Bombin' the A.M. With Mike Bithell

Sweet Thomas was Alone is a cool game! Love the narrative in it!

Bought Thomas Was Alone because of this, just like he said I would..... Conspiracy!

@patrickklepek: I'm getting the "That video is unavailable." message. Just FYI.

England representing!

Also, what a charming chap.

Thomas built a dome.

Is that YouTube? It takes a little while for it to push out there...longer than the site version.

Mike Bithell might have been the coolest guest on this show so far. Glad his game did so well.

I still don't get the people that like Arkham Asylum more than Arkham City because "it's too big." The openness is part of why I love City so much. Asylum felt WAY too constrained to me.

@patrickklepek said:

For a second there I had thought that Bombin' The AM had just gotten a huge budget and adopted an Inside the Actor's Studio style set.

Where's the audio podcast of this?

I definitely second Mike Bithell's opinion about Arkham City. Asylum was a superior experience. I'm normally of the mind that bigger is better in game world design but City proved an exception.

Really great interview. It's good to see these indie devs being open about what they do like this. It's refreshing in an industry where AAA devs are "protected" by ten layers of PR bullshit that won't let them speak a single honest word in the fear that they'll say something dumb (With a few notable exception, like Jaffe and Cliffy B) and I hope the openness of indie devs leads AAA devs to be more open towards their audience (especially on E3 podcasts!).

@patrickklepek: Thanks! I hadn't noticed since I subbed that I had set YouTube as default...

I do like Mike Bithell. Seems like a nice chap. And Thomas Was Alone is a fantastic game. Watched one of his early-development streams for Volume and it was really cool to see some of those early processes.

Only if they start asking every guest what their favorite curse word is.

@mooseymcman: Some people just want a directed liner experience and not be distracted by all the open world business. I love Arkham City but i usually save most of the side missions/riddler trophies for later.

Maybe if open world games had an option, like ME3 style, to just play the story missions that would be cool for players who just want that.

I am intrigued by Mike's iPad-based economy.

Also, I still really need to play Thomas was Alone; it's been sitting in my Steam Library for quite awhile.

Edit: I really agree with his stance on sales. There are a ton of games I would never had owned had they not gone on sale, simply because I'm not willing to pay above a certain price to try something that I'm normally not a big fan of.

Dark Souls, yea I'll pay 60 dollars right away because it's worth that much to me. Just Cause 2? I never would have even cared had it not hit below 10 dollars. The difference with and without the sales; the Just Cause 2 developers would not have gotten a cent from me without fluctuating prices taking effect.

@mooseymcman: My problem with City is that they don't really do anything with the open world: You're just going from A to B in a mostly empty world with almost nothing to do except for some dumb collectibles, and it just feels tedious. Every time I was out in the open world I wanted to go back to the story stuff. Asylum is a much more streamlined experience with no fat, which makes it a much better game in my opinion.

That's not to say that I'm against a more open world Batman game, but they need to actually do something with the open world,

Not really trying to be too negative here, but is anyone else not really digging the guest every Monday. I more prefer hearing Patrick and Alex "talk shop".

exactly... that's a much better way of articulating what I also felt about it.

Personally, I wish the Monday episodes were longer. Chat with the guest for a bit, and talk shop. I don't think the two things need to be mutually exclusive.

@swat200: I really like the format. It's enough that the Friday episode is just the two guys, two episodes of that a week is a bit much. And I really like the format of interviewing a dev on monday and having him/her talking about the news etc. with Alex and Patrick. As I said there's way too much PR bullshit in this industry and I find it very interesting to hear what these devs have to say.

Apologies for lower audio quality. Had to rip the video audio for today's show.

i apologize for my English, its not my first language.I don't know to put this so i'm just going to blurt it all out but i feel i need to post a comment and say that i really wish you gave more focus on the guest , Mike seemed such a interesting person, based solely on playing Thomas was alone. I don't dislike being focused on you guys but i can watch you guys talk about stuff on Friday and its only a day i get a chance to watch other great people from the gaming related industry.

https://soundcloud.com/michaeltransaction/bombin-the-a-m-with-mike

the PSN+ thing was pretty interesting. I wonder what most developers ask for in return from sony

Mike seemed 100% legitimate in everything he said in this video. Great guest! Get him on again!

Awesome show and awesome guest. Already excited for next Monday's with Jim Sterling.

What a likeable guy! Now I just hope that Volume will be something I'd be into.

The presentation with the voiceover and everything was definetly what sold me on Thomas was Alone back when it was quicklooked, though I distinctly remember being in the minority in the QL comments. I actually recall being surprised by how toxic some of them were.

Seems like a really nice, honest dude. I like that he was willing to admit how utterly unsure you can be of the end result when making something. It's kind of rare to hear many developers say that there's the possibility that their game "might be shit".

