ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 155.
Esther Alter started out making games like Neocolonialism and No Pineapple Left Behind, which she now describes as “anti-fun.” But her newest game PROĆEMON is unashemedly fun, in addition to being a thoughtful experiment in how far we can push procedural generation, and in what human-machine collaborations can looks like.
Here Esther talks about PROĆEMON in terms of its inspirations, its tech, and how it fits into her broader artistic practice—which spans tabletop RPGs, non-game technical experiments and tools, and short-form fiction (much of it profoundly and unmistakably Jewish).
PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them is out now on Itch.io and Steam.
You can follow Esther on Twitter, and find a whole bunch of her work on her website.
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• The secondary antagonists who want to liberate Pokémon (those jerks) are Team Plasma from Pokémon Black and White (on the DS).
• It’s true enough that you wouldn’t have read about MissingNo. in Nintendo Power at the time—though a year later, the hundredth issue did cover the Minus World in Super Mario Bros (a glitch that was then about a decade old).
• Here’s Esther’s talk about the life and death and slippery definiton of the indie game.
• Here’s the collectable card game version of Proćemon.
• And here are Other Covenants and “Cultureship.”
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“All The People Say (Season 5)” by Carpe Demon.
Some (genuinely procedural!) music from PROĆEMON: You Must Catch Them by Esther Alter.
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Everybody's Talking at Once 