I will remember every single games CEO who cut jobs instead of cutting senior leadership's paychecks. I will not forget.

Speaking as someone who has had to make the rough decisions regarding running a business before, my hot take is that one of the worst parts of the Epic layoffs is that they did them after GDC & Dice. All those people could have been chasing jobs or new studio funding if the layoffs had been sooner.

Imagine all the amazing games we could be making by building teams from the gigantic talent pool made up of everyone getting laid off just this year (let alone the past few years).

Sick of this crap? Us too. Hit us up. 💪 uvw-cwa.org

I hope our game sells a gazillion copies next year so we can dedicate a bunch of engineers to getting the hell off Unreal Engine and moving to Rust / Bevy. Embark and Believer are a step ahead of us there, would love to work with them on a shared OSS engine.

rows and rows of major game companies lined up at slot machines, pumping in employees like quarters, desperate for a jackpot that comes once every 4 years

@murray.senate.gov games and tech are huge industries in Seattle and both are being dismantled daily by Wall Street greed.

YESYESYES Say it with me, "SPEED PAINTING IS A SKILL." If you need brilliant illustrations at fast turnarounds, you can pay for it from human artists. If you're broke, learn how to speed paint. Great tools like Blender and KeyShot can help you learn lighting or materials on a short turnaround.

Went to a wedding today and the couple exchanged vows and talked about how much they fell in love while playing Thousand-Year Door. I was so happy for both of them and video games.

OHMYGOD Astropad Studio finally added a virtual display! Now I don't have to futz with VDD to do 4k paintovers in Clip Studio on the desktop. Huge props to @mronge.bsky.social and the Astropad team. Love the update.

Some publishers are like this too, which means the studios getting the money were often the ones that could afford a fancy video or to prettify their entire vertical slice. Not the studios focused on finding the fun first.

Multiple publishers evaluating the latest build. Multiple investors that have agreed to discuss check sizes. We are SO CLOSE to being able to finalize announce and launch dates ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh, there are a ton of indies and AA already doing things more sustainably! The trick is to get funding to them at terms that make it possible to keep going for a long while after a game's launch.

My resolution to overturn the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision — H.J.Res 122 — has now been co-sponsored by 72 Members of Congress. You can view the full list at: www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c.... I’ll keep fighting to get it across the finish line!

I LOVE, love meeting people in the games industry, getting advice, pitching, helping out with DevOps and StudioOps. Publisher pitches are a ton of fun especially. Hate chasing down checks. Never gotten used to it. Necessary evil, but the wheel never stops spinning.

Good news, my studio is hiring for both a Lead Technical Artist and a Senior Rendering Engineer! The bad news is both these roles will likely subject you to me ranting about tonemapping. job-boards.greenhouse.io/cloudchamber... job-boards.greenhouse.io/cloudchamber...

The terms are reasonable. If you're gonna use Gen AI you have to disclose it, and the investor will decide if they are or aren't okay with getting legally and financially involved. And if you lie, it's a breach. If you want to work with investors that are okay with Gen AI, just pitch to those. ezpz

is this how graphics work

A lot of the devs I’ve talked to about Outersloth don’t seem to understand fund vs Publisher. I had one dev argue with me about Outersloth and asked me if I was sure they’re a fund. I’m pretty sure since I signed one of the initial Outersloth contracts. Anyways, more funds to offset publishers!

This was such a blast. Seriously, thanks to everyone involved from the artists, to marketing, to the fans. Really cool reveal. When you don't have a AAA budget, a small team of brilliant people can do some incredible things.

...At the end of everything. TY to the amazing artists at Sequence Designs, @sketchsawyer.bsky.social and @brianatkinsart.bsky.social . #indiegames #gamedev #comics #conceptart

And now.. in the near future... Page 9 arrives. Comic by @sketchsawyer.bsky.social @brianatkinsart.bsky.social story by @joewillsart.bsky.social @derekree.se #gamedev #indiegames #comics #conceptart

If you love seeing all these gamedev faces that you don't normally see in the industry, remember that #WhatAGameDevLooksLike has a feed you can follow. Shout out to @singingpigs.online for helping to get it set up! ✨

The prettiest villain origin there ever was 🥰

Peer at Page 8 and into the origins of the Assimilator! Comic by @sketchsawyer.bsky.social @brianatkinsart.bsky.social @joewillsart.bsky.social @derekree.se As always, new pages on our Discord first: chroniclersoftware.com/discord #indiegames #gamedev #comics

Ooh, design doc discourse. Yeah, we don't do design docs at Chronicler. We have a Codex that has pillars, "Do"s & "Don't"s, brief lore, a story timeline, encounter guides for writers, and onboarding. Design reqs must fit on a small Favro(Jira-like) card. Implemented design must be in a Gym map.

