Incredibly excited that we're announcing the first project I've been involved with end to end today - CATAN On the Road! It's a faithful reimagining of the game you know and love, now as a fast-paced card game you can enjoy anywhere and everywhere. On the Road launches April 3!

Incredibly excited that we're announcing the first project I've been involved with end to end today - CATAN On the Road! It's a faithful reimagining of the game you know and love, now as a fast-paced card game you can enjoy anywhere and everywhere. On the Road launches April 3!

being silly with your children is one of the best parts of being a parent the eight year old and I were playing Catan Jr and I kept getting goats so I started chanting “goats goats goats” and doing a silly dance and now he is randomly coming up to me and going “goats goats goats” and it’s adorable

Synopsis: You need to kick more people out. You will actually have a larger base of customers/attendees if you kick more people out. You will make more money. I am dead serious.

Speaking as someone who has also seen the data for this at major game companies, this is universally true. The worst 2% of your players/customers/whatever that you aren't dealing with are costing you 10x as many people who won't participate because of them.

“Hybrid” just means “onsite.” Can we be honest here.

Kids got new iPads for Christmas, and I need @shappy.bsky.social and @johnathan.bsky.social to know that some of their amazing @rawsignal.ca stickers finally found good homes.

This might sound harsh, and judgmental, but if video is your preferred way of getting information about a topic, you’re a fucking moron

Zero tolerance is the ONLY and FITTING response to genAI being used in production of media. Sure, you might think it's too harsh. Sure, they might've only used it for early stuff in development, etc Listen, it's not even a SLIPPERY slope, there is NO friction at all unless we speak out against it.

This one is easy: No. Don’t use the evil slop generation “tools” anywhere in your process. Consumers have been so, so clear on their preferences here.

No, it’s not. Consumers loathe generative AI badly enough that you a) cannot use it; and b) might have to come up with other terms for other things we used to describe with AI. That’s not a crisis.

This one is easy: No. Don’t use the evil slop generation “tools” anywhere in your process. Consumers have been so, so clear on their preferences here.

this is a good battle to pick. the CEO mentioned using "AI" and got so much shit for it immediately that he's rattled and backpedaling. easy win there

my team has never used ChatGPT for any of our writing. these are 100% artisanal handmade mistakes, thank you

Happy to report that the new Bluey game is - for its target audience age - fantastic. Highly recommend. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsGY...

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

The Blair Witch Project, Joker (2019), and Rise of Skywalker.

Some people (not me) use Sunday morning to catch up on their politics, so here was my Say No to AI piece from this week for that. www.sfgate.com/tech/article...

why is miss universe always from earth

I gotta say this is a pretty decent list (bolstered by the fact that it's huge, but still). You'll get a better picture of where games are this year browsing through this than anything (literally anything) that happens at The Game Awards.

I’m calling it now, we’re taking the year off from puns in 2026.

Go a step further: Do not read the opinions of your community. It's creative poison. Often as game designers we love to make people happy. But if you index too much on making the community, or people in the community, happy, then you're ceding too much of your judgment to them.

You will only ever find me dressed for comfort on a plane, sorry.

I’m gonna be a zombie from insufficient sleep, but I’m at PAX Unplugged this weekend! Excited to see a bunch of friends and do a little early Christmas shopping. Come by the CATAN booth during the afternoons or message me if you wanna catch up!

we don't just need to be funding small studios to make one game, we need to be funding them to make the ones they can fuck up before they can make the ones they learn from.

A reminder that for every billion dollars made on PC gaming, Newell pockets $300m. He keeps out of the public eye better than some billionaires, but he is still a libertarian billionaire, and billionaires should not exist.

My incredible friend @joneaves.bsky.social is going to do superhuman things and cycle 1,000km for childhood cancer research, and he’s incredibly close to his fundraising goal. Help push him over the top? live-for-lily-foundation.grassrootz.com/act-to-mcg/j...

Even the island got a good look at the beautiful northern lights! 🥰🌌

Just fucking insane to see the absolute (intentional) collapse of full remote jobs available for AAA studios in so short a time. Why would I EVER move for a job again when I could be laid off weeks after moving my entire life across the globe??

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

My AI strategy? That’s a great question. It’s a nuanced topic that calls for a multipronged approach best outlined in this excellent ebook by thought leaders in the field of intelligence: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

The people opposed to the Microsoft/Sony/Apple/Google walled gardens sure are falling all over themselves to support the Valve one. Call me if Valve cuts the portion of revenues they're taking from developers, then we'll talk.

Twitch Plays CATAN is live! Give it a click if you have a few minutes tonight. 🤩 www.twitch.tv/directory/co...

“individual employees asked to change behavior in response to catastrophic mistakes made by their high-level leadership over the past 3-7 years” really feels like the overarching story of the current times

capitalism rules, I love doing extensive research any time I need to replace something because roughly 94% of all products are scam garbage

We're back! Join us Monday, Wednesday, and Friday next week for the first-ever Twitch Plays CATAN event.

i hate it when something is described as "inscrutable." you have no idea the types of things im able to scrute

The new @Formula1 driver obsession - Catan 👀🎴

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

You could honestly boil this down to even fewer bullets, IMO: 1. Failure to delegate (this covers all of the "approval" or "direction" issues) 2. Not prioritizing retention (turnover has *enormous* hidden costs) 3. Lack of transparency (this is where weak direction and decision-making live)

GAME ON! 😤🏀 We are THRILLED to announce our sponsorship of the Minnesota @timberwolves for the 2026 NBA season! This was a natural partnership alongside our MN headquarters and we cannot wait to start trading timber for wolves! A-wooo! 🪵🐺 #catan #nba #minnesotatimberwolves

Sometimes, we come up with partnership ideas that are a slam dunk. Trading w̶o̶o̶d̶ timber for s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ wolves. www.nba.com/timberwolves...

INVENTOR: ive got a great new toy idea for you, it's called... the Radio Flyer TOY EXEC: oh wow, so it's like a plane that flies via... radio? INVENTOR: it's not a plane TOY EXEC: oh...Kay, so it's INVENTOR: its a little red wagon TOY EXEC: with ... a radio on it? INVENTOR: theres no radio

GET IN THE QUEUE

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Hell of a month. Canada to the US to Australia back to the US to Mexico back to the US to Germany back to Canada. Announced our Netflix deal, set a new CATAN world record for largest game… …and we’re not done yet. Excited to sleep in my own bed and give my family a month’s backlog of hugs, though.

We’ve been up to some stuff…

A note for sports: Bluesky’s engagement rate was x10 higher than X’s across a sampling of identical posts made on both platforms by @rapsheet.bsky.social (sharing with permission) Fwiw we see a similar trend across all communities, not just sports. Real people, real conversations.

We’ve been up to some stuff…