Monthly ArchiveFebruary 2013



Games 26 Feb 2013 03:29 am

Card game Kickstarter = BANANAS

We launched our Machine of Death card game Kickstarter a little while ago, and it’s been nuts! The above is a real tweet from the official Cards Against Humanity account, linking to our our pitch video (which I think came out really great!).

We’re raised over $150K so far, and have unlocked a ton of stretch goals, including free bonus cards by a variety of Webcomics Pals, as well as four — yes, four — free preview stories from THIS IS HOW YOU DIE. You can read them all right now via our Kickstarter updates:

Preview story #1“OLD AGE, SURROUNDED BY LOVED ONES”, by ’Nathan Burgoine
Preview story #2“ROCK AND ROLL”, by Toby W. Rush
Preview story #3“DROWNING BURNING FALLING FLYING”, by Grace Seybold
Preview story #4“CONFLAGRATION”, by Ian Stoner, writing as D.L.E. Roger

And there will hopefully be more to come, thanks to the kind backers who’re supporting this game! It’s a super fun (if somewhat morbid) party game that I’ve had a lot of fun developing with Kris and others. To give you a better sense of some of the mechanics of the game, here’s a video from one of our playtest sessions.

Hope you like it! I’ve been posting all the Kickstarter updates (of which there are now ten separate posts) to the Machine of Death Facebook page, as well as announcing them on Twitter, so there are ways to get INSTANT NOTIFICATION OF ALL NEWS if you so desire!

Podcast Episodes &Vol2 Updates 12 Feb 2013 03:36 am

MOD2 Interview & Card Game Announcement

The time is drawing near for This is How You Die! We just returned the copy edited manuscript, and we’re having marketing conversations with the folks at Grand Central. I’m really excited for some of the stuff we have planned — if there’s anything MOD stands for, it’s doing cool stuff for the sake of it and hopefully we’ll get a chance to do some really cool stuff in service of this book.

In the fall of 2011, we held our Super-Stupendous Magic & Variety Show in Hollywood. At the close of the program, our friend and colleague Kris Straub chatted with me and Ryan about the process of choosing the stories for the book, as well as what we’re looking forward to. Here it is for your listening pleasure, and it’ll be on our podcast feed as well.

Kris Straub interviews Ryan North & David Malki ! (25 min)

Download the MP3 Subscribe on iTunes
Direct podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/machineofpodcast

Kris and I are also working together on something else — he and I have been designing an official, super-fancy Machine of Death card game. Here we are at a special shoot we just did for a promo video:

I’m really excited for the game — we’ve been working for months on making it super fun to play and neat to look at. A feast for every sense. Our pals Nika Harper (of podcast narration fame) and Jordan Morris (of Jordan Jesse GO) helped us shoot the promo video; both very funny people experiencing this incarnation of the game for the very first time, and they either really enjoyed it or lied to me very convincingly!

The game will be going up on Kickstarter this week. Kris designed dozens of original cards for the game, and we’re hoping to make it a very pretty package. More information on this to come, once it’s available for pledging! UPDATE: IT’S LIVE!