The data is in: People like it when I serve face

This entire building looks like one of my shirts

I am seeing folks argue about 'AI' again without being specific, and that makes your entire argument murky and unsustainable. It is the opposite of helpful, and creates confusion. As much as it sucks, you have to be very specific. I made a video with a bunch of examples from over the last 20 years:

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone about this. You know how in TF2 you see the place and shape of a turret before you place it? Or in World of Warcraft an area of fire is telegraphed before it burns? Yet in level editors this is rarely done. That’s dumb. Joe made a door example years ago:

most pleasing when your video game's level editor becomes full of meaningful debug shit imo (@sleightofhand.game)

People often forget there is one Unix system that did get good UX and UI ontop of it. So much so that it’s the standard outside of Windows! And that’s macOS: youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ?... As long as you have ornery Linux engineers telling you that command lines are best, the UX is going to suck.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone about this. You know how in TF2 you see the place and shape of a turret before you place it? Or in World of Warcraft an area of fire is telegraphed before it burns? Yet in level editors this is rarely done. That’s dumb. Joe made a door example years ago:

new blog post about: makin' it easier to integrate elaborate (or not) contextual character animation stuff into gameplay in @sleightofhand.game. Like all the best shit, this is not so much technically impressive as workflowily excellent. www.joewintergreen.com/contextual-a...

For those heading to GDC, you can find me there again this year hosting the Tool Design Roundtables! Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday in Room 306 of the South hall.

Fuck it, putting this out a bit early: I'll be looking for a 3D Level Designer for a new project. ▶️ No/very low budget (but small scope + lots of control) ▶️ Godot / First Person / Im-Sim "light" ▶️ Open nonlinear levels (Abiotic Factor, Deus Ex MD Prague) Reach me via Signal or DM!

That's a nice looking zoo

One of the most awful things about Agile (or any other production system) is when a studio follows it to the letter because "That's what the system says we should do" Folks start having to do 'rituals' like standup, not because anyone gets anything out of them, but because it's a box to be checked.

I have heard of folks visiting TGS (Tokyo Game Show) before, and it seems like a Gamescom-ish event with a public area, business area, and many exhibited games. But, is there also a conference attached? Do folks do talks? Can I submit one? I can't quite get clarity through their website.

Lots of leadership loves talking about iteration and being agile, but when you need to put effort into making workflows fast, suddenly there’s no time available. The cure is simple: Sit behind someone who is actually doing the work. If their tools are bad you’ll get frustrated in minutes.

Something I have seen a few times that instantly lets me know a person does not understand the game community: They see a speedrun of their game with many glitches and immediately say they have to fix their game. No! There's a big difference between a Reddit post of a broken game, and a speedrun.

Reminds me of a studio at which there was no time selector in the engine, so level designers and QA were spending hours manually going through missions. I pushed for a way to speed up time, we got it, and all the level designers were so happy to no longer have to wait around so long.

A video on gyms, zoos and museums! A must-watch by @rystorm.com for any indie out there. Goes into why you should choose different ways of documentation sometimes, learned a lot myself! www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PJR...

Some days I get very sad thinking about how many workflow advancements in level editors were lost by way of teams just offloading level design to environment artists and standard 3D packages.

The parallels with archaeology here are so fascinating - "knolling" reminds me of working at the Knossos Stratigraphical Museum, processing pottery sherds to be photographed by laying then out according to their diagnostic features

"None of this was possible without some very smart level design tool tech investments near the beginning of the project. At the time I thought it was just some silly math-boy nerd overkill, but it proved to be utterly visionary and essential..." A tale as old as time. Everyone needs good geometry!

If you have ever rocked with anything I've said about tooling for level design, Robin-Yann Storm has probably also said it but more articulate and more richly grounded in experience This contains a bunch of great, specific info spanning across tons of games you've played

My 2025 talk 'Gyms, Zoos, and Museums: Your documentation should be in-game' is now also available in text format, for those who like to read instead of watch: rystorm.com/blog/gyms-zo... And if you haven't seen it yet, there is an all new video too, with bonus material on the history of Zoos!

