’s day three of the Finding Games retrospective! We explained what this was on Friday (and let you see the previously-exclusive Episode Zero), and yesterday we ran through Episodes 1-4. Today, we’re looking at the next four!

For Episode 5, Sophie spoke to Rob Burman, who’s in charge of lots of stuff at Mantic Games. Honestly, we’ve lost track of what his job title is, because he seems to do a bit of everything! He writes blog posts, liaises with license holders, froths about goblins and… well, when I was Mantic’s Community Manager (years ago!) I did all sorts of utter nonsense over there, and it’s great to see Rob’s taken up that particular torch.

For Episode 6 was a fascinating one - it was the first time we stepped outside of tabletop games and took a look at other types of analogue gaming. John Mizon runs South West Megagames, which straddle the line between live action roleplay and tabletop gaming.

Episode 7 brought a new perspective in the form of Danielle Reynolds, who James met when he was partnered up with her through the Tabletop Mentorship Program. When she recorded the podcast she was an as-yet unsigned designer, pitching games to various publishers, and if you listen you’ll hear how much hard work she put in! That hard work paid off, and we recently found out that she’s successfully signed one of her games with a publisher. Congratulations, Danielle!

After Danielle’s podcast was released in December 2019 we had a bit of an unplanned hiatus, as we started winding up for the Kickstarter launch of Robot Fight Club… and then COVID-19 happened, and we lost track for several months. Finding Games returned in July with a special episode, where we flipped the script entirely, and I interviewed Sophie! This was a really fun chat, although it also got pretty deep in places. Basically, it’s a meandering ramble about all sorts of things, but honestly, aren’t they all?

There we go - day three is done! Check back tomorrow for day four…

Finding Games Retrospective: Episodes 1-4

Our Finding Games retrospective rumbles on - if you dunno what this is about, check out yesterday’s post, and all will be revealed.

So with Episode Zero done to our satisfaction - no one caught fire, nothing exploded - we started branching out to people we knew in the industry. Who better to be our first proper guest than our office neighbour Annie Norman, a.k.a. Bad Squiddo Games?

For Episode 2, we got brave and branched out to someone we didn’t know so well - Matt Jarvis, who (at the time) was the editor of Tabletop Gaming magazine. These days he’s Editor-in-Chief at Dicebreaker, which puts out a load of great gaming content.

Episode 3 was a lovely one, as Sophie got to catch up with our long-time gaming buddy Nathan Dowdell, who designs roleplaying games for Modiphius. He’s worked on some cracking titles, including Star Trek Adventures, Dishonoured and the upcoming Dune.

Our guest for Episode 4 was Jack Caesar, a game designer for River Horse and Cæsar ink. We met Jack through the Industry Network socials that we started running a couple of years ago, and we always love hanging out with him. By this episode, Sophie was starting to find her feet as a podcaster and interviewer. Unfortunately, we were still getting the hang of our audio equipment, and there are a few clicks and beeps which we only managed to get rid of a couple of episodes later.

That’s it for part one of our Finding Games retrospective - join us for some more tomorrow!

Finding Games Retrospective: Episode Zero

Hello Needy Cat fans! With the end of the year approaching (apparently it’s Christmas this time next week, but that sounds like nonsense), we thought it’d be nice to get some updates on the blog and look back at what we’ve been up to over this strange, strange year. We’re kicking that off with a closer look at the Finding Games podcast, which really came into its own in 2020. It’s almost like we suddenly had a lot more free time to record podcasts, or something…

We started Finding Games early last year, as part of our drive to help people find their footing in the tabletop games industry. We’d already set up the Nottingham Tabletop Industry Collective, we’d been running game design courses and been doing some mentoring, but we wanted to do something that took a closer look at the journeys that lead people to working in the tabletop games industry. One of our favourite things about this weird world we now work in is that there’s no obvious career path; it’s very rare to find someone who left school or college and immediately started on a very dedicated track that led to them working on games. Just among the people we know personally, there are former oil rig workers, mathematicians, chocolatiers, doctors, journalists and who knows what else. We wanted to spread this message loud and clear - you don’t need to be some kind of “games professional” to find a place in the games industry!

Anyway - over the next few days, in the runup to Christmas, we’re going to be looking back at the past eighteen months of Finding Games. We’re kicking it off with a little treat today - a look back at the very first episode!

Episode Zero was originally released in May 2019 as a Patreon exclusive, and is an interview with James. It was Sophie’s first time hosting a podcast or interviewing someone, so this was a test run as much as anything else. As such, you’ll have to forgive a bit of audible nervousness - not to mention the audio quality! (That Patreon money’s been put to very good use in upgrading our kit since then.)

We hope you enjoy it. If you want a bit more Finding Games, our Patreon backers will be getting access to the next episode today - head over and throw us a dollar a month if you’d like to join the early bird club!

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Music from filmmusic.io (incompetech.com):

"The Show Must Be Go" by Kevin MacLeod

“Happy Boy End Theme” by Kevin MacLeod

Licence: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)