Normalize high earners investing in indie game studios. Putting terms online for people to read is a great start. We need people outside of game dev to talk about doing it too. Devs shouldn't have to go to Kickstarter to get funding from angels, and the community is good for indie mental health.

I'm Adrian, a composer and video game developer who shipped a title to the Google Play store in 2021 and continues to ship updates to my mobile game project. This, believe it or not, is #WhatAGameDevLooksLike

We asked @sketchsawyer.bsky.social to paint all of our 1000s explosions in the game, but it turns out he actually likes doing other things too. Shame. To be fair those other things are designing aliens and spaceships! We'll take all the Ben time we can afford. (Not a lot, but worth every penny).

Love our spooky soot-spritey space robots. @sketchsawyer.bsky.social @brianatkinsart.bsky.social and @joewillsart.bsky.social killing it with the alien designs.

Why GDC? Moral support from friends? I skipped GDC this year. Most of the people I know writing checks are also skipping because their inboxes are already full. It's a buyer's market, and the only thing people are interested in buying is a complete game. Tons of those around, many unreleased too.

Thanks to everyone who came to #DayOfTheDevs this year! Both the developers and the players! Thanks to all the hard working folks who make the show run so well! And thanks to all our generous sponsors! I had a great time and met so many awesome people! See you next year! 💀🎮❤️

You've met the Lanu, now see the Eno in action! Artists + Writers + Story by: @sketchsawyer.bsky.social @brianatkinsart.bsky.social @joewillsart.bsky.social @derekree.se And of course, the next page is in our Discord 😉 #gamedev #indiedev #comics #realhumanart

I've been watching my wife replay Majora's Mask. It's remarkable how many activities they managed to cram into the world. And it still feels designed and cohesive. Plus, the whole thing was made in just a year from mostly existing assets.

After discussions about poor behavior by DICE attendees last month, I thought I'd bring these out again at GDC dawns. AND DUDES... PLEASE CALL OUT YOUR FELLOW DUDES IF YOU SEE BAD BEHAVIOR. Rock that boat!

My team at work came up with like a millennia of lore and backstory to drive the art in-game today, it's so freaking cool to see it brought to life in a comic. Also I think the idea of using the comic to drive growth of the community Discord is pretty cool. My friend Jen thought of that!

This is my studio y'all, just absolutely kicking ass 😭

I'm reviewing my list of "in progress" gamedev projects right now. It's basically 20 subfolders, each earmarked for a project. 10 of these folders are empty or contain a single document with less than a paragraph of text. 7 have partially-written rules but are unplayable. 3 are fully playtestable.

I've been running gdcparties.com for a few years now. Some shitty company BlueberryAI decided they'd just take all the source code for the work I've done and reskin it, advertising it as their own. Jokes on them...it was still linked to my events spreadsheet, and now their website looks like this 😉

We're a bunch of indie comic nerds, so what better way to start introducing a new sci-fi universe than making a comic? 100% made by REAL HUMAN ARTISTS @sketchsawyer.bsky.social + @brianatkinsart.bsky.social + @joewillsart.bsky.social . Don't let me down bsky indie #comic and #gamedev scene!

9 games that made me a game dev, a bit different than my personal top 9 my9games.com

Players are right something is wrong but rarely about what

This is so on point! We invested a ton in our mission builder for exactly this reason. You can write and ship a new mission with minimal, Age of Empires-like scripting and config, plus tagging. Minutes, not weeks. The biggest barrier now is coming up with something worth the player's time.

I feel like most devs want to be cooks, few realize they need to be chefs, and the restauranteurs are intent on only hiring bussers and only if they have to.

Matthew Ball’s State of Video Games in 2026 is now out (Early Access) and cover: 1⃣ Why revenue growth is more elusive than headlines suggest 2⃣Why video gaming has been losing the attention war for a half decade (and to what) 3⃣ Where there's indisputable growth www.matthewball.co/all/presenta...

Fun fact, US passports did not have a gender marker until 1977, when a rising trend in unisex fashion started freaking the government out.

This is disgusting. Where is the Democratic Party? Oh right… they’re largely happy to sacrifice trans people. Newsom is in that camp, and this is why we cannot let him go anywhere near federal office.

Sorry, I meant to say *specifically* defund the police. Instead, fund social services, civil traffic enforcement, CPS, RETURN to funding permanent psychiatric residencies and therapy, emergency first responders like fire and ambulance, and highly-trained highly accountable state militia.

Our next game is Verminsteel! You're a bird with a broadsword, kicking thousands of fascists so hard they fly into the sun PLEASE go wishlist it, it'll make me really happy and help me stop low-key panicking and stuff: store.steampowered.com/app/4352280/... #indiegame #indiedev #gamedev