If you're a CATAN fan, we'd love to have you in our Discord server - and this week only, joining gets you a shot at an awesome prize package! gleam.io/Z6Z8U/catan-...

Too much else going on today so I forgot, but we did it! We launched this incredible thing that is going to be a ton of fun for millions of players.

Picard humor tip: Be thankful that April Fools' Day jokes fell out of common practice hundreds of years ago.

if I were ever to write a followup or expansion to 'A Pivot To Indie Won't Save Us' it would probably center around how much midsized indies benefit from the ability to poach producers, QA and other roles from AAA, roles that indie itself makes zero room for other than preexisting domain experts

You know, I’ve said for a long time that a big problem in the entertainment industry these days is people claw their way in so young and are so afraid to take a break that they have no time to have actual life experiences, so they write about media they’ve seen instead of things they’ve lived-

Hey @boardgamegeek.com, you know how once kids are a couple of years old, it's weird to keep referring to their age in months? 😅

Yeah, okay, I can get behind that. 😆

For years my iOS devices have kept reminding me to set up Siri (“You haven’t finished setting up your phone!”) and I just wish there was a fucking option to stop that shit. I don’t even want a dumb smart assistant. Just let me fucking work, man.

I don't know about the rest of the millennials but I make all purchases via real computer because I don't have to Download Yet Another App to do it and the browser there is better at blocking all the stupid fucking ads and trackers. At some point you gotta take control of the hamster wheel, kids.

If you were someone pinging critics with ‘it’s just lighting cleanup’ a few days ago, I need you to use this as a jumping off point to thinking about your susceptibility to talking points and marketing rhetoric more generally. It was right there in front of all of our faces.

The DLSS 5 thing is just NFTs all over again. A bunch of people who know *literally nothing* about game development are talking up how revolutionary it is, while anyone who has ever touched gamedev is absolutely uninterested (because they know better). Tired.

One cool thing about unequivocally hating AI is that you will be proven right over and over again every single day

Sorry to get radical but I don’t think it’s my job or yours to embrace, accept, understand - and certainly not to use - the thing being sold to us as AI. I don’t like any part of it, so I won’t. I’m missing out? Good, that’s what I want. You’re worried about me missing out? That’s fuckin weird, man.

Call for papers: for a special issue on contemporary craft work and digital economies. See below and alt text.

* Mention that X has been banned in multiple countries over this * Ask whether your emotional or legal risks from exposure to this kind of material will be covered * Confirm that they know Musk restores the accounts of, retweets & PAYS those suspended for CSAM violations www.cnbc.com/2026/01/05/i...

If you are a person who works in social media, and your job requires you to manage an account on Twitter/X, please ask your boss, in writing, to verify that you are required as a responsibility of your position to be on a platform that knowingly creates and monetizes child sexual abuse material …

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