Rule of thumb: you need at least one QA person for every 10 contributors in your team (where by "contributor" I mean anyone who contributes or updates assets in the project on a regular basis).

20 people sitting in a conf call, worrying because some guy is angry the game doesn't have the colorblind mode (it actually does).

If you like Start Trek and narrative-driven games, you might want to give this game my client has just released a try: (you won't see my work directly, but Toni and Luna, two of our talented designers, used the tool I made for them a lot and pushed it to its limits)

Oooh, this post is doing numbers, I gloat, as it reaches 10 reposts and almost 30 likes. If only I had something to plug shamelessly...

Of course it never occurred to the tech bros that if you convince people you're giving them a virtual friend / romantic partner, and after that you phase the service out, then for all intents and purposes you've just killed their friend.

If I, a video game designer, could have one message to all the nerds in the world, it would be don't worry about your PCs and consoles, we'll just make games for the ones you already have and they're going to be great. Instead, spare a thought for all the medical equipment at your nearest hospital.

This made me look into the settings and discover there's about a dozen of those labels, and some them sound quite arbitrary.

A few days ago I finished drawing furbolg for a friend~ There it is ✨ #art #warcraft #furbolg

One of side effects of having spent three years working with actual Germans is I can't stand Germans doing self-depreciating comedy that leans into the American stereotype of a German. Real Germans don't talk like that.

It's interesting how 30 years on we're at the same time more relaxed about discussing bazongas, and more aware of the fact that it's not fine to make your opinion of someone else's bazongas their problem.

Every photo from Minneapolis looks like this. Cops decked out with guns and full tac gear facing off against people in bathrobes, parkas, and sweatpants armed only with whistles and cell phones. Yet every verified MAGA chode on X dutifully calls it a riot or violent insurrection.

PSA: when you have a remote gamedev team, where half of your staff lives hundreds of kilometres away, announcing a release party six days in advance, at the company office, on the release day, i.e. on a Wednesday, is perhaps not the most brilliant idea, if you want people to actually get there.

I feel I could use one of those vacations where you're nowhere near your home, your workstation isn't there, your household chores aren't there, but some nice people are there and you get to hang out with them without worrying that you need to be home by midnight. (seven days left to Steam release)

Game developers on strike. I didn't think I was going to live to see it.

I was blissfully unaware of the impending Valentines, a "holiday" I wouldn't celebrate even if I were in a relationship, until the leading local e-commerce platform decided to spam me with ads for "games for couples". I guess I'll just play some more "Rogue Trader" where romance is creepy and toxic

A literal burglar robs the rich people and local bigots blind, because the rent for his flat is due.

I wrote a (niche, technical) book back in 2016, it took me a year, it sold around a thousand copies (so far), and it's one of a few things I genuinely consider an accomplishment, because I keep bumping into industry folk who have read and liked the book and now think I'm a cool guy because of that.

If I accidentally cut myself while preparing the dough for potato pancakes, and a drop of my blood makes its way into the pot, does it mean the dough is no longer vegan? (to be clear, it was never going to be vegan in any case, because it needs eggs)

Incidentally, the video game project I've worked on that releases this month was also started in 2023. In other words, if someone started making a video game with genAI back then, they should be done by now, unless genAI is, you know, shit at making video games. (spoiler: yes it is)

I have two cats who wait for their meals patiently (i.e. they're all over my desk but mostly just sit there and stare at me). I also have a third cat who walks around the flat and just screams she's hungry. She can do that for an hour and only stops when I get up from my chair.

I'm now well into the second chapter of "Rogue Trader", and I'm not sure if it's intended, because I don't know enough about WH40k, but it's very consistently portraying the human empire as an unstable place on the brink of complete collapse (and not because of the demons!).

Looking for an experienced, EU-based systems designer / narrative designer / level designer / lead designer / technical designer / gameplay programmer? Didn't think so. But hey, I'm out of gigs! My last job was gameplay and tools programming for the upcoming Star Trek: Voyager game.

Perhaps it's just a case of low initial expectations (I don't like WH40k) but I'm so far enjoying Rogue Trader (a sprawling cRPG set in WH40k). Good pacing, decent combat system, non-trivial NPCs, heck, even writing and acting are fine.

So far this year the winter in Warsaw has peaked at -17 degrees Celsius, which roughly corresponds to 0 Fahrenheit. This is not "exceptionally" cold but definitely in the lower regions of what's normal for our climate. In terms of latitude, Warsaw is roughly half-way between Calgary and Edmonton.

Today Poland is rolling our its new standardised system for digital invoicing, and I feel I'm going to regret saying this out loud, but I'm a bit surprised that it only took me about 15 minutes to set it up on my side and I *think* I've understood everything.

