Playwatch Listen is a mostly games industry podcast brought to you by game developers.

It features video game writer Alana Pierce and video game composer Austin Wintery.

And also usually Mike Bithel, who is a video game director, but he was not able to join us this week.

So instead, we have a special guest.

The show is supported by Patreon, who got an extended cut of this episode and also got it several days early.

Thank you so much to our Patreon supporters for keeping this very independent sponsor-free show alive. Enjoy the show. I'm trying

to let Mike Laidlaw introduce himself, Austin. I know, I'm going to shut up. Sorry. Thank you. Hi,

Mike, welcome. Hello. Who are you? Why are you here? Well, I'm the chief creative officer

at Yellowbird Games. I just released Eternal Strands with

the fantastic team up here. I think I'm here because you folks asked me to join, which is cool.

I also had the privilege of working with Austin on the game, too. So that was pretty rad.

Which I actually did not know until I had already started playing it,

and then I was on Minmax, and they were talking about it,

and they were like, you know that that's Austin?

And I was like, son of a bitch, he's everywhere.

He's sneaky.

Yeah, but you've been in the industry for how many years, a long time?

Let's see, 22 at this point.

Were you at BioM most of that time?

I joined in 2022.

Yeah, so I started in 2003 on Jade Empire.

Start as a very junior writer, with a lot to learn.

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