I'm sorry you guys, it was me. I was on duty and stamped the permission letter that allowed Ken Jennings to peruse the folds of the Gray Lady. Not only that but I was bribed with 17,650 PolyCoin which I promptly exchanged on Silk Road for 2.7 QueerBits. I'm hoarding to bankroll future non-apologies.

Did not have Candace Owens going "I'd like to know who's funding the IGDA!" on my bingo card for today

actual reasons to make games (or idk, something more straightforward like going up a mountain)

maybe: annie rauwerda@annierau.bsky.social · 7d ago

starting a collection of quotes like this

Layoffs hit Double Fine today, and I'm sorry to report that I was one of the ones hit. If you need a game designer with tech chops and 2+ decades of experience, here I am.

This is funny, as almost all the surge in mass popularity of anime started in late 99 (after Pokemon picked up) or early 2000s (Toonami showing Sailor Moon, Dragonball etc). The 90s were a dark time of VHS, when John O'Donnell of CPM managed to get Blockbuster to put hentai in the animation aisle.

James Beckett@kickthebeckett.com · last wk.

The U.S. didn't "hate" anime in the 90s. People these days tend to conflate (or confuse) "broad teasing of foreign cultures and nerd hobbies" for "hatred." As for the nerds and bullies that may have gotten weird or douchey about it...I mean, what do you expect? That's what nerds and bullies do.

Finally bobbed out to the strange little island in the harbor to offer up our firstborn to THE YARD and its vicarious deities of unstructured play

Jimothy became embroiled in partisan meme discourse and found he was now a political football (in addition to being roughly football-shaped). In 39 days, the night would seethe with treeing dogs once more; perhaps a blissful release from this new torture.

Good talk worth reading, and I would go even further: all of "design" as a field of practice has gradually compressed into a rhetoric that subordinates creative meaning to the frictionless satisaaficing of users. Luckily this smooth vision is pepetually at odds with the unfathomable horrors of play

Eric@mokkograd.net · 2w ago

Here are my slides and a transcript of my talk I gave during Glasgow Indie Games Fest on July 11th: Evil Game Design - An Introduction: mokkograd.net/posts/2026-0...

The main difference between center-left liberal orgs and more progressive-leftist orgs on trans athletics is not the number of trans people involved in establishing policy positions, it's whether they are openly or quietly retreating to the "let individual athletic associates decide" position.

Jes Staley, ex-Barclays CEO to Jeffrey Epstein: '“You want to know why we are not São Paulo, watch the TV adds [sic] on the Super Bowl...Its all about hip Blacks in hip cars with white women. The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. by Jay Z.” www.theringer.com/2026/07/23/m...

This Has Always Been Jay-Z’s Blueprint

Jay-Z said 2026 will be a year of “all offense.” Here’s what that really means.

theringer.com

loved both of these games.

Fellow Traveller@fellowtraveller.games · 2w ago

Fae and Wizards signed a landmark partnership for the Outlandish Fantasy Tactics bundle 🧚 🤝 🧙 🎭 Titanium Court: A one-of-a-kind surrealist match-three adventure 🚔 Tactical Breach Wizards: Turn-based tactics with Kevlar-wearing wizards Grab both games at 10% off today on Steam! 🔮 bit.ly/OFTBundle

New York! Do you want to come play games? Support a big ole games library? Walk away with some of our rare, odd, or just plain extra games? We're having an afternoon of gaming and raffles in a couple weeks!!

NYU Game Center@nyugamecenter.bsky.social · 2w ago

Announcing: NYU Game Center Summer Fun Fair! Saturday, August 8th, 1pm - 6pm 370 Jay Street, 6th Floor Join us for an afternoon of free to play games & community! We will be accepting donations in exchange for board games from the Game Center Library's surplus. RSVP: gcsummerfunfair.eventbrite.com

My brain will melt if I read one more take that's basically "the Odyssey isn't WOKE (i.e. evinces some left-of-center politic) it ACTUALLY transposes modern moral dilemmas onto a 7th-c. epic poem!" Especially since I have no hope that one blockbuster could reform reac-fan textual-faithfulness cults.

yes! as someone who’s been working in procedural text before LLMs were a thing, I really wish people had a sense of the varieties of procgen writing that *aren’t* genAI output. there’s a ton of stuff we can do (including pre-LLM, ML style AI) that’s nothing like chatbot output directly in a game.

Matthew Kirschenbaum@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you! Very illuminating. We’re so fixated on genAI right now, it’s useful to be reminded of the varieties of synthetic and procedural text flowing through different kinds of experiences.

(adjusts actuarial spectacles and opens spreadsheet) *sepulchural cough* if you dislike the fantasy of fortuna, miss... we can ALWAYS return to the time investment of grinding...

