James O’Connor

@jickle.net

Games industry producer, narrative designer, editor and critic. Author of Untitled Goose Game for Boss Fight Books and (unannounced second book). jamesoconnorau at gmail.

I remember seeing Big Walk in the House House office while I was working on the Goose Game book and thinking “this is very them, but I wonder if it will have broad appeal”. Then the first trailer dropped and I felt silly to have had any doubts at all. Excited to dig into it soon.

I’ve worked with Fellow Traveller a bit over the last two years from a few different directions and I am a big fan of how they work and what they prioritise. This is a dream job for at bunch of different folks, I’d say.

Fellow Traveller@fellowtraveller.games · 3d ago

We’re hiring - come join the Fellow Traveller marketing team as a Product Manager! This is a senior role leading the marketing for some very cool games. More info and how to apply here bit.ly/FTPMJob

Working in game dev has given me a much keener sense of how games are made, the processes people undertake, how a design comes together, and so on. But I am playing Denshattack and I truly have no fucking idea how you make a game like this. It rules.

Bild

Hopefully Marvel will reveal that Chris Evans is returning as Captain America four or five more times before the movie comes out, just in case anyone missed it

Spent the entire run time of The Odyssey with a sort of ecstatic feeling of “oh my god they are nailing this”. And the cinema was *packed*. Life is good, more or less

I feel like this is a very BlueSky anecdote, so I want you all to know that I bought the Super Hexagon soundtrack on vinyl during a TISM gig tonight

Hello! Here are all my life updates at once so I can be efficient on social media: - I have been working as a producer at a game studio for two months now! I am also still available for freelance work. - My second book is coming together well. - I am getting married next month! Okay, as you were

Here is my cool physical game - a copy of Wind Waker HD with a smudged signature from Miyamoto on it (the smudge does not matter because obviously I am never selling it)

Bild

I’d like to think that the backlash against PlayStation has been strong enough that we *might* get one of those “okay we were testing the waters here and clearly people like discs, we’ll keep them going for another few years” social media posts in the next week or two

Vinyl made a comeback, boutique Blu-Ray brands are doing well, there are 10,000 memes about filling your house with books, op shops are always busy, Kickstarters for magazines keep hitting targets, Pokopia on a *game key-card* sold a million copies in Japan alone, but sure physical media is dying

Saw Disclosure Day in a huge empty cinema and I think it is important that we start treating new Spielberg releases as huge events again (also I loved it)

If you looked at games just from new release lists and reviews, the industry (such that it is) would look *so* healthy. Just a constant stream of new, good games, every single week. This should be an incredible time to be working in and around games. And yet…