Katie Chironis
@kchironis.bsky.social
game dev, mom, tired. made elsinore by night. by day, principal game designer working on a frog-type game at teamLFG (sony). previously riot, xbox, oculus, EA
started a BotW family playthrough, and husband and i take turns playing with the kids. today i showed them all the secret mom combat techniques their dad doesn’t use: running away, exploiting enemy vision ranges, and killing things with 1000 arrows rather than entering melee range
Louder for people in the back, "Art has throughput and quality bars. Engineering has velocity, defect rates, build health. QA has coverage and escape rates. Production has burndowns and forecasts... The decision layer has status updates." www.productionalchemist.com/p/inever-see...
I Have Never Seen a Game Fail Because the Artists Were Too Slow
AI is optimising the cheapest part of production
productionalchemist.com
i love in medias res experiences so much that my first final fantasy game was X-2, on accident, and i played all 100 hours without questioning it. at the end i was like “dang they never really fully covered who that unnamed blonde guy was but it’s probably not important”
1000xRESIST is now firmly in the top slot for “games that have made me cry the most.” great videogame. it’s about so many different things and yet it all comes together so well, like a poem.
lots of big differences between people who play RPGs and people who don’t, but IMO the sharpest skill check is “have you intimately memorized the layout of a japanese high school or not”
airports suck, but Burbank is the best airport. parking lot is approx 39 inches from your plane. you think you want your bag from baggage claim? they’ve already psychic beamed it directly into your car trunk, have a nice day. only 1 restaurant, but it’s Guy Fieri themed, as all restaurants should be
watching/playing pokemon with my kids has given me a new appreciation for the insane transmedia strategy this IP had right out of the gate. a banger video game series, CCG, and a solid tie-in anime in the same 12 months? could a company in 2026 ever hope to pull that off???
my belief is that at the end of the day, great games are made by groups of people who have high trust with each other & can fluidly execute a shared vision. which is a small part of why these layoffs are so devastating- it's not just about jobs, it's about these "trust structures" being torn apart.
BAH! Enough talk! My <Beam Blast> shall make short work of you!
(looking at blueprint) jesus christ, who worked on this content last? this is in terrible condition. i would never shame anyone, but i need to see who it was and shake my head in disdain a little. let's go check the perforce history an--
i have two children, and they are very different. we saw a little bird on the lawn this morning, a bird we’d never seen before. my daughter, 4, said “wow, so cute!” my son, 2.5, pointed and stated emphatically “i eat him”
went to clean up my hard drive today, got to Steam. there are folders in here for games now defunct-- Highguard, Concord, Marvel's Avengers; and other folders for private "friends & family" betas for games that never shipped, or may not ship. i need the HDD space back. and yet.
instant tears. thank you Destiny 2 for being an important space for me and my friends over the years and for giving me some of the highest highs i've experienced while gaming. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyUz...
Destiny 2 | So Far, Together
YouTube video by Destiny 2
youtube.com
hi friends- we're looking to hire a progression designer on my team! we're remote friendly (1 onsite/year) and implementation skills are a must for this role. i absolutely love this team and game. i'm not the hiring manager, but my DMs are open for questions! job-boards.greenhouse.io/teamlfg/jobs...
Principal Progression Economy Designer
United States, Remote
job-boards.greenhouse.io
five years ago i gave my husband a cute nickname in my phone, but i have to say now (years later) it is really fucking humbling to be struggling thru the Costco aisles with two screaming kids and barking into my phone, “siri, i said CALL HUSBANDOLORIAN”
nocaps takes a look at the history of Game Jams, the commercial games they've spawned, and the future of the form in the absence of Ludum Dare. WATCH NOW on noclip_2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=XONj... (by @nocapsbb.bsky.social)
the Past, Present & Future of Game Jams - nocaps_2
YouTube video by noclip_2
youtube.com
sometimes late at night i am confronted with a troubling thought: maybe in 2026 everyone has just forgotten how to make video games. then i am confronted with a more troubling thought: perhaps we actually never knew how to make video games in the first place
watching F1 from a game design perspective is so funny because all of the rulesets and guidelines amount to We Didn’t Think Car Could Be Like That
future career goals? honestly if the opportunity aligns someday, i would love to be the guy standing on top of the shed with my rifle, looking around in a little 180 degree vision cone and waiting for the protagonist to come by
2026 feminism is about rejecting the emotional & mental labor inflicted upon you by Okta Verify
thoughts & prayers for the rocket league team who are transitioning from UE3 to UE6 in one fell swoop, that is a hell of a jump (but yes the cars do look pretty) www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5d7...
Rocket League x Unreal Engine 6 - Official Reveal Announcement Trailer
YouTube video by IGN
youtube.com
good: i bought a bunch of snacks to send you a care package this week bad: i ate the snacks good: ...but i bought new snacks to replace them bad: i ate those as well,
This kind of mixed use urban planning is illegal in America
an underrated game dev skill IMO is being able to realize “this person and I have been discussing (thing) for months, and yet i think we have slightly different versions of (thing) in our heads. let’s get together and talk about that in excruciating detail”
when i was a kid i always found it unrealistic that padme died of a "broken heart" after luke and leia were born. but now i think it's actually the most realistic thing ever, that a society with flying spaceships and shit still has absolutely no idea how to, like, care for a postpartum woman
we've come up with a system where you can demonstrate growth to shareholders by hiring more people than you should, but also you can demonstrate growth by firing more people than you should. we call it the economy and we think it's going to be great
If we're doing game design doc discourse, I highly, highly recommend following this template from @kchironis.bsky.social
Derek Reese is making games@derekree.se · 5mo agoOoh, design doc discourse. Yeah, we don't do design docs at Chronicler. We have a Codex that has pillars, "Do"s & "Don't"s, brief lore, a story timeline, encounter guides for writers, and onboarding. Design reqs must fit on a small Favro(Jira-like) card. Implemented design must be in a Gym map.
