ETAO Podcast, Episode 75.
Neo Cab is the debut game from Chance Agency, about the last human rideshare cabbie in an aggressively automated, vertically integrated, near-future California city. In this episode, Vincent Perea discusses the game’s visuals (a masterclass in scale, scope, and focus), and Paula Rogers discusses the game’s writing process (which, by design, more closely resembled a TV writers’ room than a traditional game pipeline). More than that, both talk about how Neo Cab’s various elements are inextricably linked, the challenges of character-focused narratives—and of extensive branching—and the fertile grounds of richly simulating characters’ emotions.
Stay human, friends. And also: RISE!
You can get Neo Cab on Steam, Switch, and Apple Arcade.
You can get the soundtrack on Bandcamp, Spotify, Google Play Music, and iTunes.
You can also follow Paula, Vincent, and the game itself on Twitter.
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• Night on Earth is on the Criterion Channel.
• Here’s a RockPaperShotgun piece about Neo Cab and nowpunk.
• And here’s my favorite video on the challenges of dialogue animation.
• That documentary about the Ovarian Psychos will be on PBS this March.
• Here’s an introduction to the cause of Claudia Mitchell.
• And here’s Paula’s “Anatomy of a Character” post.
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“All The People Say (Season 3)” by Holly Hyperion.
“Stay Human” (feat. Vincent Perea), Halogen Mosaic, and “Neon Moon” (feat. The Saxophone Warrior) from the Neo Cab soundtrack by Obfusc.
“Apple Blossoms” by Vernon Geyer.
We’re on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Overcast, and RadioPublic. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.
Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.
Everybody's Talking at Once 