I am in Strasbourg this weekend, and due to the insane heat it is still 31c near midnight. And because of that, every single ice cream store is still open, with huge lines in front of them

This vision statement makes sense, and I appreciate them mentioning Godot is for games of small to mid size teams. Thats a good blend of vague and specific to have. But… Seeing the words ‘sensible defaults’ makes my Tool Designer hairs stand on end. It’s best to avoid that: youtu.be/ALJ4sq9NZzY

Wow, even Europe has advertisements for Mamdani’s taxes and bicycle infrastructure

Why is it bad? 60% think it is because of unreasonable investor expectations, and 49% think it is mismanagement.

The sound and gizmos on this fence editing tool are fantastic. Very clear lines, easy to see yet not overwhelming grab handles, and satisfying clicks that indicate state. So many tools don’t do these things, despite the huge popularity of Tiny Glade, 2 years ago, which I figured would resurge that.

Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike already combined their item economies on Steam a while ago. It’s neat! But, not some magic bullet for player interest. For example, Bill’s hat in L4D and TF2: rystorm.com/blog/this-is... I wish more folks knew about the history of game development.

Interesting bits from the latest Game Dev Collective survey: How would game developers describe the current conditions of the game industry? Bad, by 66%!

Been working on this as part of my Levelling The Playing Field program for a while, as part of a mission of creating fairer access to knowledge. Eight 101 video courses for independent game dev, €40 each, available soon. Sign up for the launch announcement & newsletter at courses.ramiismail.com

Interesting bits from the latest Game Dev Collective survey: How would game developers describe the current conditions of the game industry? Bad, by 66%!

Next month, at SIGGRAPH in LA, I will be hosting two sessions! The OpenUSD Roundtable, together with @ezragoss.bsky.social, Sunday The 19th of July, in the 411 Theatre, at 3:45pm till 5:15pm The Tool Design BOF (Birds of a Feather), Tuesday the 21st of July, in Room 512, at 11:00am till 12:30pm

I have done a lot of gamedev student portfolio reviews over the years. I am often giving the same advice, so to help as many students as possible I am organizing a live digital portfolio review where everyone can watch the feedback. It's scheduled for July 6th: www.eventbrite.nl/e/game-dev-s...

I'll say it out loud: The modern architect's thirst for design has ruined the user experience of being inside buildings

It's pretty crazy how The Netherlands lost the basic technology of... holding back the sun. We're pretty good at holding out water! Apartment complexes built after WW2 used to have these giant orange awnings all over the place. Now they just look like brick facades. Where does the heat go? In!

Here is a great video about awnings. Turns out blocking the sun is really ridiculous important, and simple! youtu.be/uhbDfi7Ee7k?...

More apartments being built without awnings. Even though it’s only going to get warmer. Aesthetics over comfort, which feels like a bad gamble over the long term.

At Unreal Fest Chicago, I saw a rare sight: someone with "Performance" in their actual job title. I was ecstatic to see that, but sad that it isn't more common.

Back in the day folks were required to add an image before posting on 4chan, so they would say ‘pic unrelated’ in that post Nowadays LinkedIn is the same. Either you post a picture, or your post essentially disappears. That something has transitioned from 4chan to LinkedIn says something about LI.

Have you heard of Gell-Mann amnesia? It's when you read a newspaper, and think the articles are interesting, until you read something about your expertise. It's totally inaccurate! How can they get this wrong? Anyway, on to the next article... and they're interesting again. This also applies to AI

Have you heard of Gell-Mann amnesia? It's when you read a newspaper, and think the articles are interesting, until you read something about your expertise. It's totally inaccurate! How can they get this wrong? Anyway, on to the next article... and they're interesting again. This also applies to AI

10 star scales are also just one star. NPS (Net Promoter Score) is an example of this Whenever you get asked if you would recommend something to others, that’s NPS. Any score lower than a 9 is a bad score. Out of 10! It’s insanity And all it measures is recommending. Not quality or experience!

To understand the Steam Machine price, all you have to do is lookup hardware prices. This is for 32gb of RAM Prices are 5 times higher than normal at the moment.

To understand the Steam Machine price, all you have to do is lookup hardware prices. This is for 32gb of RAM Prices are 5 times higher than normal at the moment.

You may have received DMs on YouTube for no particular reason, or even seen DMs being sent without you sending any. This is because YouTube started adding your account information to any links you send. If you find this really annoying and awful like I do, you can disable it in Settings -> Privacy

An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt: lr0.org/blog/p/arabi... This was just linked on @tomscott.com's newsletter, and it's a really neat, though frustrating, experience

Look folks, you cannot be a part of this conversation unless you have your own private power source, only cook homegrown food, welded together your own two cans for a telephone to your neighbour, and melted your own sand for a CPU with which to compile your own Linux kernel.

