So long, Substack! I've moved my newsletter, Kirk's Notes, to a new home with its own URL and everything. I wrote about that, along with some other plans for 2026: www.kirksnotes.com/p/new-home-n...

Here’s a “I didn’t play for a week and now the Christmas event stuff started and every recurring revenue system reset requiring a new pop up” version that is somehow twice as long

Phantasy Star Online ver.2 (DC / Sonic Team / 2001) - Pioneer II

Something in this episode derails us harder than we have ever derailed before, and it starts with me reading off the names of softcore titles from the 1990s.

Really funny to me that Jake Paul got his clocked clean exactly one year after @eyepatchwolf.bsky.social's breakdown of his whole boxing racket. youtu.be/ktLaMInfono

Six Ages for 10 dollars is a completely non-optional deal imo. if you don't know, it is your duty to find out

- Did it require me being sick & 9 years minus one day to watch @notquitereal.bsky.social & @austinwalker.bsky.social play The Division Survival dlc? - Yes. - Am I still glad? - Oh hell yes. The Division 1's Survival DLC is a super interesting standalone game mode with systemic spice. (1/2)

Is this movie a train wreck? Yes. Do I think I have my best joke of the year on this episode? Also yes.

YES! this is what techbros who have let their creative selves wither call "procrastination" or "inefficiency" and try to technologise away, not understanding that it is the source of creativity and imagination and everything good

beating a dead horse but part of what makes art both worthwhile to the creator of it and interesting to the beholder is that you can’t actually beam ideas from your head into exactly what you imagined that way when you make it yourself, and the left turns and fingerprints are all part of it

Here it is. The final 24 hours. You've helped coax banked embers into a steady flame. Tell me, what is one thing you'll bring with you into What-Comes-Next? Seeds? Thread? A good kitchen knife? What will you make of what's left? Together, let's light up the world. www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

Breakdown of where the money you pay for a game on Steam goes: - 30% goes to Valve, right off the top. - The remaining 70% goes to the publisher, and is split with the developer based on their contract. Usually the publisher will want to recoup their investment before paying the devs. ...

it's now been 8 hours so i think i can say: austin reads half a chapter of war and peace aloud in this one. i'm advertising to the people for whom this is an incentive to back us on patreon, rather than a deterrent. that's the audience i want

It's that time of the year again

We spoke to a dozen professional concept artists who are currently or have previously worked in game development about whether generative AI image tools have made their jobs any easier. Zero said it did. Most said it made things harder. thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/conc...

30 hours left for Apocalypse World: Burned Over on @kickstarter.com. Would love to see it hit 200k! www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

There is a prison of judgment and success-chasing most artists get heaved into at an early age and can take a lifetime to get free from. You gotta understand that the process—not the product!—is the thing. Others are entertained as a byproduct of you attending to rituals you construct for yourself.

this is to me the same issue in terms of why I was upset about Larian: a pattern of behaving badly towards the labor that makes a game possible

Fish Poem

when i tell you that this episode has a tangent in it, i promise you that you are not prepared

If you want to communicate your idea to an artist all you need is 30 seconds and the basic ability to grip a pen

speaking as and artist or writer or whatever, research (verb) is more important than research (noun)

We're back with the final Outward Let's Play ep of the year! www.patreon.com/posts/lets-p...

smoking a joint with Wario on this porch in the winter would fix me

think of all the times you've been deep in the records and see something that makes you say 'that can't mean what i think it means right'

This is such a misunderstanding of why writers, artists, and designers do research to begin with, which is to find something unexpected, not capture the average or find reference for the default. And, as always, the biggest misapprehension: We don’t want to NOT do this part. It’s fun to learn shit

I loved this one so much. I’m usually turned off by "wrong" and romanticized retro aesthetics, but Ruin isn't quite a retro game. It feels closer to the blurred memory of playing games as a child. ~15 min - Browser

it is funny when someone admonishingly says "You gotta pick your battles" in response to people picking their battles

‘The Circuit Slate’ commissioned for the upcoming ttrpg ‘Realis’ by @austinwalker.bsky.social

Why We're Boycotting Xbox: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybj1...

Very weird feeling waiting for the president to announce an illegal war based on total bullshit that they made up right in front of our faces on TV, almost like I've lived through this moment before

Ramen from the rainy Bernband restaurant would fix me

this is really NOT the important part but I keep thinking that if you are going as far as generating AI graphics for your internal studio powerpoint presentations you have lost the plot and are spending time making it look slick and not on making it informative and moving on to some other task

You hear it screaming across the sky, the familiar song of your rival's machine of war. You ready yourself, and sing to your own. Dragon Reactor's digital edition is AVAILABLE NOW! https://forktwenty.itch.io/dragonreactor

I meant to post about this earlier but in 15 minutes, at 3.30 et, @notquitereal.bsky.social's going to return to the SEGA DREAMCAST with a choice by @carberry.deals, plus guests twitch.tv/friendsatthetable

"look we're not using AI in the final product we're just using it to speed up the conceptual stage" is what a lot of dopes affecting an enlightened middle position keep saying. I truly do not get that one. You hate imagining stuff? You don't like thinking and conceptualizing? Get a grip

larians recruitment process features prominently in this:

Everyone is more or less okay with it” dude you make people emigrate to work there because you don’t do remote work, they risk having to change countries if they disagree with it

FWIW, Larian isn't alone in this sort of thing. The application-to-hiring gauntlet should not take six months, but a number of studios do this because they know there's a pool of candidates that will jump through the endless hoops and swim the oceans of stress to get to the finish line.

Once in a century political opportunity here, if only there were a party to claim it

🏘️

Sprawling yet intimate, the new RPG Angeline Era offers sharp, personal design in an age of open world excess. Read @gracemachine.bsky.social's review. www.avclub.com/angeline-era...

Now live!

Finally, I'll get to choose a Uniqueness.

I am so proud of them. the kids did it. they made a new stupid number to say. they may now take their place in history.

A reminder that my free deduction/horror/parser game KINOPHOBIA is now available in its final, more polished version. Explore a haunted movie studio; research its history; identify the wretched souls trapped by a curse inscribed in celluloid. brunodias.itch.io/kinophobia

Despelote is one of my favorite games of the last few years. Documentarian and personal and unlike anything else I’ve played. Go run around as a little kid trying to make sense of the world in the shadow of the World Cup.

Josh hits it.

man..........