Never mind the AI tagline, I have never nodded this much while reading a game dev article. So many great quotes about the real reasons for project time and cost bloat that I don’t even know which one to post here. Just read the whole thing.

Brie@briechindeyerle.bsky.social · 2d ago

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...

Certainly we have to rationalize investment as well. our investors are insane. But the level of waste on most game teams (again - mostly caused by upper mgmt dithering or being unable to articulate a vision) is not something we can sustain as an industry

My son is at an age where he decides on his favorite soccer teams/players, influenced by his friends. I’m doing everything in my power to steer that away from Cristiano Ronaldo. Fortunately the next generation of star players is here. He’ll be happy to hear that Lamine Yamal and Spain beat Portugal.

I guess this comes as no surprise in the current industry landscape and Xbox’s cost cutting spree in particular, but it is still unreal to read. I worked on this project for 3 years and I worry about what this means for my friends and former colleagues.

Jason Schreier@jasonschreier.bsky.social · last mo.

NEW: Xbox confirms to Bloomberg News that it has pulled out of IO Interactive's 'Project Fantasy' video game. “We expect to invest about the same in content as we did last year. What's changing is where we're investing and the kinds of projects we're backing.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The thing that drives me nuts is that every big studio exec is like "oh you know AI will let us be more efficient and sharpen our processes and ship games faster" and at the same time every AAA production is SO wasteful and SO inefficient largely because of upper-management malfeasance

"I'm okay with using LLMs for the sake of the team's work-life balance" is a really insidious thing to say because no tool (however effective) can give you work-life balance. Work-life balance comes from good boundaries, appropriate headcount, clear responsibilities, and realistic scheduling.

I need Referee View: The Game. You just are the ref and see everything first-person. Shake players’ hands at the start of the game, choose your field position, try to spot fouls, communicate with the other refs, check VAR, dangle your arms in view giving a card, see the goals up close. GOTY.

World Cup refcam offers new perspective to hint at future of football broadcasting

Usage in opening matches focused on replays of goals from a unique angle, offering the viewer greater depth to watch from home

theguardian.com

Leaders with no ability to do this are one of the top causes of development thrash in the games industry

v buckenham@v21.bsky.social · 2mo ago

an important skill, when directing a project, is to be able to imagine what the finished product will look like before it has been made

“The dead won’t rise. But their sons… will.” Our gameplay reveal trailer for Chronicles: Medieval aired during Summer Game Fest yesterday evening. Proud of my friends and colleagues at Raw Power Games I have the privilege of working with!

Chronicles: Medieval | Gameplay Reveal Trailer

YouTube video by Chronicles: Medieval

youtu.be

Doing some home redecorating and my wife used EXCEL to make floor plans! She makes all the cells square, to represent around 10cm of space each, and then uses BORDERS to draw. As a veteran game designer of 20 years, let me tell you how much I despise borders in Excel and would not want to do this.

I love how Forza Horizon just completely ignores car progression in its open world in favor of the driving fantasy. In 6, I picked a basic Toyota Celica at the start of the story, then I get a R-Class Ferrari FXX-K Evo from my Welcome Pack that goes 350 km/h. Living the dream in Japan!

Ferrari FXX-K Evo

The 2018 Ferrari FXX-K Evo - abbreviated as

forza.fandom.com

It me.

Calligram Studio@calligramstudio.com · 3mo ago

Just watched a Square Enix interview with Hiroyuki Ito about Dungeon Encounters, which includes pearls of game design wisdom such as "I put a value of 12 there because it felt right" and "I can't remember what that's for".

Finished The Pitt season 2. There were many emotional moments both good and bad that really got me teary eyed, but what really gets me is when one of these extremely competent people gives a sincere compliment to another extremely competent person on a tough job well done.

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

This article does a great job of explaining the issues that made me and many F1 fans drop the sport hard this season. I doubt they will find a satisfying solution, just because of the very nature of these hybrid cars, but I hope they do and make the races more enjoyable for fans and the drivers.

I too would like to optimize my costs by just not paying for shit.

Aftermath@aftermath.site · 4mo ago

Gunzilla CEO posts deranged rant on Twitter, disputing his workers' pay claims and attacking his 'haters': aftermath.site/gunzilla-off-t...

non-dev playing a game: why didn’t the team do [X thing that seems obvious]? are they stupid? dev playing a game: why didn’t the team do [X thing that seems obvious]? am I stupid?

"Well, well, looks like it isn't so easy to ship a game on time is it Mr. Know-It-All?" Yeah I already said most of my games ship 3-6 mo. later than initially projected motherFUCKER. We all make mistakes in estimating, but those mistakes can be compounded by poor choices in pre-pro and production.

Me, excitedly making an announcement: THING!! 🎉 Somebody, always: Hm. But what about this other thing, that I want more? 🤨 Me: Opens up a tiny box on desk and yells swears into it. Closes box. Goes to sleep.

New LEGO build! Been looking forward to this one ever since Andor finished.

Pushed a single bit of code? Credit. Made some animation that didn't get used? Credit. What you believe was being unlawfully fired from a job? Credit. It's that simple, folks.

Today I officially became a soccer dad.

They’re just gonna end up calling it the HelixBox, aren’t they?

Jason Schreier@jasonschreier.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Asha Sharma’s first major move as Xbox boss is to announce their next console, which will operate as a living-room PC as expected, on X:

But in your VS, you need to be using your pipelines and making sure they're robust. It doesn't mean there can't be room for improvement, but you shouldn't be making things in a way you expect to abandon.

God bless the Dutch for this

Doing some work downstairs, my 5-year old son asks about my laptop. I mention the keyboard and he starts laughing out loud at the Dutch word for it (toetsenbord). I repeat it and my wife joins in on the uncontrollable laughing. My 2-year old happily laughs along. Dutch is a joke to my Danish family.

I usually work from our Copenhagen office once a week and today it was freezing cold traveling there and back, but I love how the city looks in winter when the sky is clear and the sun is out. This is the Vor Frue Kirke (Church of Our Lady) right next to the office.

Many game studios have "shadow production", in which someone sets up a parallel (but functioning) system of organization to compensate for the inadequacies of whatever methodology the actual producer insists on employing; thus requiring an act of continuous translation between the two.

Activision flew us out with parachute planes to a remote hotel in Poland, where Eva Braun supposedly lived. We drove army Jeeps and track vehicles through the woods and got ambushed by Nazis, who brought us to a bunker where we played Call of Duty 2 and Big Red One.

Dan Olson@foldablehuman.bsky.social · 7mo ago

What are the wildest video game promo events you can remember? Things like game reviewers being brought out to the gun range to shoot a .50 cal or SAW.