ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 116.

Don Bellenger stops by to talk about his upcoming “open-world gardenvania,” The Beauty Cult, as well as his cyberpunk roguelike-shooter-platformer (and nihilistic synthwave multi-media project) Black Future ’88. Along the way, we discuss the importance of game developers taking inspiration from things other than games, the joys of disengaging from monoculture, the unique appeals of disreputable art, and the difficulties of crafting non-murder-based gameplay and game genresAlso, making music exclusively for yourself, sometimes. Also, briefly, bread.

You can get Black Future ’88 on Steam and Switch, and the OST on Steam and Bandcamp.
You can also follow Don on Twitter.

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• Here once again is that Yoko Taro “Philosophies of Violence” video.

• That incredible power pop album I mentioned is Alright by Zzuf.

• When Don mentions “the Ghost Ship fire,” he’s referring to this absolutely horrific event.

• Like I said, before this conversation, I only knew of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality from Elizabeth Sandifer’s analysis of it (and of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s influence more broadly) in Neoreaction a Basillisk: Essays on and around the Alt-Right.

• That book also contains a thorough explanation of Roko’s Basilisk—but if you’re looking for something shorter and more focused, this Thought Slime video covers it pretty well, too (albeit with absolutely no attempt (like, whatsoever) to be charitable to Yudkowsky’s overall project).

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“All The People Say (Season 4)” by Carpe Demon.
“Skymelt” and “Intruder in the Dark” from the Black Future ’88 OST by Don Bellenger.

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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.

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