In Episode 5 of #EnduringPlay, a #GameDev podcast, @brightwhitney.bsky.social levels up our understanding and appreciation of #narrative design and narrative direction - and how they differ from writing - drawing from award-winning experience on #videoGames like Holovista & TTRPG Bluebeard's Bride.

Ah! HoloVista is Apple's Game of the Day today! And the little article even quotes me! "Meet the creator:...The game’s narrative director, Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, views HoloVista as 'a strange ode to postmodernism and Western capitalism, bathed in vaporwave-y aesthetics.'”

The Golden Cobra Challenge 2025 is NOW LIVE! Get your gamesss in by October 13th! goldencobra.org

"You all go into debt, and you all hate each other. That's consumerism."

I woke up this morning wanting to make a seapunk style Ecco the Dolphin soundtrack remix with Ableton and my hard synths. Do I have the skills for this? Absolutely not. Yet.

Oops I'm at Gen Con 😁

Sometimes as a developer you can't tell if something going wrong in the engine is a you thing, or a "the software just lost its mind" thing, and honestly that is like where half the stress comes from.

AI is so dumb 🥴

Our REDs recently volunteered at Warsaw Zoo for Earth Day, working to support its eco village. We planted 450 flowers and herbs that will protect animals, by providing them with food and shelter. Thank you to everyone who took part for supporting projects that make a positive impact!

CDPR is hiring for a bunch of game jobs, y'all. No writing roles on my team at this moment, but lots of other positions. It's a really good place to land www.cdprojektred.com/en/jobs

So if we're doing K-pop Demon Hunter typologies I'm definitely a Mira.

Food and cooking play a big role in Juneteenth celebrations. The barbecues and fish fries woven into Black culture helped shape American cuisine.

Single shot 70mm from yesterday. Ghostly. Etherial. And a photo I'll probably never be able to top! Dickens, Nebraska. 6/16/25

Did an LLM write this too because this guy can't even subtract two mintues from two hours properly. As always, clown shit.

I get to be a Napoleonic horse girl today!

Mine was about an elemental mage who became queen by slaying her mother. Her consort was driven mad by an evil sentient sword and he attempted to kill her. Thusly betrayed, she hunts him to the ends of the earth, but upon finally taking revenge realizes the terrible mistake she's made in doing so.

Our next game, Dosa Divas. Battle an evil fast food empire in this spicy narrative turn-based RPG. Two sisters and their upgradable spirit-mech cook delicious meals, fight corpos, build up your reputation with local communities, and reconcile with loved ones. youtu.be/jzOKSPSVYwY?...

The leopards They are eating each other yes YES The leopards are HUNGRY

Saying this in the same room as The Witcher 4, a gorgeous-looking, richly detailed world designed, written, and built by a team of seasoned craftsmen, that people buy for said craftsmanship, is WILD work, dude.

My new Tangent “Daddy Politics" is about the psychodynamic and cognitive-linguistic reasons everyone hates freedom and wants to be vigorously spanked like a bad little girl. Up now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/contrapoints...

The real news here is nanite foliage 🌲🎉

Why isn't there a faerie core dance music scene? Sparkly bacchanals with glitter and wings and otherwordly vibes seems like a money maker.

Witcher Concert!

As a game developer I'm stuck somewhere between "the simulacrum is poison" and, "we make the world" and this is why we should NOT be trained in philosophy because I am having a very bad time.

FromSoftware made an Elden Ring music video just for me!!

Get in loser we’re creating honest sentimental art without a trace of irony and putting a piece of ourselves out into the world

Guess what, fam.

The good part of AI is that the only thing a writer can do to combat it is to become more human. Make your writing weirder, hornier, more violent, absurd, poetic, difficult, political, jagged, dreamlike, ironic, surreal, alive. You don't have any choice but to plumb the depths.

I don't even think we're in a post-truth era anymore. Thanks to generative AI we've slid directly into a post-information age. Want to read a book from the book list of a major newspaper? You can't, it doesn't exist. Get information from the hiring manager you're interviewing with? She doesn't EXIST

Oh yeah, we are in Trouble trouble.

So here's a tough nut to crack: How do I figure out the cultural perception of what the edgey, cool names were for adult women in the 1970's in Mexico? Context building from films and TV, maybe? None of my relatives are alive or accessible to ask.

(Philosophical) materialists are so exhausting. We both have an understanding of reality, my dude. It's just that you think real=material and there can be no other possible interpretation. Rigid, boring, narrow.

Workshop applications close at midnight EDT TONIGHT May 15. Not your local time zone, unless you live in the eastern US. Don’t wait until the last minute. If you want to join us for the 2025 workshop, get your application in. We are so excited to find the newest members of the VP community!

Good luck to all Viable Paradise applicants today! No matter the outcome, you did the thing. That's like 90% more than most people that want to be writers. You're already actually a writer. Dare I say, even a Writer. Cheers! 🩷✍️

Had a dream that I kept trying to fuel white SUV's at a gas station, but I would forget to put them in park each time, and they would roll into a public swimming pool next door. It happened three times in a row! I'm stumped at how to interpret this one. Any ideas?

deadline.com/2025/05/sout... Got to talk to Destiny Jackson about South of Midnight a bit, my first video game, and some of my inspirations as we wrote the game. :)

This is good and, as usual, Graham is doing really interesting things with the form.

Coco and now Sinners… people don’t just want original movies, they want ones that don’t center white experiences. they want culturally rich, bold, empathetic, challenging stories. entertainment sectors (especially AAA games!) need to stop believing that people will only show up for white stories.

I was thinking about emotions, and maybe I'm just really late on the uptake, but I had an epiphany that they're a system output, not an input. We don't really "have" emotions, we make emotions in response to stimuli, either external or internal, and we do it mostly on an unconscious level.

I got a dumb phone and I no longer let my smartphone anywhere near my bed, among some other technology hygiene choices, and I now sleep 8-9 hours instead of 5-6. This is what I was hoping, but I'm still shocked. I'm not a luddite but I do suspect unchecked engagement with tech messes with us bad.

This is a bummer. I reference Bandersnatch in my narrative design curriculum as a really important object lesson in how to not design player choice. What will I use now?

The conclave is already over?!?

Your eyes are the audience's eyes, and theirs can open along with yours. Marking this experience as "taboo" for cis/het/white guys to engage with, IMO, contributes to the patriarchal othering of the feminine experience.

As co-designer of Bluebeard's Bride, this makes me sad. When we ran the Kickstarter I ran an AP on Weekly Affirmations (my streaming RPG show) with a mixed cast and it went great. I don't think it's the game that's the issue, but hypersensitive, unforgiving individuals in the audience.

I literally can't because of the NDA for [REDACTED]. Video games are wild.

Our colleagues in the Vox Media Union have put together a Go Fund Me. Please, if you've enjoyed what we do... If I've ever helped you in some way... If you've ever loved something more because of what we've written... Please give what you can. The next few weeks and months are going to be hard.

HORIZONS 3 IS HERE! It's got quests, magic items, battles to the death, philosophy footnotes, anime references, a fiendish fantasy Uno game, and more! ❤️‍🔥