One of the sweetest moments of the march: a bunch of shop floor staff at a fancy boutique suddenly having a flash of inspiration and rushing to grab plain shirts to make a trans flag at the window.

M is one of the most exciting researchers in the game. Whatever they are cooking up will 100% be cool as heck and you should help them make it

Well would you believe it. The Horror At Highrook is ON SALE!!! store.steampowered.com/app/2836860/... So if you have been waiting to see what those 230+ very positive reviews are all about maybe now is the time to check it out! 20% off!

glad to see people really liked this one! unfortunately it seems like youtube doesn't really know where to send it so impressions are unusually low, so any shares are appreciated

These BioShock beta screens are well worth a look, if just for the 'placeholder atrocity'. www.reddit.com/r/Bioshock/c...

🏃New blog post!🏃 This time I'm writing about the "triumphal procession" of video games - what gets included in the video game canon? And what makes a video game worthy of study, or even just being remembered? florencesmithnicholls.com/2025/05/23/f...

🎉 YARN SPINNER 3 IS OUT NOW 🎉 for Unity, Godot, VSCode + try.yarnspinner.dev Including: - Storylets, enums, simple "run this bit only once" syntax - Better variables, easier-to-customise views - Bugfixes + QoL improvements galore - All-new docs + guides Check it out at yarnspinner.dev/v3 💚

new blog post: turned my gdc 2025 level design theory talk into a blog post www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2025/05/spac...

Any time anyone points out a pun I'd never spotted it makes me paranoid for ages. Like I'm surrounded by an invisible alien threat who's goal is to make me feel foolish when I least expect it

Absolutely delighted that the first episode of the podcast I’ve been making with Ubisoft and HistoryHit is now out wherever you get your podcasts! We discuss creating Victorian London in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, featuring an interview with the lead writer ✍️ open.spotify.com/episode/0kTv...

#FDG2025 was an absolute blast! 3rd year attending, 3rd year of it being the highlight of my PhD. Inspiring talks, cool new projects and the most welcoming and exciting community I've encountered. To all who attended and especially the organisers, sending all of my love. Cannot wait for FDG2026!

You can find the impressive (and free) BBC sound effects archive here: sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk

Day 2 #fdg kicking off! My favorite event in the academic calendar.

I really try and finish games before moving onto new ones, but the Blue Prince FOMO I'm getting from all of y'all is getting to be too much to bear

I just found out about this periodic table of game mechanics that is fun to experiment with for brainstorming and game jams. determined-clams.static.domains/chipped #gamejam #brainstorm #gamedev #indiedev

Buddy of mine is trying to use genAI to make assets for his game. Sent me a mesh he'd generated for a basic targeting arrow and asked if I could give it a quick tidy up in Blender. Opened it up and...lol

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

New Game: Mike Cook Presents SQORP! A Digital Puzzle Game It's a quick little game about laying tiles in a grid, inspired by a mathematical puzzle. Play free on itch, in the browser: illomens.itch.io/sqorp #pico8

What game had an overall bigger negative impact on singleplayer game design because people took the wrong lessons from it: Half-Life 2 or Dark Souls? — neospring.org/+r/168016012...

‘An overwhelmingly negative and demoralizing force’: what it’s like working for a company that’s forcing AI on its developers aftermath.site/ai-video-game-...

After 2+ decades of it being hyped up I've finally been playing Planescape: Torment and fair play, its amazing. I especially love how it lets you add your intent to dialogue choices. Feels so cool every time and i'm shocked I've not seen that ripped off more in other RPGs

It's trans day of visibility so I'm going to yell more about all the games I make outside of my day job My main project is a lesbian post apocalyptic road trip visual novel that I started as a way to make a visual novel in an engineering department (also Rika is trans <3)

brutalist bloki a thread with an accumulation of screenshots from all the modeling i've been doing for my procedural city . . giant abandoned structures . . #gamedev

Absolutely delighted to be writing for Amberspire!! When Nic approached me I jumped at the opportunity to work on such a brilliant project and with a ridiculously talented team 💫 So excited for people to see what we’re creating… I think it’s really special

Finally watched Alien Romulus on the flight home and it was...fine. But introducing a door that looks like this and at no point having it chop anyone or anything in half is an Art Crime.

Thank you GDC! What a strange, tiring but delightful week. More cogent thoughts to follow but for now: safe travels, and hope to see you next year!

The reason I went back to making Balatro 3 months after I essentially gave it up in March 2022 was because I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League

New video out! This time talking about the three cruelest pieces of game design I've ever experienced. Algorithm was not a fan of this one but I loved making it and based on the handful of lovely comments, folks who gave it a go are enjoying it.