My 2025 talk 'Gyms, Zoos, and Museums: Your documentation should be in-game' is now also available in text format, for those who like to read instead of watch: rystorm.com/blog/gyms-zo... And if you haven't seen it yet, there is an all new video too, with bonus material on the history of Zoos!

Whenever you get feedback, it may be that 100 other people had the same issue, but never told you. Or, it could be a single person with that feedback. There is no way to clearly know. At this point your experience, vibes, and sense will have to come in to make a decision. You're not always right.

Undo

Whenever you get feedback, it may be that 100 other people had the same issue, but never told you. Or, it could be a single person with that feedback. There is no way to clearly know. At this point your experience, vibes, and sense will have to come in to make a decision. You're not always right.

I just found out the very best lunch restaurant in Amsterdam, my favourite, has permanently closed after 19 years. Always full. Always needed a reservation. Always incredible food. I will miss Gartine so much.

Nice! Good UX always comes from user observation. Nothing else comes close

Nice! Good UX always comes from user observation. Nothing else comes close

I don’t have words, but 🖤🫂 to all, thanks for being here.

The gb in lgbt stands for gigabit

Amsterdam is installing more LGBT

The price of GDC has gone down, its now one pass for all sessions in the whole week, they split the IGF and GDCA into separate days so the award show isn’t 4 hours long anymore: All great sounding changes! I genuinely wonder what it’ll be like. …but, I just wish it had moved to Vancouver.

I keep hearing people talk about Ball x Pit, and sure he's a great actor in a good show, but I don't think it makes sense to give him an IGF award for it.

I keep hearing people talk about Ball x Pit, and sure he's a great actor in a good show, but I don't think it makes sense to give him an IGF award for it.

"Data Driven" is like "Common Sense". Easy to say, and easy to bend into whatever you want reality to be.

Is there any accessibility consultant or designer who is willing to work with me on a talk or article about the accessibility of game development tools? No budget, just trying to do the right thing and get it out there. I don't feel like I can talk about it enough on my own. I miss lived experience

Wow, in less than 6 months since IPO Figma stock is down 74%

Human beings are generally creative. And creativity is organic, so output shifts and morphs over time. Because it is organic, you can’t have 9 mothers make a baby in one month. So even if you are working on technical software, creativity and organic development are still part of the process.

Same story as the ozone layer! It was a huge issue at the time, but laws got set up to prevent further issues. You can just do that.

Same story as the ozone layer! It was a huge issue at the time, but laws got set up to prevent further issues. You can just do that.

I think you should be allowed to not get out of bed today

He is not only able to make technological connections, he's also able to make rhetorical connections, and that's pretty cool.

Eventually any title on LinkedIn comes down to: “I solve your problems, for money.” so it should just auto-apply that to everyone.

Formlabs is looking for a Senior Product Designer for their 3D tools! careers.formlabs.com/job/7443410/... Tool Design jobs are rare, especially in Europe, so if you want to live in Budapest this is a great opportunity!

proud to report that Rift Riff earned enough to break-even its development costs! it's currently at ±€130k net from Steam, App Store, and Google Play. Rift Riff team members share in the game's profit, so the money that continues to trickle in is also theirs <3 #gamedev #godotengine

"Crunch is bad for you and the project" and "I feel like working on this because I enjoy it" are part of the same coin. Just as much as 'kill your darlings' and 'stop tinkering and release' are flipsides to 'put in the work' and 'iteration is normal' The correct and annoying answer is "it depends"

"Crunch is bad for you and the project" and "I feel like working on this because I enjoy it" are part of the same coin. Just as much as 'kill your darlings' and 'stop tinkering and release' are flipsides to 'put in the work' and 'iteration is normal' The correct and annoying answer is "it depends"

yes to everything everyone is saying about crunch, also if you lock twelve artists in a room and give them a million dollars they will do it to themselves 9 times out of 10