The more time passes, the more the original "Deus Ex" turns from being a weirdly prophetic pastiche into a documentary, and words cannot describe how uncomfortable I feel about it. (to be clear, it's one of the best video games I've ever played, a well deserved classic etc.)

Two things I'd like gamers to stop saying in their opinions about games: that they were "rushed", and that they were "abandoned". Every single team I've worked with has always fought tooth and nail for two things: to get the deadlines postponed, and to get more time for bugfixing.

As one of the comments pointed out, the user literally gave the chatbot an instruction to "be a feminist" i.e. talk like one. He meant it as a judgement, but that was too complicated for the bot that's programmed to take commands. Which in my opinion makes the whole thing all the more hilarious.

Hot take: the Second American Civil War has already started, only it's a hybrid war, so instead of two armies clashing there are "little green men".

I guess it's a sign of times that the story synopsis I'm writing down as my guilty pleasure / coping mechanism ends with a choice between blackmailing a politician and exposing them.

Today's video game discourse appears to be "who criticises the critics". I feel it has obvious direct answers (e.g. "a lot of people do and they're often very unkind"), and a less than obvious meta answer which is: "it would be in the spirit of what we're preaching to simply disagree and move on".

The Minnesota protesters' strategy appears to be working. Wearing down ICE morale was their stated goal.

Guess what, YT is now randomly pushing shorts from science communicators doing PSAs about tear gas and such. I'm having flashbacks from 2017 Poland, but in a good way for a change.

Bluesky is this peculiar place where you can get reliable news, and also basically unlimited amounts of cartoon porn. I don't necessarily chase either, but I have friends who do and I care about my friends, so for better or worse I partake in their preoccupations.

I don't know about you, but my coping mechanism for Bad Stuff Happening Around Me is I try to sit down and write down a story idea, synopsis, or even the whole story. Best case is I turn it into a project pitch and get funded. Worst case is someone looks over my shoulder and doesn't like it.

I installed "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided" a few days ago and replayed it to remind myself why I didn't quite enjoy it on my first playthrough years ago. It was less of a mystery than I expected.

This is the way to go. ICE violence needs to make things worse for ICE. Pro tip: with this many people, you can try and stage protests in many places at the same time. This is the police's nightmare scenario. There aren't enough of them to be everywhere.

This thread is 100% truth and I can tell from my own experience here in Warsaw that when the push comes to shove, there's always more work than people, regardless of how many people show up. Our dedicated group for organizing demos and such was 60 people, but we would easily find tasks for 600.

I agree wholeheartedly, which is why all of the current top 5 game ideas in my drawer put the player in a role that doesn't involve the use of violence but does involve working around other people being violent.

Looks like there's a nice big lawn in front of the state capitol in Minneapolis. If I lived there, I would go there now, call all my friends to go there too, and stay there until state authorities do something. The place is some 90k sq metres, should fit some 150k people comfortably.

I've been seeing people referring to -20 degrees as very cold weather today and was almost ready to bring out my 52N latitude pedigree, until I caught up to the fact they were talking -20 Fahrenheit (i.e. -29 Celsius). So, yeah, that's pretty cold. Protesting in these conditions counts double.

This is such a good advice. You don't need to start something. There are people around you who specialise in starting things. Joining something you like is not just great, it's actually the best thing you can do unless you have a *specific* idea for something else.

Mid-life crisis is when life starts to feel like one of those open-world games where you have five different plots running in parallel, and you're stuck in all of them because you're one or two stat points short of crossing some arbitrary threshold.

I've seen misinformation about this being spread in good faith, since people are understandably concerned about each other's health, so here's a repost for balance.

One of the reasons unsolicited advice on protesting doesn't make much sense is that every place has its own dynamics and resulting best practices. Minneapolis is doing something unique right now.

I have no unsolicited advice worth sharing wrt the current crisis in the US, but one thing I feel very confident about is that taking part in that general strike thing is a really good idea right now. Preferably with a good deal of accompanying noise.

The rate at which ICE are escalating their violence is incredibly dangerous and also incredibly dumb in purely operational terms. I won't spell out what can happen next because I don't want anyone to have even a shadow of a suspicion that I might endorse such things.

Eventually, some foreign leader is going to manipulate Trump into signing a very bad deal, and that's when the American far right is going to learn the hard way that having a mentally fit president does matter after all.

That feeling when someone you consider a friend is apparently ignoring your attempts to communicate though multiple channels (in a professional matter), and you have to guess if they're mad at you, sick, got fired, are on vacation, are having a technical issue, or it's just a coincidence.

Here's a short video (in English, by a guy from the UK who lives in Germany) on why ICE is not analogue to the Gestapo, but rather to the SA. Ironically, that's bad for ICE, since the Nazis eventually assassinated SA leadership in order to neutralise potential challengers.