making video games

imagined: make fun little guys

actual: invoicing, doing contracts, writing taxes, having planning meetings, doing UI

Did games really get more costly to make? By how much, since when, and for whom? We have the receipts.

"Dev costs have skyrocketed." What does that actually mean? By how much? Since when?

The bigger the scope, the higher the rise: x2.5 for solodevs, x3 for AAA in 10 years ($100M ➡️ $300M).

@hushcrasher.bsky.social full analysis: newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/did-games-...

the passive voice store was visited by me and you were known by everybody there

This is great because you get a visceral sense of the acceleration. h/t @jdotj.bsky.social on the video app.

I’ve been learning French too! I’m taking online courses that have been really good

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

BDA is the new hotness, now we just toss pointers around

Grateful for my trans friends and all the wonderful trans folk I’ve met in the Rust community and elsewhere. Hoping with all my heart that the world becomes a better, safer place for trans people

my days consist mostly of thinking of the things I have to do, first picking the ones I'm legally obligated to do and then doing those, and then picking the one that makes me want to cry the least without not making me want to cry at all, and doing that one

Okay for the rest of my life I have a new preferred go-to example of what a DFA is

Your favourite game was not your favourite game until in the last 5% of development. Some games you don't like would've been your favourite game had they made different decisions in the last 5%

Large number of people at no kings rally in Missoula.

Massive no kings rally here in Missoula, Montana.

The final page to be edited? The one titled “Wikipedia”

Critically analyzing what's in front of you and projecting/imagining a future described by a team are the only prerequisites to reviewing any of this stuff and if you can't do it you are worse than worthless: you are actively damaging and should either rubber stamp everything or get out of the way.

Claude cannot actually feel, it can't think, it doesn't have opinions, it isn't self aware, it doesn't have context outside the immediate window you are using it with. By asking for its comment on war crimes you are legitimizing the idea that it can be used autonomously or for war at all. Stop it.

Hard agree. I totally trashed a Linux install on my laptop years ago with bad chmod usage and it was way easier to just reinstall than actually fix it.

Subnautica devs v. Krafton ruling is ABSOLUTELY stunning. Start at the top of page 32 and read until the end of that section on page 37.

Krafton CEO was warned by their legal personnel to not follow ChatGPT into what is likely Some Of The Dumbest Legal Shit Ever, CEO believed the plagiarism bot.

I think we're going to see even more stories like this over the next year.

Good.

1990s style cover for a computer game called "Waynely Farfield's Geomaquarium", with geometric shapes and tropical fish

Ok, I'm gonna start a little thread here for something I've been doing for fun lately: making designs for things that don't exist.

First up: ah, yes, that classic computer game of the early 90s:

Video game expert here, here's why this won't work.

1. The strait of hormuz is about 100 miles long, and a laden oil tanker travels at about 20 mi/h. This means that a transit will be about 5 hours. Stars provide ~8 seconds of invincibility, meaning that we're looking at around 2000 stars per pass.

Someone bought the bundle, then left the same review on both games

worth remembering, David Lynch directed “fix your hearts or die” specifically at transphobes. it wasn’t a generic “no mean people allowed” statement, it was said by his Twin Peaks character in defense of a trans woman he cared for and deeply respected.

Not quite ready to launch, but if you're a decentralized identity and/or AT proto nerd, you might want to take an early peek at this freeq.at

This is something I’ve struggled with in our (non-Unity) ECS game and it’s cool for those problems to surface explicitly but it is a brain trip to sort out what order systems should run

this is a @themountaingoats.bsky.social song

Anyway here is a poem I wrote about my Palestinian dad

Anything in your game that’s worthless enough to have an AI write it should be cut instead

Lucien Greathouse - MobyGames Game credits, biography, portraits and other game industry information for Lucien Greathouse - MobyGames

I'm claiming my @mobygames.com profile: www.mobygames.com/person/15691...

This GOOD BOY ran onto the course during the Women’s Cross-Country Skiing Team Sprint event, crossing the finish line and being automatically recorded by OMEGA’s photofinish camera 😆