There's a great gdc talk from many years ago about games of skill, games of chance, and games of labor (where it's about time invested not skill or luck). Which makes me think that maybe this all maps to Power Fantasies, Productivity Fantasies, and maybe Lottery Fantasies.

We will be having a Roguelike Celebration GDC meetup this year! ✨ The gathering will take place at Yerba Buena Gardens on Tuesday the 18th from 12:30-2:30pm. Add it to your calendar! Let us know if we'll see you there! Until then, beware of unidentified scrolls. 📜

Hello! I have a little survey about procedural generation and games. No expert knowledge required - it's for anyone to take and fill in. It'll take about 5 minutes to complete. RTs appreciated! forms.gle/AN4zFDxodQyx...

Hello, I'm giving a talk at GDC about writing Tactical Breach Wizards, called How to String a Joke Out for 15 Hours. schedule.gdconf.com/session/inde... It's on Monday at 4.40pm, and it features things like this shot, illustrating why our tactical wizard generator did not produce anything useable.

You know who should've won an Oscar last night? The person who designed the little 'Gravity on / off' buttons in Alien Romulus.

good philosophical deep-dive on “value capture”: the phenomenon of people outsourcing their values to external metrics; the mechanisms by which it occurs; the potential benefits and (especially) costs philpapers.org/rec/NGUVCH

I'm on the precipice of starting a new game project and I might need someone to stop me. This project has '5 years down the drain' written all over it and yet I cannot resist the call. Been thinking about this game for over a year now and I think I need to see if I can bring it into existence

New Post - Muse: Before You Tweet Hello! Microsoft's new Muse system isn't trying to generate game ideas. If you want a concise summary of what the paper tries to do, and a few notes and criticisms about the project, I wrote something about it. www.possibilityspace.org/blog-before-...

newsletter out!! this one's about Alan Wake 2, one of my favorite games of the last few years. buttondown.com/aysha_u_fara...

Two nice milestones over on Youtube. Hit 2k subscribers and 200k views on my Skyrim vid on the same day. Been my first time getting significant online attention which obviously come with downsides but overall I've been loving this new(ish) journey

this advice can be applied to any creative pursuit and is SO important this idea of creating the "masterpiece" held me captive as a young creative. i never let anyone see my work because it was never perfect yet. those works were wonderful—and long buried in dust relish CREATION not perfection

i'm absolutely devastated man... 52... i don't use the word lightly but antonov was an actual visionary. his eye for art direction was unlike any other and has been so incredibly inspiring. one of the few who's work you could instantly recognise. this is heartbreaking

Week spent in hospital with my youngest was made so much better by this view out our window. Fire safety door inexplicably leading directly onto a 3 story drop, secured only by the worlds smallest padlock. Perfect black comedic surrealism, 10/10 no notes. Every time I saw it it lifted my spirits

In this weeks newsletter, I recount my trip to Dagstuhl Seminar 24261: Computational Creativity for Game Development. Discussing how research AI for games can evolve in a world where generative AI runs rampant but is often useless in actual game production. www.aiandgames.com/p/a-week-dis...

New Club Flashpoint episode out!!! We played Judero and had a wonderful time. Give it a listen and a retweet. Next month we play Citizen Sleeper 2 crossflash.network/club-flashpo...

hey did you know there's a website called nudel.cc where you can just watch like a dozen different people livecode art and music at the same time, in a huge amazing mess? and you can just edit anything?

Best in the game returns! I dream of being able to write with the clarity and passion of Noah one day

Ok so if you want actual thoughts on DeepSeek, here are a few tweets: first, benchmark performance is of dubious usefulness except for AI companies competing with each other to claim superior performance. We have too many benchmarks that don't reflect real usage. themarkup.org/artificial-i...

You asked for it! Is there no good video game writing? Here's a better question, what makes video game writing *interesting*? Featuring excerpts from 1000xRESIST and Mouthwashing: florencesmithnicholls.com/2025/01/20/g...

I wonder how many players the game industry is _still_ losing to the complexity of 3D game controls, but they feel so normal to those of us WITHIN the industry after all these years that we don't even think to make that easier.

Thrilled that this March I'll be speaking at my first #GDC2025! Catch me at the AI Summit talking techniques for visualising procgen system output that could be useful for your next game. If you're attending and want to talk anything and everything procgen I'd love to chat!

Favourite piece from the Electric Dreams exhibition at Tate Modern is by Davide Boriani. I recommend seeing these iron shaving creatures in person if you can time it right, as they take little rest breaks https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/electric-dreams