Cara Ellison@caraellison.bsky.social · 2w ago

Controversial videogame dislike: I hate when games have ‘dice rolls’ involved. If I wanted to be totally out of control of my own life I would not have opted for the designers’ hand for a tenner

This page is fantastic. It's a "best hits of game narrative blogging" and it can teach a student more about narrative design and production best practices than many university programs will bother to. I am also very proud to report that my writing is on it several times

Bruno Dias@brunodias.dev · 2w ago

A side project I've been working on—a curated link page of important essays on video game narrative—is now live. You can read about it on my blog: azhdarchid.com/the-game-nar... Or you can go straight to the dedicated website: www.gamenarrativereader.org

Loser says what? You're saying... You're afraid of jury nullification? The long-established, virtually unquestioned right of jurors to deliver a not guilty verdict for prosecutions & laws they find to be unjust? Sure wouldn't want everyone to find out about that bulwark against criminalizing tyranny

Laura Jedeed@laurajedeed.bsky.social · 3w ago

Here's Stephen Miller saying that assaults against ICE officers are coordinated terrorist action by left-wing organizations, and that members of the juries who acquit them are engaging in "jury nullification" that aids terrorism and must be stopped by any means necessary

As someone who was 19 that summer I just want to assure you that for a while we were all turning towards our friends with a death glare and going "Not GAY... Not STRAIGHT..."

shawn@mulchy.bsky.social · 3w ago

on this day in 1995, scientists discovered bisexuality. happy 31st birthday to all my fellow bs

[ slaps down a whole dollar ] one piece

Molleindustria FUTURE? NO THANKS! DEMO OUT@molleindustria.org · 3w ago

If I answer this question publicly I’ll never be able to run for office

Glad to see that even on this relatively placid site people still argue about whether games are art. Just think about what would happen if that was settled either way: the heat-death of play. Always be trash; always be art. In the grim darkness of the future of game discourse there is only--

Pretty cool that so many of us in North America live in the Spiral Zone now. Anyone wanna get some yellow dilated-pupil contacts and skin lesions, then stand motionless on a corner to see if a supersoldier on a Gundam unicycle will rescue us?

For @mothership.blog, I talked to over a dozen caretakers about the reality of being a caretaker while working in games. The short of it? It's *very* difficult. Here's a glimpse of the current experience, its consequences, and coveted standardized practices: www.mothership.blog/the-games-in...

The games industry isn't taking care of its caretakers

We spoke with over a dozen devs who take care of children, aging parents, and sick family members

mothership.blog

Many point out how these sad "you're a hypocrite" jokes denigrate gender-affirming care in general. But it also doesn't even land when state legislatures have explicitly codified funding and approval of healthcare that affirms assigned sex. Of course they believe that's fine and trans people aren't.

Tammy Duckworth@duckworth.senate.gov · 3w ago

Sounds like gender-affirming care to me.

WARNING: if the US proceeds with their reckless plan to eliminate non-daylight-savings time, keeping the "spring forward" without the "fall back," it will only be 11 more years before day is NIGHT and night is DAY. Fortunately, 12 years later--[is pulled off stage by cane]

You know when you get the point in a game where the most fun thing is not actually playing the game, but decompiling it and finding a bug that involves 14 different JSON files, trying to fix them and then sending a pull request or contacting the lead on Discord -- no? Maybe I am doing it wrong

Graham's maxim is not only true of politics but of most large institutions and every system accurately labeled a bureaucracy: there's no THEY that's truly runs things or knows what's going on. You should know this, because being embedded in a human Azathoth is less comforting than the alternative.

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 3w ago

An amazing quote from Lindsey Graham in this Atlantic story. It really captures an essential truth about politics that too few people ever really come to terms with. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Gotta point out once again in case anyone missed it: six months ago, Valve removed the requirement for developers to disclose the use of generative AI for code on Steam. It's now only for "content" (text, music, visuals, etc) pre-generated and live inference / deep-learning proc gen stuff.

Atimisc@atimisc.bsky.social · 3w ago

Steam REALLY needs a new return policy for devs that don't disclose when gen ai was used. It's bullshit that devs (big and small) get away with using gen ai (art, coding, and every other form of gen ai) and don't say anything till they're caught.

I have to say once again... it's now one of my top "life amenities that are worth it" to pay $3.33/mo for a group plan on a decent search engine where you never have to encounter any weird shit like this (or paid promotions) or unintentionally deal with a LLM

Riley MacLeod@rcmacleod.bsky.social · 3w ago

OK not to keep going insane about this, but I have jury duty today and wanted to see if anyone on reddit had mentioned if it's cold in there, and the way google is like "could you share..?" as an attempt to engage me in conversation (i.e., juice my time spent) is making me lose my mind

I was finally convinced to play some Ghost of Tsushima after a half-decade of "is this some Last Samurai shit" abstinence. Probably a mistake to play a self-serious PS game on PC, since the cutscene/engine jank was unintentionally comical. Japanese dialogue kind of... functional, didactic?