Shows / The Killscreen Podcast
The Killscreen Podcast
Join host Jamin Warren on conversations with someone of the most unique and experimental artists, designers, and thinkers in the worlds of games, play and culture Jamin Warren founded Killscreen and has produced events such as the Versions conference for VR arts and creativity, in partnership with NEW INC. Warren also programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the groundbreaking Arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kill Screen Festival, which Mashable called "the TED of videogames."…
Episodes
- The Killscreen Podcast
How Does a Horror Space Surround Us?
I talk with three people who build dread out of ordinary rooms. Sophie Winqvist Loggins shot Aniara, Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja's adaptation of Harry…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Can a Dating Sim Say No?
I open with Sagan Yee's Last Call for the Redding District, a 3D narrative game that asks what would happen if mermaids had the life cycle of Pacific salmon…
- The Killscreen Podcast
What Does Fear Sound Like?
I sit down with two composers who make audiences flinch for a living. Ryan Holladay scored Zach Cregger's Weapons and this year's Resident Evil with his…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Can a Game Be the Work of One Genius?
I open with a fan who has rebuilt P.T. from its own PS4 code, which raises the question under the whole hour: when a game can disappear, who is responsible for…
- The Killscreen Podcast
The Satellite Has Too Many Explanations
I open with Cezar Mocan's satellite, which finds a lake missing from the place its own records insist it should be, and would rather produce testimony than…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Nobody Knows What Happens Next
I open with Tomo Kihara, a Tokyo designer who has built an arcade cabinet that nobody scripted, and put a question to Danny Snelson that runs through the whole…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Does Water Have to Look Like Water?
I open with a 2015 Kill Screen essay about a police station built wrong on purpose, and end up asking Danny Snelson, a writer and professor of English and…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Do Good Games Taste Like Gasoline?
When Bennett Foddy was a fellow at Oxford, the college sold off its wine cellar and let the fellows judge the bottles. After twenty-four samples, the one that…
- The Killscreen Podcast
The Backrooms Were Always About Games
Something a little different! We're focusing on the newsletter now and in a conversational way! This week, I sat down with Danny Snelson, a writer and…
- The Killscreen Podcast
The Pink Game About Corporate Violence
Catmilk is a digital artist and solo developer who has been building a game called Gossamer Matrix for about four years. It's a first-person shooter set inside…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Your Body Is Being Compressed—Lisa Jamhoury on Lossy, Grief, and the Digital Body
Lisa Jamhoury is an artist and performer working at the intersection of the physical body and computation. Her Capture Series—five years in the…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Telling the Bees: Kyriaki Goni on Building a Game from a Stranger's Gift
In this episode, I talk with Greek artist Kyriaki Goni about Telling the Bees —her in-development game about a character called the Bee-Seeker, searching for…
- The Killscreen Podcast
The Level Designer Who Went Underwater
Jakob Kudsk Steensen has spent fifteen years building a practice that doesn't fit neatly into any single category. He's not a game designer in the commercial…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Lou Faroux: Internet Collapse, the Sewing Circle, and Building Digital Worlds from Queer Hollywood History
I sat down with Lou Faroux—French artist and filmmaker—to talk about growing up on The Sims, why she spent years making films before she ever touched a game…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Can Art Fight Climate Change? Kara Stone & Joshua Dawson on Solar Servers, Degrowth, and Making Work in a Crisis
What does it cost—materially, ethically, psychologically—to make digital art about the climate crisis? I brought together two artists who are building things…
- The Killscreen Podcast
100 Strangers, One Controller: Making asses.masses with Patrick Blenkarn & Milton Lim
Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are the Canadian theater-makers behind asses.masses — an eight-hour live RPG where an audience shares a single controller to…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Vadim Nickel Is Waiting for Games to Hear Themselves
What does it mean to really listen to a game? Vadim Nickel is a researcher and game developer at Concordia University who studies exactly that question. His…
- The Killscreen Podcast
The Body Is the Controller: Symoné on Circus, Memory, and Live Play
Symoné is a British-American interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of circus, dance, and game technologies. Her piece Nullspace Motel is a…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Dance Moms Trained a Generation to Perform for Algorithms
Competition dance trained young girls to hold their bodies in anticipation of judgment—to perform flawlessly, make difficulty look effortless, and measure…
- The Killscreen Podcast
What If A Love Eternal's Story Doesn't Explain Itself?
