New Podcast: Probably Designed

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a podcast project called “Probably Designed.” This show is a series of conversations with interesting folks about how the practice of design interacts with randomness and chance.

Games and game design are a natural fit for these conversations: probability as a mathematical discipline was founded in the study of games of chance! As an individual, I’m a bit of a math and games nerd. I studied mathematics as an undergraduate, and focused on game systems as communications media in my masters degree. Over the past year and a half, I’ve been digging back into and really trying to learn probability and statistics: in part because of the importance of data science and machine learning, but also because it’s a fascinating branch of math that I didn’t spend enough time with in school.

I’ve collected a series of conversations and interviews that I’m editing into a “season” of eight episodes to start, mostly focused on independent game designers who I know or have connected with over the past couple of years. The episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays starting on September 9th. Here’s the current show list:

1. Input and Output Randomness with Ezra Szanton (Mr. Magpie’s Harmless Card Game),
2. Card Pools pt. 1 with Kev Chang (As We Descend) and Eddie Cai (Star★Vaders),
3. Card Pools pt. 2 with Kev Chang and Eddie Cai,
4. Drafting and other forms of chance pt. 1 with Dan DiIorio (Luck Be A Landlord, Maze Mice) and Brian Long (Ballionaire),
5. Drafting and other forms of chance pt. 2 with Dan DiIorio and Brian Long,
6. Multiplayer Madness with Julian Schumacher (The Quizard’s Domain),
7. A bit of a potpourri of design topics with Fabian Fischer (Rack and Slay and many other credits),
8. Deckbuilding as design with Gabe Carleton-Barnes.

I still have a lot of work to do, but the conversations have been great, and I can’t wait to share them with you. The podcast will be posted here, and distributed to all the normal podcast places (maybe excluding Spotify, I haven’t decided yet).

See you on Tuesday, September 9th with the first episode!

Thanks for reading Playful Work! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.