I was just saying to friends that I dress down to go to work (and most game events). I’m actually writing a post about hoodies as armor & the gamedev uniform (though I’ve prev written about how I bought new clothes & shoes at my first GDC in 2014 so that people on the floor would talk to me)

Are you or someone you know skipping GDC (or considering doing so) because of worries about coming to the US/San Francisco in the current environment? If so, I want to hear from you for a piece. DM me here or kyle DOT orland AT arstechnica DOT com. Please spread the word

Sometimes the most unexpected lenses yield the most fascinating insights

management are also often subject to The Shareholders who cannot imagine a world more creative than the ‘current successes’. remember that before BG3 and disco came out, selecting unvoiced branching dialogue options was considered ‘old fashioned’ and ‘not what the kids want these days’. then whoops

If you insist on changing both your profile pic, display name and handle at the same time, you have become a stranger to me and I will always wonder who you once were and why I was following you 😅

Hey! I have no idea how to do this, I’ve never made a List or Starter Pack before, but: ⭐️ If you’re a Games Writer/Narrative Designer looking for work, and you’d like to be added to my Starter Pack, lmk! ⭐️ If you’re looking to hire a Games Writer/Narrative Designer, check out this Starter Pack!

This touches on a principle I embrace- lenses, not boxes. Putting things in boxes means defining hard boundaries, losing nuance, and resigning ourselves to only benefiting from one framing. Using lenses instead of boxes means we can use more of them, and see what we learn from new perspectives. 1/2

Credit to @stcymsn.bsky.social for putting words to this principle in their dissertation! It's a principle I had seen elsewhere in more words, and had been trying to follow myself, but the clear framing here helped so much in my efforts to communicate how I was approaching conversations.

Just don't post. Don't feel the need to weigh in on every issue all the time. Sometimes other people have said it better. Don't force yourself to chase trends, news, events, drama, and definitely don't feel like you have to be involved in everything that happens.

Happy 40th birthday Super Mario Bros

Deeply impressed that the BIPOC Game Studies Conference at The Strong Museum hasn't happened yet--it's in 2 days--but the Proceedings are already available: playstorypress.org/books/procee... (@analoggamestudies.bsky.social has an entry, Aaron Trammell & I have a brief essay...) #playstorypress

This year's Summer Games Fest presentation was really concerned with how few people made a lot of those games, huh? It feels kinda fucked up. Not just because they're often misrepresntating the real size of these teams, but because I think it's playing directly into a new(ish) flavour of dev hate.

Officially back in Boston 💚

icymi it's actually INCREDIBLE that Qud won a Hugo Award? 1) Hugos started 70+ yrs ago. this is serious. 2) we were up against fkn DRAGON AGE and 1000xRESIST !?! 3) only games that EVER won were Hades & Baldur's Gate 3 Kitfox always punches above our weight, but still reeling from this one

Oh gosh just had a cliche millennial moment: ordered a beer before realizing I didn’t have my wallet (Apple Pay is ubiquitous & I rarely get carded these days). Told the barkeep my age & had a picture of my ID: no dice. Then told him I could recite my Blockbuster Video employee number—that did it 😂

It might be confirmation bias, but it’s striking to me that on my last couple of days in the Bay Area, people keep asking me what I’m going to miss and I’ll absolutely miss ✨people✨ but I’m struggling for restaurants, cafes, places, activities, and scenes I’ve loved that still exist. So much is gone

After becoming obsessed with the Katseye Gap ad, I’ve been watching their Popstar Academy Show on Netflix and I fear I’m falling down a rabbit hole. There’s something about seeing the pop culture sausage being made that I find engrossing.

We’re preparing Neo Cab, a game I’m immensely proud of, for a mobile re-release soon! I’d love to celebrate this. #Gamedev pals- can you recommend any streamers/podcasters (esp narrative games focused) who might want to host a behind-the-scenes “let’s play” / interview with me? Shares appreciated!

OPPORTUNITY Senior Narrative Writer - Riot _ R&D project - Various locations US Not affiliated - shares welcome www.riotgames.com/en/work-with...

Had a very spooky and sudden urge to stop my very busy evening* to see if there was any important news. Just a weird vibe shift or something 🤔🕯️ *packing for my cross country move! Movers are coming in the morning and I’m not ready but close and ahhh 😅

AUTHORS!! 📣 If AI trained itself on your book, you can be part of A class action lawsuit now. More here: lithub.com/did-anthropi... Spread the word, please!!

