The debate around using AI/ML/text-to-speech for voicework for games is fascinating because it's one of the only times I can see in gaming where a genuine, decades-long design / production problem is meeting a justifiably sensitive topic within games culture at perhaps the worst possible time.

This is like saying "we're replacing banks with DraftKings", any journalists treating it seriously and not screaming their heads off about how totally deranged it is should be sent to the gulag

Rosalind Franklin died at 37 of ovarian cancer attributed to radiation exposure from the methods she & her assistant used to photograph a cross-section of the DNA double helix. Meanwhile, Watson won a Nobel off that work & survived to the ripe old age of 97 by simply: stealing those notes!

Deus Ex (Ion Storm, 2000)

I was a member of TGA Future Class 2022 and lemmee tell ya, my skin has been crawling since pretty much every interaction I had with them (few) & story I heard about other members' interactions with them (many) was bad. & by bad I mean, so many shades of being used as photo op tokens & nothing more

We had fucking congressional hearings over Mortal Kombat.

perhaps the most egregious thing that happened with the Future Class was when The Game Awards took money from Old Spice in the name of the FC & simply... pocketed it it wasn't used to fund Future Class initiatives, it wasn't used to help lift marginalised developers they just profited from us

marginalised developers are among the poorest in the industry, but were expected to pay for their own tickets to their token inductions (not even talking travel+accom) TGA organised meetups at places like Starbucks where FC members were left with the tab after a quick photo-op-and-dash

One minor take-away from the NYC mayor's race for those concerned with AI/synthetic media and its effects on politics and elections might be that, in this particular instance, the guy who made a malicious deepfake lost and the guy who made authentic videos won.

Zohran Mamdani won the primary by double digits. Eric Adams squeaked by with 0.8% and we had to suffer endless thinkpieces on why his conservative center-right politics was the "real future" of the Democratic party.

man I dunno this is just off the top of my head, probably missed some things

If every Silwa and Cuomo voter had voted together, they'd all still be fucking losers

I really believe that if you tell people the truth and say it with passion and without compromise, they will be receptive. Not everyone, but more than you’d think. It’s the same way I feel about teaching. Don’t act like people are stupid and incurious.

basically every 2024 truism is dead. Trump did not build a lasting multiracial coalition or turn young men into committed Republicans. You don’t need to cave on trans rights to win. The pundits have nothing left to tell you.

If you’re still in line, STAY IN LINE

it’s actually so worth being around still, many good things could still happen

“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life”

I think Dick Cheney’s death today highlighted this divide. The Democrats who still say shit like “reach across the aisle” and praise evil people are playing to a political audience that no longer exists. Mamdani wasn’t cruel to Cuomo in a Trumpism style, but he didn’t concede anything either.

If you have 8 million to just *give away*, you can afford to pay more tax.

The billionaires can buy the newspapers and buy social media and buy attack ads, but they can't buy their way out of how much we fucking hate all of them.

My thoughts on today. For alt text, I link to my instagram post in the alt, because it is simply too long.

centrists love to say they're the only way to beat fascism and then the fascists are like hey vote for our guy

As a NYer, ”real” “small town” America now looks like a sexual freak zoo run by genital-obsessive xenophobes who make women into living dolls and shoot each other. Mamdani’s NYC (and mine) is a safe, wholesome place where neighbors help each other, do scavenger hunts, ride bikes, and birdwatch.

A theory visualized

Y'all, I know two hours is a big time commitment, but this panel I arranged and hosted last month is one of the most important things I've ever done for video game history. The launch of the NES is a crazier story than most people realize, and my guests were extremely generous with their memories.

Hear about the NES US launch 40 years ago from the people that made it happen: Gail Tilden, Bruce Lowry and Lance Barr with @frankcifaldi.bsky.social from the @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social moderating! Panel recording at youtu.be/f2WDfsiLiRA #prge #prge2025 #retrogaming #VGHF

Unreleased Sega Technical Institute RTS ‘Dark Empires’ Dumped and Preserved www.segadriven.com/2025/11/unre... #SegaTechicalInstitute #MegaDrive #DarkEmpires #SegaGenesis #Sega #SegaDriven #Gaming #RTS

I am so upset. Last week Time Magazine solicited a piece from me on Zohran Mamdani & anti-Muslim hate. I pitched a framing re the dehumanization of Muslims & how Mamdani’s inclusive, socialist campaign in its content resists that. They agreed. I wrote the piece. 1/

Blocking hatemongers is one thing but this trend of using mass block lists to avoid hearing from people who might or might not hold points of view you expect to disagree with is unhealthy imo and hurts the platform. Bluesky was better off with folks like Margaret Mitchell and Giada Pistilli on it.

Still need more baseball? We found a CD in our archives containing dozens of unused voice lines from MLB Slugfest 20-03 rejected by the MLB. Here's some of our favorites.

i owe so many video game designers an apology

My Space Quest site, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broomcloset, launched 30 years ago this month. That makes it one of the oldest video game fan sites on the web. To celebrate the milestone, I've updated the site for the first time in ages with tons of new content. Check it out! wiw.org/~jess/roger.html

can't believe outlets are running moral-panic headlines again based on flimsy anecdata from the *same* trade group (the national retailer federation) and sponsored by the *same* anti-theft company (sensormatic) that had to retract this *same* "study" just two years ago for being bogus.

(CEO, very assured voice) I think we can all agree the torment nexus was about CEOs getting pestered on social networks

"someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying" comes from this tweet and is often used now to describe how in the modern economy, it's difficult to keep your family alive while still buying all the candles you need

every news now is either "billionaire spends twenty million dollars to vajazzle their skeleton" or "why are millenials spending so much money buying water"

Can't overstate how fucked up it is that unraveling what is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of humanity is now a motivating issue of one of the two dominant parties in the U.S.

Lehman Brothers any% glitchless

“we will rule you forever with an iron fist of suffering” is maybe not the most compelling message any administration has ever had

"average museum is full of looted objects" factoid actualy just statistical error. average museum only has a few looted objects. british museum, which has 80000 looted objects, is an outlier and should not have been counted

Narrative Designers, do you want to work on "a multiplayer game set in The Witcher universe"? And with one of the kindest, friendliest teams I've ever met? Then this job's for you #games #gamedev #CDPR www.cdprojektred.com/en/jobs/2064...

I have to know some people for whom this role would be fitting -- come work with me (and other great people) as a Lead Narrative Designer on Project Sirius jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CDPROJEKTRED...

like what is fucking elgato going to launch a 'speedtree killer' next? who are you people

like what is the thought process there, "we sell RGB-lighted ewaste to gamers therefore we are A Gaming Company". sit down

Just a reminder that Clair Obscur was caught doing almost exactly the same thing FIRST (launching with some AI 'placeholder' textures that got patched) and yet somehow caught like a tenth of the flak. Making an example of one while smiling and shrugging for the critical darling sits wrong with me.

If they get to 19 they open a new legacy deck. we don't actually know what happens. we may be in the early stages of baseball, as a species