Xenogears. Still holds up, but I would love a glow up version.

I am very happy to announce what I’ve been working on for the last while :)

“Fire it up.”

My three year old is suddenly very into Pokemon thanks to Pokopia, and already understands that people have six. She’s picked her six and I’m mildly concerned about the obvious theming:

'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.'

Absolutely love this kind of design documentation, and it's very close to the model I use for both design and product feature documents. I do add two pieces to this model: Rationale (Why?) and Priority (which parts of this design are vital, and which can come later?), but same basic idea.

What's your Star Trek project only you would love? Star Trek: Galaxy, a procedurally generated open galaxy game inspired by Stellaris and Crusader Kings, except instead of a 4X you're following one customizable ship through its many iterations across the Trek timeline, FTL-style.

Grocery shopping in the early 00s with too little sleep and a Star Wars shirt, I make a comment about bread to a gorgeous woman who glances at my shirt and looks tired. She’s polite and nice but seems awkward, so I excuse myself which visibly surprises her. Later I realize it was Natalie Portman.

I miss my dog, already. Sleep well, River.

Had a newer associate game dev thank me today for taking them out to lunch right when they started. They said it helped them be more comfortable actually being a gamedev, because the impostor syndrome was hard. Realized I’d come full circle from when @harvey1966.bsky.social did the same for me.

hades gals 💀🌸

Finished a project, which I don’t get to say often. Invincible Army, and I’m really pleased with this yellow. Total time: about 35 hours.

if you're tired of friendslop, that's not very hopecore of you, truly in your hate era, so not teeheepilled, should be smilemaxxing, have you ever heard of yay theory, don't be a genrecel, i love to play companionlikes, it's so sugoipunk

Thanks to @ass.golf I am now unable to meet anyone named Penelope without immediately thinking of pronouncing it to rhyme with "antelope", which I just sort of suppress. Today I interviewed someone who, as an intro, went "or you can say it like pen-ell-ohp if you like" and it very nearly broke me

Understanding a medium is vital to telling a good story. This story gets that.

Weird selection for me, but I’ll take it. openpsychometrics.org/tests/charac...

It's final paper season.

I got death threats for working on Elder Scrolls Online, over a year before it released.

5 tongue-in-cheek game writing exercises that are a more realistic representation of what most game writers do (in my experience) than a branching dialog tree:

"I think Unpacking's diploma demonstrates a deeper understanding of narrative in games than the diploma on my wall does." Story by James O'Connor. ➡️ https://www.superjumpmagazine.com/wordplayer-im-still-thinking-about-the-diploma-in-unpacking/

Maybe I'll write more. tamrielo.com/indiana-jone...

Gamedevs, post your first shipped game and your latest shipped game. (doing the first game I shipped professionally here)

Been processing grief over the suicide of my brother-in-law via minis painting, and have nearly finished this project. As I’ve read about them, Blood Angels have felt very apt. Rest in peace, Sam.

Have a game I really want to play, but it lacks inverted Y support, making it unplayable for me on PC. I really wish more people realized that this is an accessibility issue, and not "oh haha who even does that".

The display on my shelf is legally not a sword according to the master swordsmith the yakuza introduced me to.

In a similar vein: Sharing a screenshot I can hear.

It's 16/09/24. You're an #indiegamedev. You spend all morning trying to figure out why your #indiegame isn't appearing in feeds. In a desperate attempt to get more eyes on your #gamedev journey for your #narrativegame with sick #pixelart you fill a skeet with hashtags and cool screenshots and hope.

Oh, that's fun. It definitely felt small when I started here, and feels quite a bit bigger.

@ozone.birb.house Pinging for the gamedev label :)

This game is incredible, and hugely worth your time. It bumped several other things off of my list for our games of the year show.

someone recently asked my game design philosophy and i didn’t know how to describe it other than realpolitik: the team you have, market, stakeholders etc are hard truths. the game that will get made is the one you’re capable of making under those conditions. all other frameworks fall by the wayside.

It brings me so much joy to see my characters continue to get new life. Whoever picked up this torch and kept it going, <3 https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/64581

Didn’t quite get the effect I wanted, but I’m pretty happy with the result anyway.

@gamedevlist.bsky.social Pinging as a AAA MMO dev. Might as well, right?

Because I'm still noodling on this "ethical monetization" talk, I'm trying to build a definition of what ethical monetization even is. All too often I see both players and devs just flatly label all monetization of any kind unethical, which is an infeasible start point to work from.

Trying to decide if it’s worth putting together a #gamedev talk on ethical monetization. I see the same mistakes over and over, and they don’t have to happen.

My current project, and some new photography setups.

Welp, here we are. I'm Tam/Chris, spent about 10 years as a game designer (mostly content, some systems), then spun off to go into the business side and try to bridge what I used to see as a huge chasm between "the devs" and "the business". Now I'm in Product Management at ArenaNet. #gamedev