Finally someone is brave enough to say it

You may have received DMs on YouTube for no particular reason, or even seen DMs being sent without you sending any. This is because YouTube started adding your account information to any links you send. If you find this really annoying and awful like I do, you can disable it in Settings -> Privacy

I'm with Storm here, its some mixture of; a self discipline problem, a paradigm learning/experience problem, or a tooling problem. Both have major pros, both have major cons.

Whenever someone mentions that blueprints and visual scripting can become a big noodle graph of confusion, all I can think is: Oh yeah, all those .cpp and .h files with references, public and private values, definitions, are so much easier to track, and no bug ever occurred because of that, right?

I was going to tell @elliottverbiest.com: Not on my watch! But then the Apple photos app decided otherwise.

One of the craziest things I've heard the last few months is that maybe market crashes are much less likely to be as hard anymore, due to computer trading. In 2001 and 2008 you still had human beings fly into a panic, with big crashes. But an algorithm doesn't panic, so 2020 and 2022 were less deep

I remember folks hating the inescapability of subscriptions, micro transactions, online only, and now I’m seeing that same process repeat with generative AI. For example, I’m at a market to buy fabric for a new shirt, and the right paw & leg of this dragon just… disappear. Can’t avoid it anywhere.

If my bank accepted these as mortgage payments everything would be great

If you want to know a little history of cross-game items, as well as player traded items, I wrote up a blog post about, and made a video if you like to watch instead: rystorm.com/blog/this-is... The lesson: Look at how Steam did it.

I have never in my life seen this much lightning. It’s going nuts in Anmsterdam

Then add in a very tough hiring environment, with layoffs, which incentives keeping the CEO happy no matter what, because you may not find another job if you’re let go. It has the potential for a very volatile feature that can run rampant and unchecked. I don’t know if it does. Just that it can.

Sharing my thoughts here, just to see what others think: I’m worried about Verse, for Unreal. It seems to exist because the CEO wants it to exist, not because it has inherent customer value. It will continue to exist, be pushed, and worked on, because it’s the CEOs baby Similar to Zuck’s metaverse

Sharing my thoughts here, just to see what others think: I’m worried about Verse, for Unreal. It seems to exist because the CEO wants it to exist, not because it has inherent customer value. It will continue to exist, be pushed, and worked on, because it’s the CEOs baby Similar to Zuck’s metaverse

If you want to know a little history of cross-game items, as well as player traded items, I wrote up a blog post about, and made a video if you like to watch instead: rystorm.com/blog/this-is... The lesson: Look at how Steam did it.

Just saw Cory Wong and the Metropole Orkest in Utrecht, and it’s just the kind of fast and upbeat music I needed right now! If they’re ever visiting near you, I highly recommend going to see them!

When I went freelance, many folks asked me how stable I felt doing that. It's tense: You don't know which contracts will renew. Next week they may be gone But, if you're employed at a hugely successful studio with a healthy game, you can also still lose your job next week So what's the difference?

When I went freelance, many folks asked me how stable I felt doing that. It's tense: You don't know which contracts will renew. Next week they may be gone But, if you're employed at a hugely successful studio with a healthy game, you can also still lose your job next week So what's the difference?

The value proposition of working at an AAA studio was that you were trading independence and agency for stability, and that if the game did well, you would keep your job, and if the game did badly, you might lose it. Obviously it wasn’t that cut and dry, but you get it. Now? You just lose your job.

Everything feels like it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. I feel for everyone going through it right now, especially the uncertainty so many folks have to face.

251 - Different Chairs People are different sizes; they sit in different ways. And yet there is a tendency in modern times to make all chairs alike.

Reusing videogame content has been a good practice for a very long time

it's especially funny because demand for air conditioning is highest when solar irradiation is at its most intense and you know what also happens when solar irradiation is at its most intense? solar panel go brr

I often call back to this talk and the fight Blender went through to improve its UX because it shows a really important thing: You have to complain. You have to show there are issues, and even if everyone already there tells you you’re wrong, you’re fighting for the user yet to come.

Please feel free to use all of these in your next meeting

I often call back to this talk and the fight Blender went through to improve its UX because it shows a really important thing: You have to complain. You have to show there are issues, and even if everyone already there tells you you’re wrong, you’re fighting for the user yet to come.