Toby Alden is a game designer and DJ based in Los Angeles. Their platformer Love Eternal — released today — is an eight-year collaboration with their brother…
- The Killscreen Podcast
He Fed a Classic Anthropology Text To Make An AI Game. Here's What Happened.
In 1922, Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific changed anthropology forever, introducing the world to "thick description" and the rigors of…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Doors That Don't Open: Simon Flesser on Constraint, Preservation, and Northern European Melancholy
Swedish studio Simogo spent their first five years making seven games—Year Walk, Device 6, Sailor's Dream—then two games over the next decade. Their new Legacy…
The Killscreen PodcastWhy This Game About the Haitian Revolution Has No Bullets
There's already a game about the Haitian Revolution. It's part of Assassin's Creed. You sneak around, you stab people, you "free the slaves"—and the game gives…
The Killscreen PodcastSpending the Big Bucks
Big Buck Hunter made a quarter billion dollars by perfecting one thing: the tactile pleasure of pulling a trigger. This arcade shooter stripped hunting down to…
The Killscreen PodcastThe Dog, The War, & The Souls You Can't Save
War games let you be a hero. Alan Kwan's games make you helpless. In this conversation, we explore Scent—a 20-minute experience where you play a dog witnessing…
- The Killscreen Podcast
Why should we treat video games as archaeological sites?
What happens when you apply the "steely, assertive mind" of a professional archaeologist to the shifting digital landscapes of video games? In this episode, we…
The Killscreen PodcastSilicon Valley in a Sand Trap with Sam Ghantous
The same silica that powers your GPU fills the sand traps at Augusta National. Artist Sam Ghantous joins us to discuss "your golf course made my GPU," his…
The Killscreen PodcastExploring the material culture of games with metalwork, jewelry, and a little bit of horror
Artist, jeweler, metalsmith, and art conservator Lauren Eckert shows us what it means to look at craftsmanship through a contemporary lens. Drawing from…
The Killscreen PodcastHow to design political games with a broken heart
Can games seep into life's political, social, and cultural realms? Across projects that fuse game development, filmmaking within game engines, LARP…
The Killscreen PodcastSam and Andy Rolfes put the life in livesteam
Sam and Andy Rolfes self-describe their work as “overly navel-gazing, obsessed-with-layers, weird.” From visualizing songs by Lady Gaga and BLACKPINK to…
The Killscreen PodcastDanielle Brathwaite-Shirley creates game worlds from autonomous archives
What happens when games account for the players’ identities? Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work does just this. Traversing game design, performance, and sound…
The Killscreen PodcastRachel Rossin creates entropy from infinity
How do we account for the tension between technology’s infinite, unrestricted promise and the impermanence of being human? Rachel Rossin interrogates this…
The Killscreen PodcastSalome Asega on cultivating the ecosystem of art and technology
Embodied” may be the best word to describe the projects of artist, researcher, and educator Salome Asega. She has created VR experiences that evoke the…
The Killscreen PodcastGayatri Kodikal excavates the ruins of history, time, and play
On a walk around Old Goa, artist Gayatri Kodikal chanced upon an archaeological dig in progress. Her curiosity swelling, she jumped over the fence to see what…
The Killscreen PodcastYasmin Elayat believes art drives innovation
Yasmin Elayat is a self-proclaimed ‘hybrid’—she’s a new-media documentarian, a creative technologist, a collaborative storyteller, and a spatial designer. She…
The Killscreen PodcastNicole He on talking to computers
Nicole He is a creative technologist whose work lives in the space between video games, physical computing, and witty conceptual art. With experience advising…
The Killscreen PodcastMonument Valley's Lea Schönfelder on designing within constraints
When we look at our phone screens, we typically aren’t thinking about the borders. We don’t notice the edges of our phones and how those boundaries limit our…
The Killscreen PodcastVideogames, conspiracy theories and the American imagination
p>-- We recorded this long before QAnon took hold and the President of the United States was advising people to inject disinfectant into our veins. Since then…
The Killscreen PodcastThe Stanley Parable's Davey Wreden on breaking the fourth wall
When people ask what it means to make a game, they typically point to a standard set of devices: points, scores, levels, and so on. It’s rare that story makes…
The Killscreen PodcastMoMA's Paola Antonelli on thinking of games as design objects
Well, we know what videogames are, but what does it mean to be a videogame designer? I posed this question to Paola Antonelli, a force in the world of modern…