Canto? Dolabra?? Who at Embark Studios is a fan of The Tainted Cup, I just wanna know

Bullet Train is such a great movie

We’re in a video game crash. You can’t look at 45K jobs lost, games in dev for 5-10 years shuttered in a week or a month, jacked prices on hardware to 30%+ vs launch, and component prices through the roof due to garbage SlopTech and tariffs and draw any different conclusion.

Ok chat. Manifesting good personal news as early as Wednesday, but might stretch into early next week.

Souls games- Elden Ring included- are games about exploration! Of space, of systems, and of story. The stories they tell and the methods they use to do so are harmonic with the rest of the game, and there is a large player base who appreciated the call to overcome friction to earn it!

Whatever the last battery I designed was, those parameters are what’s currently set up. If you’re curious to see it in action, the tester is on my Itch page Also has an input diagnostics tool i use to text controllers spriteborne.itch.io/reaction-timer

I’m not trying to be your reply guy today, BUT: I actually studied this for a few weeks a few years back! I build a reaction time assessment battery and tried hundreds of permutations for telegraph and reaction timing 600ms is the sweet spot. Player performance drops below that, plummets below 400

Ok if we’re giving out genre experience advice: A lot of people think that vibrate is the most important command you can send to a buttplug but actually the most important command is stop.

I haven't done much design work in WoW, but ... those mongrels that run up to a shalehorn and then run away when it charges them? All spells. Ditto *all of the name and appearance changes in Hallowfall.*

Would add an addendum that around 65-70% ish is where the player starts expecting it to work every time (with invisible odds), XCOM folks have talked at length about the psychology of displayed odds.

Think about how your level design and art- the size and shape of spaces, lighting, color, vfx, audio- can align or contrast with the emotional arc of the story moment. Low ceilings vs high, tight dark enclosures vs wide open vistas, etc. Being intentional here has huge impact.

For reference, one frame at 60fps lasts 16.67ms, so 100ms is about 6 frames.

Oh here’s a good one: 55% 25% 15% 3% 1.75% 0.25% A pretty good initial breakdown for varied frequency of events that feel genuinely common / uncommon / rare / very rare / epic / legendary. Start here and then nudge around.

Fun addendum to this for musicology and audio folks: Assuming full ability in both senses, people react faster to sound than sight...and touch stimulus is faster than both. Most humans are a bit slower than 200ms for sighted response only.

Just about everything in your favorite MMO is done with: * invisible npcs, and… * spells * spells that cast spells * spells that cast buffs * buffs that cast spells * spells that check buffs it’s all just… check a buff then cast a spell that checks a buff and applies a buff that then casts a spell.

100ms is just about the fastest that an average human can perceive before being able to react; 200ms just about the fastest an average human being can react to. A huge amount of PVP timing is bound by these values.

When balancing, a) don’t wait; if you think you need a change, just doing it will teach you more than not; b) double or half, don’t waste time with smaller adjustments until after the big swings have shown you your limits

DO YOUR STRETCHES AND THANK ME LATER

The problem a lot of marginalized folks have with No Kings events is that it so far appears that they are inclined to pacify people more than they are to make change to a system that has been broken for a long time. Fundamental change needs to happen for things to actually be better for everyone.

Wild swings from “we’re so back” to “it’s so over” and back every, oh, 30 minutes

Me recently:

*Laughs in game designer*

Gaming has to be accessible to children or the whole party is over.

16 1-hour episodes per season, one season a year

the pitt is like. rediscovered lost technology of the ancients. secret ancient lost arts forgotten for a 1000 years. what if a show was well lit so you could see what's happening in it. what if the dialogue was good and also audible. what if episodes ended on cliffhangers. what if

Because not shipping is the tier 0 fail case for game development, long ideation gets a bad rap. But for some class of design problems or ideas generally, there is no substitute for letting them steep at their own pace

Applied to a role today that seems like it was literally written for me (if I get it and announce it you will say “oh of course”), AND emailed a recruiter suggesting one of my reports as a perfect fit for an open role at their studio. Gotta keep on truckin’!!

If the estimates were right, there were about 9 million people at No Kings rallies today. That would mean this protest was THIRTY TIMES AS LARGE AS THE TEA PARTY PROTEST which we were told, over and over again, was a massively important sign that US politics had shifted dramatically to the right

If Slowrunner were a term I think that should basically be the definition of it.

I think I need to become like… an extremely deep expert in 1-2 genres of game, as a player. Like… platinum’d multiple times, played every class to endgame, etc. I’m thinking Souls (style) games and ARPGs might be closest fit for me. Might be my unemployment project.

Really sucks the only way out is through

this is an insane price for a game that does some really excellent work in both its proximity barks (if you’re a nerd) and its power fantasy of “being the biggest dirtbag in a crew of dirtbags” (if you’re not)

one thing you can do for your laid off friends is reach out to them and tell them that you appreciated their work. I dislike the stigma in America of people avoiding talking to you because you were callously cut out of employment because people who have no taste deleted you from a spreadsheet

The Pitt!!!

Losing internal access tomorrow, so spent the afternoon doing all the admin work to make sure contact info is up to date, expense reports made, etc. Very sad! Still have a month to land an internal role, so fingers crossed I hear good news in a week or two- I have small reason to be optimistic!

Here’s the LinkedIn post that I’m looking for work! I’ll be aggressively spinning up my applications now. www.linkedin.com/posts/steven...

No less than FIVE vegan restaurants within 20 minutes of us have closed since we moved here. Now there’s… two? left?

Here’s the LinkedIn post that I’m looking for work! I’ll be aggressively spinning up my applications now. www.linkedin.com/posts/steven...

Jess and I ask each other “are you revenge bedtime procrastinating?” and gleefully reply “yes!!”

Gonna drop the gimmick for a second and explain, as a therapist. What you're describing is a phenomenon called Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. It's a subconscious habit that develops in which a person seeks dopamine-releasing behavior at night to exact "revenge" on the day which deprived them

Manifesting good personal news… in 1.5-2 weeks 🫠🫠🫠

Researchers say they have developed a new way to transplant healthy mitochondria into animals harboring defective versions—a strategy the team hopes could one day treat certain neurodegenerative disorders and inherited genetic diseases in people. https://scim.ag/4uND3mi

leave behind your need for harry potter and come over to the world of anime. we've got 2 of the best fantasy things in recent memory (delicious in dungeon and freiren) and another fantastic looking one coming out this year (witch hat atelier). don't be ashamed, nobody is going to tell adam sessler

wouldn't be the first time disney killed sora

vibe coded bluesky is STRUGGLING this morning eating likes, refusing to send replies, taking 30s to post… yeesh

That recruiter conversation I was having yesterday looks different in the cold light of morning 🫠

Two pilots dead at LaGuardia. A lone controller managing two simultaneous emergencies. The FAA is 3,000 controllers short. We will blame the human. We should fix the system. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

Might fuck around and replay Bloodborne

11 Years of Bloodborne. 🥳 #Bloodborne #ブラッドボーン #VPRepost #VPSupport #VirtualPhotography

Manifesting good personal news… Tomorrow!!!