New article coming Monday mas-bandwidth.com/the-best-thi...

had a moment yesterday after solving an issue hundreds of thousands of people have been hitting for nearly 2 years

Got some exciting news that's too good not to share something with the world but also precarious enough that I'd prefer not to elaborate yet. Nevertheless, vibes are good!

Phil Spencer was tasked with achieving enterprise software grade returns in a games market where Microsoft is decidedly third of three places. Truly remarkable misunderstanding of the games industry from one of the world's largest companies

As far as software goes 2026 is looking as strong a year for video games as I can remember

If we want to understand the value of the work, we need to understand what the work is. blog.markvideon.dev/the-title-pi...

From 2012's E3 Show Daily magazine - https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/ef9efaf7-e5c3-4410-a628-3d26daf05240 - remember when Microsoft thought the Xbox's Kinect motion controller would be a "watershed moment" for home entertainment? (Nobody gets it right all the time, folks.)

Like many technologists, one of the ideas I have been grappling with over the last couple of years is - what's the point of this whole thing? blog.markvideon.dev/education-di...

7 months to go

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, blog.markvideon.dev/the-one-abou...

the tl; dr blog.markvideon.dev/the-story-so...

did not expect that

I've used the term digital factory a lot and it's probably past due to look at some examples from the real world to ground the concept. Donkey Kong Country (1994), Microsoft Office (2010) and Netflix (2026) blog.markvideon.dev/yeah-but-lik...

'Microsoft in games' continues to live in my head rent-free. I think their big problem is managing certain kinds of IP that has a life outside of digital products. The strengths and weaknesses of IP like Forza and Flight Simulator are pretty well aligned with the strengths and weaknesses of MS imo

I feel like the 2026 Xbox and AI strategy is going to look and sound a lot like the 2013 Xbox and Azure strategy Third-party games are probably not going to do a bunch of custom integrations for the platform in last place, so not sure what gives

There are so many boutique publishers of books about digital games these days, what a time to be alive @bossfightbooks.com @apwot.bsky.social @thevideogamelibrary.org @wearegamebound.bsky.social @rocketbooksltd.bsky.social Has me dreaming a little dream about opening a little store/museum

gotta go fast blog.markvideon.dev/going-faster/

I think most people understand that existing data centres have considerably large energy requirements but the amounts required to support the most ambitious versions of the AI-powered future are eye-watering and almost certainly involve regressions toward a transition to renewable energy

Finish The Fight blog.markvideon.dev/whats-so-har...

RE: Allbirds going from sustainable shoes to AI compute

Lost some good people at work today. Pretty rough

Allegedly my 50th post blog.markvideon.dev/delegation-o...

sponsoring Anton - they’re calling it the hot new trend anyone can be part of

can someone make LinkedIn without the grift please

Today I wrote about how people find software and also developer-focused content. A lot of '1+1=2' and '1+1=7' out there. BFFR. blog.markvideon.dev/search-socia...

On-prem, source control, secrets, bundled content, build pipelines, and so on. blog.markvideon.dev/managing-inf...

Further to this point I wonder if Mass Effect 3 was in production today, to what extent the ending controversy could have been avoided with a generated ending cutscene based on a broader pool of decisions you made throughout the series

Chewing on what some Gen AI use cases might look like if used relatively tastefully in products we recognise today. Technologists often ask the public to do the imagining for them see Kinect, hybrid compute for Xbox One, PS3 power of the cell.

The One Where We Juxtapose Software Delivery with Team Austin vs Team Bischoff at WWE Survivor Series 2003 blog.markvideon.dev/grappling-wi...

Have to wonder whether this contributes to a period of time where people drift away from digital spaces. Getting pretty expensive to read procedurally generated complaints and ad copy. Is anyone getting what they want?

This is a good example of why The Project is part of the conversation about digital factories. Streamers contribute to the success of The Project, but they play no part in the design of digital factories or the delivery of the digital product, in this case, the game.

Today I visited the SA Games Expo hosted by the SA Film Corporation and saw some great stuff.

I’ve travelled to Melbourne for Freeplay stuff a number of times and it has never failed to inspire. Very sad to see this

Interesting…

🥲

Metroid Fusion is incredibly punishing, if this were the only game in the series I had played I’d probably never touch the seres again

This kind of stuff has been totally ground out of video games for so long that many people would have no idea that once upon a time there were modes of engagement beyond transactions

You’re building something that has never been built before. You’re asked to guess how long it will take to do it. You are held to this estimate because no one really engages with point 1 Needless suffering

I am astonished by the increasing prevalence of gambling in (video) games media Are gamblers really performing consumer research to find new games to play?

👀 blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2025/12...

For as long as I can remember I’ve largely seen mergers and acquisitions celebrated by customers and workers, in defiance of what happens in their wake, time after time.

Advent of Code has never been my thing. There are alternatives. Here is one a colleague of mine shared with me, where the goal is simply to make continuous progress: eli.li/december-adv...

Took some time this weekend to do a few proof of concepts of various things I've seen at conferences this year. Great experience using home_widget from @abausg.bsky.social - amazing docs

Input handling is a part of Steam’s moat that doesn’t get a lot of attention

There are conferences. There are hackathons. There are meetups. There are workshops. There are a range of opportunities to connect with other people in the field of software development. Is this so different to other fields? blog.markvideon.dev/meetups-conf...

Today I had a nice opportunity to test my theory that the way to get the most out of LLMs is to navigate commoditisation. I needed a web page that simulated storing cart state for a store in cookies, commoditised problems all the way down. One sentence prompt worked first go

@realmarkvideon.bsky.social at #DDDAdelaide 2025 offers a better framework for technologists to understand their own work and future as tech rapidly evolves. A clearer way to think about what we do and explain it to anyone. Enter the digital factory 🏭✨

I’m concerned by posts I’ve seen on LinkedIn remarking agents must be self-aware/conscious if they “arrive at the conclusion” that they’re an agent when there would be data about the nature of agents and how they communicate in present in training….

When I started work on conceptualising the digital factory it was born from a lifetime of personal and professional experiences in a world that is not digitally literate. This post is centred around two questions every client of a software developer has: blog.markvideon.dev/breaking-the...