The biggest surprise in this year's GUR Speaker Summit is that we didn't have enough data for the 2025 salary survey. Games User Researchers, please fill out the survey now! Also please share the survey link with your GUR friends/coworkers! gamesursalarysurvey.com

"ooh! what if we—" what if we stuck to the plan we originally agreed to and i mentally prepared for. what if we did that

The fastest time to die in a video game is the original Karateka. The player spawns next to a cliff and can die immediately by taking one step backwards.

I loved this talk from @rich-lem.bsky.social when I first saw it at GDC, and it inspired me to push for our own in-engine data visualizations for Destiny.

Hey folks. I was impacted by the layoffs at Amazon today. If you or someone you know is in need of a UX Researcher with multiple years of experience leading or supporting research initiatives, games or otherwise, please DM me or reach out to me on LinkedIIn. www.linkedin.com/in/cdwheelock

Elvis is the rare celebrity of yesteryear that if anything would fit in even more today because he was super into self defense and being high on drugs and talking to a crooked President and dating a teenager, he’d 100000% have a crypto thing going on

dudes rock

100% this Whenever folks outside the industry say things like “why don’t devs just do [extra thing]?”, it translates in my head to “you’re already juggling twelve greased chainsaws while walking a tightrope. Why can’t you just light them on fire as well?”

Speaker announcement📢 The full lineup for GAConf USA 2025 is now online, including lots of previously unannounced talks - from FC26 to the Nhuad controller, from AbleToPlay to South of Midnight! gaconf.com/schedule Sept 29th - 30th, registration at gaconf.com #gamedev #indiedev

The Sharp Tranket transistor radio (1960)

My book, The Secret Science of Games, is free on Kindle today! Disclaimer: This book contains angry rants, embarrassing game dev stories I shouldn’t have included, questionable life advice, and a lot of strong opinions on how to make games. #games #gamedev #ux #uxr www.amazon.com/Secret-Scien...

excited to get 'what i do' (my series interviewing individuals about their specific jobs in the games industry) back on the site and this was GREAT, @bentaels.bsky.social has some extremely interesting stuff to say about UX, as well as dispelling some myths about the field

Amazing things that benefit everyone can come from optimizing for small groups of weirdos. One that sticks in my mind is the small roller bags that we all use for travel, which were originally designed for flight attendants.

Confluence is a detective/mystery game

Unfortunately I've been impacted by this round of Xbox layoffs. I'll miss being part of Team Green, and judging from other folks I'm seeing that also got hit, at least I'm in some fantastic company. So, looking for my next opportunity - more info: www.linkedin.com/posts/james-...

In case you're having a bad day, here's a picture of a stone from an ancient roman seal ring showing a mouse riding in a tiny chariot pulled by a rooster.

How do government documents, locked away on tiny sheets of microfiche, become searchable & accessible online? Now you can see it happen in real time. 🎞️⤵️ Watch it live: www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5R... #InternetArchive #LiveStream #LiveNow

Just saw a comedian say "If vaccines caused autism then America would have trains" and I almost spit out my drink.

ideia de jogo: second person shooter sua namorada dispara nas coisas enquanto vc leva a mochilinha dela com as munições e itens de cura

How to get into Games UX Research: - Go to www.gamesur.com for talks & articles - join their Discord! - Network with folks online/IRL. Be friendly. - Psych/HCI or other human research science degree - QA experience in games is useful - Play & care about games - Tech confidence is a bonus - Be lucky

I can’t wait until someone asks it to code a game with a dark pattern and the AI calls Kotaku on them.

What I like about role-playing games is that they allow you to act out power fantasies that you could never achieve in real life.

Just found out about the r/changemyview experiment that was run without informed consent from the moderators or participants. This is egregious and the research is not worth the ethical violation these researchers caused. I wrote a whole paper on when FB did it journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

I Will Fucking Dropkick You If You Use That Spreadsheet ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-... “You don't have to live like this. … Just put the spreadsheet down and we can work with databases. Do you remember databases, and possibly happiness?” (via @copystar.bsky.social’s excellent newsletter)

The "antiwoke" guys are calling Marathon a "genderqueer shooter" and I don't think they understand how cool that sounds.

A couple more masters students need some more results for their studies. This one is about motion sickness in games forms.office.com/e/ySiaF1yNFM

THEY ARE DOING SANCTUARY MOON THIS IS NOT A DRILL

NEW 🧵 A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far: 1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively. These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.

Yep

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

The 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 is 𝚏̲𝚛̲𝚎̲𝚎̲ on Kindle for the next two days! www.amazon.com/Secret-Scien... Please let people know this is available, I only get a few days to make it free per year and I'd love to see as many people take advantage of the window. #games #ux #uxr #gamedev #gdc

Just reminded myself how hard the ending of Coffin Text Spell 714 goes

Me as a kid: No way the Roman senate would let a horse in there. Me, 2018: I completely understand the Incitatus thing. It's about the slow but significant loss of norms, the gradual descent into destabilization. Me, now: Oh please God, I hope the US Senate lets a horse in there

I was unfortunately impacted by the studio closure today. I appreciate any support or leads and am open to new work.

📣 The @igda.org Analytics and Data Science SIG is hosting a roundtable at #gdc2025 on March, 19th, chaired by @johnhopson.bsky.social to discuss the evolving role of data in the games industry. Full details here: schedule.gdconf.com/session/anal...

Really excited to share more at GDC!!!. This project is one of the best and most impactful I had the chance of working on those past years. Plus we have a stellar moderator and passionate copanelists. It's going to be amazing!

Dems are still operating in a political paradigm where the public has a set of concerns, roughly reflecting the reality of life in America, and elections are about who addresses them better. But that is not the political paradigm we’ve lived in, for a long time, and we’re getting further from it.

This is completely true, although it’s not always that bad. A lot of the time it’s “how do I rebuild the wheel in a way that incorporates everything I learned last time and meshes with the cool new things other departments are doing?” Still exhausting, tho.

It's amazing how much time in spent in game development just... reinventing the wheel.

One aspect of peer review systems that a lot of bosses skip is putting their own work up for peer review by their team. Making my own draft surveys or reports available for comment and critique by my team is a great opportunity to model how to accept feedback.

Like a lot of folks in the games industry this year, I’m looking for a new position. In this thread are some of the things I’ve done in the past which I’m particularly proud of.

I'm fine if my games are just entertainment. People deserve to enjoy their lives. While I wouldn't claim what I make is a nutritionally complete media diet, I'm fine being someone who makes really good desserts.