Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress.

Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress.

My guest today is the American co-creator of one of the longest-running and most popular independent games yet made. In high school he and his older brother Zach designed adventure games based on fantasy and science fiction stories they invented together. He taught himself computer programming and received fifteen offers to enrol in PhD math programs.


At Stanford University, he and his brother continued work on a procedural adventure game called Dwarf Fortress, in which players guide successive generations of dwarves to build and maintain a settlement.


He quit university to work on the game full-time; in 2011 the New York Times described an early version as “perhaps the most complex video game ever made”. Dwarf Fortress became his life’s work, with a vast and committed cult following, but it remained a work in progress until December 2022, when a commercial version finally released, and promptly sold half a million copies.


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Episoder(181)

Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder Games Workshop.

Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder Games Workshop.

My guest today is the English fantasy author and champion of the video game industry, Sir Ian Livingstone. In 1975, while in his mid-twenties, he founded a boardgame company, Games Workshop, which soo...

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Susan Calman, comic, writer, presenter.

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My guest today is the Scottish comedian, television presenter and writer, Susan Calman. While studying law at the University of Glasgow, she spent three months in North Carolina working with criminals...

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Henk Rogers, the man who sold Tetris.

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My guest today is the Dutch video game designer and entrepreneur, Henk Rogers. While a student at the University of Hawaii, he’d while away the hours playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends. Aft...

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Jake Solomon, game designer (Marvel’s Midnight Suns; XCOM: Enemy Unknown.)

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My guest today is the American designer of some of the finest strategy video games yet made. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Computer Science in 2000, he accepted a j...

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Phil Wang, comedian.

Phil Wang, comedian.

My guest today is the British-Malaysian stand-up comedian and comedy writer Phil Wang. Born in the UK, when he was one week old his parents moved to Malaysia, where he attended school until the age of...

13 Mar 20231h 5min

Shahid Ahmad, former director, Sony PlayStation.

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Shahid Ahmad was a schoolboy living on a London council estate when he sold his prized BMX bike to raise money for programming books and taught himself to write computer games. After several knock-bac...

6 Mar 202354min

Phil Fish, creator of Fez.

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My guest today is the reclusive designer of one of the greatest video games yet made. He studied game design in Montreal and, after a brief stint working at Ubisoft, left to begin work on a game of hi...

27 Feb 20231h 8min

Heather Anne Campbell, comedian, screenwriter (Rick and Morty).

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My guest today is an Emmy-nominated writer, sketch comedian, voice actor and performer. As a teenager she studied improv comedy at the famous ImprovOlympic studio in her home city of Chicago, training...

20 Feb 20231h 4min

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