Tommy and Adam are joined by special guest Tina Amini (Editor in Chief of Games at IGN) to talk about what makes a video game great and how they successfully establish an emotional connection with the player.

Links for this episode:

• @TinaAmini (Twitter)Tina's official Twitter account.
• The Writer Will Do Something"The year is 2012. You are the lead writer for the third game in the wildly popular ShatterGate™ franchise. Expectations are through the roof: fans of the series are waiting for the biggest, most bad-ass entry in the series yet, and your publisher is expecting the best-selling title in its history. But the game's development hasn't gone as smoothly as planned. One morning, just a couple months before E3 and six months before ship, an emergency meeting is called..."
• Borderlands Is Getting Review Bombed On Steam Over Epic Store ExclusivityKotaku: "Yesterday, Gearbox announced that Borderlands 3 will be an Epic Games Store exclusive for six months after its September 13 release. Like clockwork, Steam users began review bombing previous games in the noted dabbing robot shooter series shortly after. Twenty-four hours and thousands of negative reviews later, Steam’s new anti-review bomb system has yet to defuse the problem."
• @tinaamini (Instagram)Tina's official Instagram account.
• Ubisoft In Trouble Over Comments About Female CharactersKotaku: "Shortly after Ubisoft upset many Assassin's Creed fans by saying that it had abandoned its plan to have female characters in its new game's co-op multiplayer mode, the company returned with another controversial explanation about the absence of women in its games—this one focused on Far Cry 4."
• Unions Stole The Show At Last Night's GDC AwardsKotaku: "'I’m not anti-union, but I don’t really think we need them, right?' said Double Fine head Tim Schafer while hosting yesterday evening’s Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco. 'We’re all great here and in this show. No one here is union and...' Then the stage lights went out."
• Tim Schafer Pokes Fun At #GamerGate and #NotYourShield During GDC AwardsTim Schafer (Double Fine) satirizes anti-union sentiment in a speech at the GDC Awards.