I've unfortunately got to cut back on some subscriptions. What do we think is more valuable: LinkedIn Gold or Pokemon Home? ...It's definitely Home, right?

Now that I'm done traveling and have slept the requisite amount - I wanted to share how incredible AIIDE was and how amazing the community is. The amount of kind and brilliant people blew my mind. I've been buzzing for a few days on the ideas shared there and am reinvigorated on my research. (1/5)

My work concerning the use of LLMs for authoring interactive narrative has just been published in Transactions on Games! We explore if LLMs could produce writing for IDNs, and if we SHOULD use LLMs in this creative writing from perspectives of actual authors. I'll let you explore our findings :)

omg I can play standard again

Sam Shields @smshieldsy.bsky.social presents Playtrace Arc Search, which essentially acts as a 'heatmap' of playtraces for designers to use for posthoc analysis. Very neat stuff!

I started having wrist pain, so I built a new firmware for my Preonic Rev3 keyboard so that I have full mouse controls in my home row, removing the need for me to switch to a mouse/trackpad/trackball, reducing wrist stress. It's on GitHub if you want to check it out! github.com/smshields/qm...

"Oh, this engine doesn't have native scroll views? No worries, I'll just roll my own" *several hours pass* "Scroll views are %@#$ing complicated as hell"

Wait what how

I stared into the abyss and like 300 of these little assholes stared back at me

I'm deeply tickled by the Princess Peach and Megaman X homages back-to-back in Silksong

What are the health implications of replacing all liquid intake with Dr. Pepper Zero ...Asking for a friend

I don't know what's turning sketch comedians into visionary horror directors but please please please keep it coming

My dog's anxiety responses: Fireworks - chill Strangers - love 'em Other Dogs - no worries Racoons - friend shaped A gentle summer breeze moving the curtains - the gaping maw of hell itself has opened and is attempting to swallow me whole into the flaming pits of its caustic stomach

this is your brain on ChatGPT

My Bluesky discover algorithm has discovered that if there is a video of an owl, I will watch it 5-10 times. I now almost exclusively get owl videos. This is excellent social media design

Very excited that my work with Oliver Withington and Eddie Melcer ("Designer Difficulties: Visualizing the Possibility Spaces of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment Systems") was accepted into AIIDE this year! Canada here I come!

New MtG Spider-Man set is not nearly Raimi-coded enough for me to be excited about it

Good climbs last weekend.

A brief history of self-approved PRs

Just finished "Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something" by Susan Griffin. While I read it in an effort to improve my writing, I found nearly every passage in it a deep metaphor for creative work; similar to how "The Inner Game of Tennis" can be used for all performance. I deeply loved it.

Gameboy Camera filters have quickly become my favorite lens for the world.

omg I can play standard again

Just made this to explain the string section of an orchestral score to gamers. You're welcome.

this set is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sick

If I don't get End of Evangelion (EoE) references in the Edge of Eternities (EoE) MtG set I just don't know what I'm going to do... ...Oh that's right proxies

I have this sinking feeling that interacting with LLM-driven NPCs will drive the same emotional response in me as accidentally asking this silly owl to repeat himself for the fourth time

Just throwing out there: It's a GOOD thing when NPCs stop talking (or start repeating themselves) after they've finished delivering everything of gameplay or storytelling value You want the player to know that it's time to move on

Generative AI feels good because it rapidly gets us to a result that feels competent, which would require skills we don't have. But in skipping the part where we're bad, we miss out on huge chunks of the creative process - and I don't think any of us have any idea what the implications of that are.

Working on graduating to the trackball dactyl elite

I refuse to pay the "Sol Ring Tax" whenever I build a new commander deck

Had such an amazing GDC this year. I kept joking I met most of my idols on my Bluesky feed, and quite a few more that I didn't expect. The games industry is filled with wonderful, curious, and talented people. So glad to meet you all and can't wait to see the amazing things you all do next!

Feeling good that adaptive difficulty is dropping as a use case. I don't think it's useful to pipe difficulty settings out to an LLM considering it's multimodal, tied to emergent experience, requires play testing to evaluate, is often rooted in quantitative, parametric definitions, etc...

Also... I may have "accidentally left" my commander deck in my bag so... If you prefer slinging spells over coffee I guess I can make that work

I'm at GDC this week!!! If anyone is open to chatting game balancing or systems design (or know someone who does) I would love to grab a coffee and pick your brain.

Anyone else in the habit of furiously refreshing a conference website in the hopes of a deadline extension

This video is excellent to explain how parameterization, character state sequencing and timing, managing balance between character strengths and weaknesses, and maintaining tone while achieving variety in gameplay works in game development.

I really hope this new optical sensors in the switch 2 means we're finally getting a sequel to Mario Paint. I really just need to compose Smash Mouth's All Star using exclusively Yoshi sounds this year

David Lynch’s passing is a tragic loss to film and art as a whole. I’ll never forget getting sucked into Eraserhead in high school and realizing the potential for storytelling in surreal, tonal images and plots. I’ll be having my diner counter coffee in his honor this weekend.