Hey Curtiss, I was late to the party but I did it! Start to finish and I enjoyed the whole thing. Thanks for taking the time to make us that content. I've been a long time gamer and just enjoy listening to other aspects of the video game world and I was NOT expecting to get with a gauntlet that randomly threw at me. So here we go... I'm no game artist. I've never coded a thing. I dont have a clue what game design is. 12 weeks?... Lets do this!

Found this podcast because the host gave a life altering Unity dev talk I watched on YouTube. Gigi is a fantastic source for information about game design and looking at them from the top down. Thank you so much for creating this podcast.

Your early episodes were great, and the information is still awesome but it's hard to listen to without hurting my ears in headphones. The audio quality has gone way down in the most recent episodes.

I just discovered this podcast. I find the style easy to listen to, yet very thoughtful in the lessons taught. Truly Mr. Murphy has been around the “around the block” in the game design world. His experience in the Corporate world combined with his own indy company make for a unique combination of experience and insight. I’ve only done a view episodes but I’m hooked.

I just listened to your Heroes of the Storm vs LoL podcast and I'm a bit surprised on such a glaring oversight. One of them has been out for 6 years (League of Legends) and the other has only been out of beta since June. I found it hilarious that you kept saying stuff like, "why is one dominating the other?" Uh...seriously? How on earth can you talk about something in such depth and not talk about how one was literally just released and the other has had 6 years to build up a fanbase? Really uninformed man. And it put a really bad taste in my mouth to want to listen to another podcast about a topic I am not familiar with. Specifically as you describe the game of Heroes, you were off base on so many levels. "You can turn of chat." Really? Sure if you jump into a casual Quick Match game or you want to hover around the low ranks of Hero League but there is no way you can do that in the higher ranks. And "no skill"? Really? I'd like to know what rank you are man. You sound like someone who just picked up the game. So many uninformed things. And to my original point: how the hell can you not mention the 5 months vs 6 years. Really bad and biased podcast.

As an active member of the Unity3D forums, I was already familiar with Curtiss Murphy as an expert in the game design and development field and knew him as a helpful person who gave kind, friendly, and most importantly, useful advice. Despite this, I wasn’t initially sold on Game Design Zen. Curtiss’s softly purring voice felt almost like a caricature of talk radio, and the first episode presented viewpoints that conflicted with how I felt about choices. Somewhere in the middle of Episode 3, however, I realized I was hooked. The voice that initially seemed silly to me now felt like liquid wisdom being poured into my ear, and I realized that questioning my own thoughts on game design was the whole POINT of the series. There have only been 5 episodes released so far, but GDZ is quickly becoming a must-listen for any aspiring game designers. The principles presented will serve as a solid foundation to build your own journey of exploration and learning. If this series continues and gains a wide audience, I fully expect the quality of indie games to increase dramatically in the coming years.