Why did I randomly think about Chess AI and how humans react to it today? Because I don’t think modern devs understand how demoralizing it is for AI systems to automatically reject appliations. Especially if there is no feedback about why.

When the first Chess game with AI released, devs learned a lot about human egos. Mainly, if a person spends a long time thinking about a move it’s demoralizing if the AI instanly counters. The fix? Devs added an artifical snooze to the AI to simulate thinking. #gamedev #gamedesign #indiedev

I said Ludo Narrative Dissonance. Once. Unironically.

I love looking at old design docs. Here’s one form the early days of Donkey Kong Country where they were still working out how to get Diddy kong and the Animal partners. It’s cool to see what made it and what didn’t. #gamedev #gamedesign #indeidev

While I'm not a huge fan of alternate controllers, this gameboy peripheral that gassed kids with nitrous oxide was probably the best way to play Yoda Stories.

Using the biblically accurate Angel tokens today. #magicthegathering #mtg

I made a joke a long time ago that games would eventually market themselves as artisanal, small batch, and cruelty free. #gamedev #indiedev

I love videos like this. No one sets out to make a bad game or have a nightmare development, so hearing how it got to that point is always super interesting and @mattmcmuscles.bsky.social does a great job of conveying that story.

Contemporary Cyberpunk www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/...

At the most fundamental level, bloodborne is a game about maintaining legacy code

Players can’t count… or read… or listen. At least not in the way game designers assume they can. #GameDev #IndieGameDev #GameDesign

I want to rig my router to play the internet dialup modem sound every time a new client logs on.

Never forget the all-time greatest placeholder asset, from Doom 64

Metroid is such an interesting franchise in that it's generally not super popular in japan, but is a big hit in the US. Devs from past games like other M have talked about actively trying to make it more appealing for broader audiences and yet seemed to alienate the core audience by doing so.

Instead of our usual podcast this week, check out our #ThinkyCon talk about how your players can’t Read, Count, or Listen - and what to do about it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEvW... #gamedev #indiedev #gamedesign @videogameworkshop.com @thinkygames.com @charlie.videogameworkshop.com

Shader systems are ridiculously powerful if you’re clever enough. 

 Most people use them to create visual effects. You know what’s cooler? Running Linux. Inside an emulated RISC-V CPU. Inside a pixel shader. Inside of VRChat...

Come see @charlie.videogameworkshop.com and I talk about psychology tricks we used when we made games for PBS!

Day 1 of @thinkygames.com was great! If you're interested in puzzles and game design it runs for two more days!! thinkygames.com/events/think... #gamedev #indiedev #gamedesign

We are live! 🎉 thinkygames.com/even...

An unstoppable monster can get boring. To use them effectively, get creative. #GameDev #IndieGameDev #GameDesign

Be careful out there y'all! If you run into a vampire just remember that the type of wood you use for a stake makes a difference! If you don't use the right wood, you'll just get a pissed off vampire! 👇🧵 #halloween #vampires #folklore

Happy Halloween! These game mechanics can make your players feel DREAD. #GameDev #IndieGameDev #GameDesign

Get em quick they go fast.

Do you want to play a horror videogame? 😱 Happy Halloween! We're discussing horror games, our preferences, and what mechanics make a game spooky. #gamedev #indiegamedev #podcast

Be careful trick or treating y'all.

You’re really going to tell me this isn’t a secret area? Come on. #videogames #gamedev #indiedev

Videogame Videogames

This brings new meaning to the Count Chocula universe. Also has implications for Fruit Brute.

We have yet to surpass the original idle game. #idlegames #gamedesign

We wrote a blog for spooky season game mechanics!

Do you see the yellow paint?? Mira! Look!!

How many heist movies do you all think are being written right now?

The very first message sent on the internet was "Login" but the system crashed after the first two letters. They tried it again and it worked the second time.... Which technically means the first 3 letters transmitted over the internet were "LoL" www.pbs.org/newshour/sci...

illustration, load sinclair, magazine (1986) archive.org/details/Load...

It's fun to see so many people say they're gonna move to Linux cause of Microsoft's latest thing, but let's be real Y'all are not desperate, poor or hateful enough... yet.

The plan was simple: remove user input, which had long been the bane of Microsoft, once and for all.

Players will enjoy these sidequests and optional things to collect! The player: #gamedesign #gamedev #indiedev

Collect-em-all, but with Frankenstein. Call it "Body Builder"

Charlie and I wrote a whole series of blogs about prototypes for #blocktober. This one is more of an intro, and we have one for paper prototypes, wireframes, and greyboxes. #gamedev #indiedev

i'm going to use these in all my game design slideshows from now on. #gamedev #indiedev

An important part of game design is being responsive and vague enough to account for the player's choices. #gamedev #gamedesign #indiedev #narrativedesign

Alright devs, liking videogames already puts you on the board so what's your Demonic Possession Score (tm)? Cyberpunk culture and postmodernism put me somewhere above 15. #gamedev #indiedev #halloween

How hard could it be to port this game to console? They have the same controls, right? #gamedev #indiedev #programming

The ti-83 is technically one of the most long-lived home consoles of all time. And it supports home brew games!

Modern people: “Haha. Witches brewing potions and flying on brooms!” The witches: brewing hallucinogens, finding creative delivery systems. "Oh, we were flying...” #witches #halloween #folklorethursday

I've got a good one. I made a save system for one of our games. It worked well, so we used it for a new game. Everything was going good at first, but then our testers reported weird errors when they tried to play. Turns out it was reading the previous games save file. Add a version string y'all!

100 tabs open. YouTube mini palyer hovering on top.

We got to complain about Other M’s progression system in this week’s blog!

When you mess up the code you can just do "git restore" to roll it back! Me: yes I certainly don’t just delete the whole thing and check it out again…. #gamedev #indiedev #programming

Congrats to everyone who participated! This stuff is hard! I'm looking forward to playing some entries.