The Twin Geeks Interviews

Minh "Gooseman" Le, the creator of Counter-Strike, sits in for an hour-long podcast about his history developing videogames, from the creation of one of the most beloved and influential multiplayer games of the '90s to his work on new projects that blend all of his influences together, like the upcoming Alpha Response. We discuss changes in the game development industry, work culture at Valve, and what makes Counter-Strike so fundamentally special and lasting in a world crowded with a plethora of options for First Person Shooters. Counter-Podcasters win.

Michael Long of Foolish Mortals joins the show to discuss Kaiju Wars, a great riff on Advance Wars that pits your military against a rogue's gallery of awesome Kaiju. The game is a unique spin on the turn-based strategy play style employing timed puzzles to route the Kaijus before they cause unspeakable destruction to each area. We love Kaijus, Advance Wars, and Kaiju Wars, and now we get to tell Michael Long's Game Dev Story.

Zachtronics made singular games for engineers and people who make games. They made the game that inspired Minecraft. Imagine the breadth of their influence and it's clear what their open-ended puzzle games have truly inspired in modern game design. We chat with the studio's founder Zach Barth about the legendary history of these programming-forward computer games, the weight of outsized influence, working for Valve, and what he's up to today. This is Zach Barth's Game Dev Story.

Alongside his wife Roberta Williams, Ken Williams co-founded Sierra On-Line, the most influential computer game publisher of their era. Hundreds of games followed. Sierra On-Line published everything from perennial in-house favorites like King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry to outside games that defined generations like Half-Life and Ultima. This is an interview podcast about the foundation of Sierra On-Line, a business partnership, life after game development, and returning to the fold. This is a document of one of the most influential subjects in videogames and an outline of an inspiring career. This is Ken Williams' Game Dev Story.

Quentin De Beukelaer has gone from designing major games with Ubisoft to creating his own pixel horror scape, blending the styles of David Lynch & Satoshi Kon, with original music scored by Akira Yamaoka. Quentin joins the show to discuss his path to game development, the difference between developing massive franchises and more personal indie projects, and the Game Dev Story for his studio Atelier QDB's new narrative horror game, Decarnation.

Al Lowe is the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, the irreverent Sierra On-Line franchise that broke all the unspoken rules of game development. A crucial contributor through all of Sierra On-Line's brightest years, Al went from teaching music to students to developing videogames loaded with wit and personality. In our inaugural episode of Game Dev Story, a series where we talk to veteran and indie developers about their history in games, Al joins our show to share his philosophy about game development and to give the inside scoop about one of the most interesting studios of the '80s and '90s. Like playing one of Al's games, listening to him reflect on his career in games is compelling and very charming.

Mickey Reese is creating a scene in Oklahoma. His many films are communal exhibitions made with friends, crafted out of love for the great American filmmakers who came before him. Reese's recent genre works have caught attention at festivals and now his Altman-esque Country Gold is seeking an audience. We had a great chat with the director, exploring the themes of his new film and its relationship with American movies about country music and the established canon of movies about the place of idols in pop culture.

Angus MacLane is the director of Pixar's latest venture Lightyear, returning the studio to their rightful place in theaters, and expanding upon the meta fiction of the Toy Story franchise. MacLane was previously co-director on Finding Dory (2016) and notably has directed a series of shorts and significant pieces of animation for the studio. Join us as we discuss the path to directing at Pixar, why Buzz needed his own origin story, what it's like to develop a major animated film during a pandemic, and much more.

The incomparable Matt Farley joins the regular Moterncast crew to highlight a gem from the Motern catalogue: 2007’s Freaky Farley, a rare throwback to ultra specific horror tropes. You won’t want to miss our interview, full of new details you won’t find anywhere else about the slate of upcoming Motern projects!

Mark Cousins is a foremost chronicler of the new film canon, expanding our culture and understanding of cinema in innovative and diverse new directions. With The Story of Film (2011) and Women Make Film (2018), Cousins has provided us with new pathways for discovery and a more diverse appreciation of film. With his new project, The Story of Looking, premiering at Telluride, Cousins creates a more internal document: exploring the gift of looking and what it means to observe the world. In The Story of Looking, wherein Cousins is preparing for a risky eye surgery, the camera is turned inward, examining what it means to see the world, through the lens of cinematic language. Our conversation covers all this and more, in our latest entry of our Interviews series.

Bill Morrison is a director devoted to the lost films. His long-running filmography explores what often gets left behind. It’s a filmography of revival and preservation, with painstaking aesthetic attention paid to recovering films. This is a story about more than films. It’s about filling the gaps in our cinematic history. It’s about the intrinsic beauty of degrading nitrate film stocks and how that can all come to life, given just the right musical backing.Morrison’s latest film, let me come in, is the subject of today’s discussion. Using recovered footage of the lost German silent film Pawns of Passion (1928), the short boldly asserts its themes of separation, connection, and discovery. Working with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang and the incredible soprano voice of Angel Blue, it’s a short film driven by the music.In our interview, we’ll explore Morrison’s filmography, from the remarkable site favorite Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) to his new short, let me come in, premiering at the Turner Classic Movie festival.

Recovery and representation are the topics of the day, in our audio interview with Blackwater director Boise Esquerra. A series of short films, the first of which is showing at Slamdance, Blackwater is the story of a country musician who has bottomed out and returned to her reservation, finding that addiction does not discriminate. We swap stories about our own personal journeys of recovery and what it means to put those stories on screen. There's also a great conversation about de-stereotyping Native Americans on film and what it means to create effective representation. Blackwater's a great, and important, short series, an early highlight of this year's Slamdance.

1980s training videos have carved out a peculiar niche on the internet. Searching for a purpose for his new picture, director Quinn Armstrong utilized these training videos as a lens to tell a different kind of police story. Given recent events, the context of his film has landed differently than planned at inception. Between a wide-ranging change in the discourse on police and the shifting realities of COVID, there has never been a stranger time to shop such a film to the market. We’re proud to present an interview with Armstrong about his new film — the talk of this year’s Fantasia, Survival Skills takes VHS de-making to another level in this intriguing experimental film, with a great theatrical turn by dramatist Stacy Keach. Listen to our interview for all this, and much more.