I don't know if the way to solve the "stealth kill everyone" problem is with restrictions like you can't kill anyone. How about if the options were less boring than sneak past the guy? Like hack the guards cell phone account and send a text message from his girlfriend saying "oh, god help..." or something to that effect to make the guard leave his post. Or cutting the power to an elevator once a guard gets in.Or even a bomb scare that leaves the area empty but now you have a timer on when the bomb squad arrives. Perhaps lighting a fire that is a great way to distract but cuts off your exit and now you must find another before the place burns to the ground.

Wow, so the you tubers have that much pull? I did not expect that. I personally still prefer the bigger sites like GB where I can get all I want about videogames in one place. Like a vdeogame information Wal-Mart.....I never bought a game from watching a you tuber's stream, but I did just pick up Blackgaurds because of the quicklook. You know, now that I think of it, videogame Wal-Mart sounds derogatory. That was not my intention. How about something more indie, like a videogame information flea market or swap and shop. There, that's more like it.

And yet Origins constraints and explanations for the open world section being segmented and devoid of people were even more contrived and even more bizarre. Shit half of it was almost entirely a copy paste job from City too with some snow added, nor did it do one iota more with it's open world then City did. :/

Oh and if you were into solving puzzles, doing villain side missions and the like, City did do a lot with it's open world, more then a lot of open world game do in fact.

I completely understand why some people prefer the smaller more liner Asylum.

However Origins did nothing to improve on City, besides have an arguably better story; but coming at the expense of worse traversal, worse combat, worse roster, worse puzzles, worse leveling progression.

The English dude is alright tho :)

yeah man the rooster in that game sucked, lame cockerel all over the place

What a nice honest dude, the more Brits on this site the better, off to buy Thomas now. Also can't wait for Jim Sterling next week, another fine guest.

Mike is a cool dude. Played Volume at Eurogamer Expo.

Quite hard and took a while to get to grips with the echo mechanic, but very accessible and cool angular aesthetics. Definitely saw the MGS vibes.

Really great discussion! I just wished you started the dialogue with the guest right away. I really have to say it's awesome that Patrick is such a Trooper concerning content. Even if there's no new quicklook there will always be Bombing the AM, Worth Playing, Worth Reading or a Dumptruck Episode!

Also: That British dude seems alright and I kinda like rectangles so I'm gonna pick up Thomas Was Alone during the next sale.

This British chap is quite alright. No interest in playing Thomas is Alone, but I'll help with the rent when Volume comes out.

Southern Han Solo himself! I will go on record as saying I loved Geography Jumper, played through it on PC and PS3.

Scoops you've been knocking it out of the park in terms of guests lately.

Really loved Mike as a guest! Looking forward to seeing him back.

Great show as always guys.

I'd like to offer a criticism of the guest episodes by laying out the basic structure of this episode. I'm using very rough estimations.

• first 10 minutes: Introduce the show, introduce the guest, bit of random talk (e.g. football)
• 10-40: Guest talks about what he's been doing
• 40-63: Patrick asks guest what he thinks about other parts of industry
• 63-67: Patrick has guest pimp his Twitter, games, etc
• -The last two minutes: "What are you up to this week Alex?"

I won't deny that it's interesting but it just feels like a 2 person Interview Dumptruck. Like whenever Patrick and Alex get a dev in the call with them they forget to talk about news, what they've been up to, etc and go right into interviewing mode. It's cool but I also want to know what games they've been playing, whether anything happened in news over the weekend, etc. I'd rather Dumptrucks be about the people being Dumptrucked and AMs be more about what's going on right now in games in a broad sense.

"and then Totalbiscuit did a quicklook and I had 2-3 years salary in the bank"

That's amazing.

Another good show, another cool guest.

I get why MasterDS might not be into the format, but I actually like how the two days have a different focus. Keeps topics from overlapping with the Bombcast since the Friday show is half a week apart.

Great guest and show today. PS+ talk was really interesting, even if he couldn't go into full details. Don't get to hear about that process from developers too often.

I think that was an amazing point and I'l love to see someone like @patrickklepek explore it more. The idea that youtube personalities, not game reviews sites, drive sales is fascinating.

The whole business ecosystem for games is changing so drastically and quickly I think it really bears more investigation.

What a great guest, some real honest discussion on being an indie dev and expectations vs. reality, great episode.

Absolutely. It also brings a lot of weight to the thought of youtubers being bought out for stealth marketing purposes.

There have been some solid and out and out great guests before (Totalbiscuit among them) but I think Mike has become my new favorite guest so far. And you know what, he's totally right. I'm gonna grab Thomas Was Alone on a whim because of a how cool he was on this show for a couple bucks.

I don't agree that sales are hurting the industry in the long term mainly because:

- we are in a digital age, where the price of games is somewhat outdated; AAA games don't need to be sold at $50 anymore; at least online they don't.

- many people buy games that they wouldn't, otherwise. If it's a good deal, with a lot of traction, many people will probably buy just because; many of them won't even actually play those games.

I didn't notice this came in mp3 as well, thanks!

I don't know if it makes sense to think of them as "YouTube personalities." They are personalities, just like Giant Bomb. Their platform is YouTube. I suspect many of them would do very well for themselves elsewhere.