I aggressively distance from the fact that my PhD was in AI (not LLMs) And I would never sell my soul to aid Big Tech's use cases *gestures around* But to hear companies are hiring people that do symbolic reasoning research for *hundreds of millions* is sure making me feel a soup of bad feelings.

“Everyone is neurodivergent these days” Is it everyone or are you over-indexing on data points from social media* and/or a professional context that highly caters to the neurodivergent**? *a dopamine faucet/magnet for the dopamine-challenged **e.g. engineering, games, academia, etc.

Pretty rare (and awesome) opportunity here. Come work with me!

People underestimate joy as a political resource. It pisses off all the right people & allows us to move toward practically imaginative solutions.It’s powerful to say, as Mamdani does&others should,I love these people/this place&we’re going to make it thrive.Political version of twirling on haters.

"By far the biggest expense when making games is salaries." Whose salaries?

This is the inside story of how Tea's male founder convinced millions of women to share their most intimate secrets on his app, then exposed those secrets in devastating security breaches www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...

Stripping my sheets turned into jump-dancing on the bed for the last hour. Neither of these are packing, which is what I ✨should✨be doing. But I don’t want to start because I’ve also got cookies in the oven and they’ll burn if I get into something. So instead we dance! 💖

Fellow ADHDers: for a variety of reasons I’m on IRs for the next month when I KNOW XRs are better for me. So now, I’m a little sedate during the day, but I go full manic pixie dream girl in the evenings. Sparkly colorful menace. Zero impulse control after 6pm. What a ride this month will be. 💖

Here is a list of Black TTRPG talent that people should check out!

Ahhhhh huge congrats!!!

for more info on what we're looking for and what we pay:

The accessibility options on AirPods around this are amazing btw. It’s been a game changer as an ADHDer who needs help filtering background sounds in (for example) bars and restaurants while focusing on the person speaking to me. Settings>Accessibility>Audio & Visual Some great stuff in there

hoping that when they say the LLM talks like a Ph.D.-level expert, they mean "holds indecipherable decades-long academic grudges expressed largely in the form of questions that are actually more of a comment"

From the creator of “King of Dragon Pass” and @aaronareed.bsky.social , one of the best procedural writers ever, wrote for it? Instant yes. (Also go follow Aaron if you aren’t)

So true! I pity anyone who asks me a question related to this hyper-special-interest that I spent YEARS researching. Every single answer starts with “okay, so…” My poor team 😅😅 They are so patient with me.

T-Minus 1 month until a big cross-country move so operation freezer cleanout is in effect. My meals are about to get very eclectic!

Once you learn that genAI companies had to include porn in their image training sets or they wouldn't have had enough images of women, it's basically impossible to unsee.

After 2018 with the Telltale and Hangar13 back-to-back made layoffs, I knew I was never going to be normal about this again. It’s why it’s taken me 8 yrs of freelancing to settle into another FTE situation (and yes, took a very special team and culture to make me feel safe doing it)

Hi, we are an alternative to Amazon-owned Audible 👋🏻 With us, you select the independent bookshop you want to support (we have 3,000+ partners across the globe), and we share profits from your purchase with them. We're also employee-owned and a registered Social Purpose Corporation.

Can’t stop thinking about Hayley Williams’s “True Believer.” I haven’t heard lyrics that hit me this hard in a long time. The South will not rise again Til it’s paid for every sin Strange fruit, hard bargain Till the roots, Southern Gotham Fuck. Absolutely chilling. The poetic craft is 🤯

Can’t stop thinking about Hayley Williams’s “True Believer.” I haven’t heard lyrics that hit me this hard in a long time. The South will not rise again Til it’s paid for every sin Strange fruit, hard bargain Till the roots, Southern Gotham Fuck. Absolutely chilling. The poetic craft is 🤯

yes, please read Stacey's breakdown:

I am an expert in games as art, and even won an award for my work aligning games and the arts. All of which is to say, this is exactly right and cracks the whole thing delightfully succinctly

if you are interested in having a deep relationship with art of any kind, you owe it to yourself to start engaging with it the way Stacey describes here, you will have a much better time with every piece you come across and learn a ton in the process

This is great framing, A++ Also I am the kind of goblin who is looking forward to using absolutely unhinged lenses to look at games *with complete seriousness* bc I really do think you can learn cool things that way And also it makes me laugh

Finally a sensible perspective on all those interminable hot dog-sandwich debates.

Stacey has what is to me the definitive analysis of all this discourse on games and art:

Wow we’re having “games are art” discourse again! Just gonna leave this here. From my dissertation: