i've got wabi sabi

Hey, this is your reminder that @georgiacooked.bsky.social and I are making The Deepest Dark for #ZineMonth! It's a GM-less, tragic horror ttrpg about getting trapped underground. (If we want to get into Zinetopia, we need 400 followers in the next week.) Please sign up for updates!

It was deliberate intentional and from the top down. That's how you do it.

brighton and south east game devs: we're having a show and tell on friday! bring your latest build and your notebook, share your work with other devs, eat pastries, profit????

brighton and south east game devs: we're having a show and tell on friday! bring your latest build and your notebook, share your work with other devs, eat pastries, profit????

Insane flex apnews.com/article/zohr...

every podcast

after eleven years in the gig I finally made it official

I'm quite interested in the histories of other art forms and their relationship with commerce, so of course I'm reading a book about Kate Bush, singular musical auteur and commander of her own destiny since '77

after eleven years in the gig I finally made it official

@samuelwroberts.bsky.social catching up on The Back Page and DELIGHTED over how many times Promise Mascot Agency and especially my girl Pinky have come up in the end of year chats! My wife worked on that game! True indie power couple status: achieved

Got some new tattooooooooooos

In our little world (me and the children), a seagull on George's head is an excellent sign, I pass it to you for the new year

call me crazy but it really feels like “World’s Richest Man Creates AI Chatbot That Generates Child Porn” would’ve been a huge international outrage requiring a governmental crackdown not even 24 months ago

Really hoping that anyone making a "Games to look forward to in 2026" list hasn't forgotten about our game, Forbidden Solitaire, which is due out early in 2026. store.steampowered.com/app/3414580/...

I will never be convinced that cool whip is anything but an industrial byproduct, created accidentally and unfit for human consumption

By any reasonable historical standard — including that of the technology industry! — ChatGPT should be pulled from the market and its product managers and executives held accountable for creating a product that ROUTINELY tells teens to kill themselves. This is a basic, common sense standard.

If you played The Blue Prince, or Fallen London, and/or are queer, and appreciate a thing of beauty made with care, I cannot recommend this book enough.

the first time in history this shit has happened. first time and it's on camera. what a privilege

If anyone wants to jump into Journey right now you'll make my kid's life

If you played The Blue Prince, or Fallen London, and/or are queer, and appreciate a thing of beauty made with care, I cannot recommend this book enough.

idk personally I like making things with my brain and my weird fingers

Happy almost christmas~

Every conversation about genAI in games reinforces two things for me: 1. People don't know how games are made 2. People know what they like, but they don't know whether something is good

In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shortswaiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. So when she came to town, I grabbed a camera and headed down to talk to them. I thought it'd be funny. It turned out to be something else entirely.

I was explaining to my 5yo what the ironing board and iron were - no ironing happens here, I'll be real - and she cut me off to tell me she knows what ironing is because she's seen grandma do it

Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words. But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.

i got to rant about LLM chatbots in games + my fears about the dead future that tech oligarchs want for all of us, alongside some very clever + thoughtful folks. thanks so much @samuelhorti.bsky.social for giving me the space & time to articulate all of this

Chris nailing it as usual, including the point that sums up my feelings: why? Why would I want this in my games?

Pinky⭐ is life

I've had it up to my ears with the fucking Grinch. I don't mind a bit of Dr Seuss but why is the Grinch all over everything here this year? Walmart/Asda and McDonald's are shitting everything up with this business

Fallen London (2009)

In other words, D&D-like imaginative play became possible during certain periods, often among women, and much of its history has been barely noticed in favor of the wargaming that bloomed *among only men* during the hyper-reactionary 1820-1848 period.

It’s almost like those with vested interests in companies ruining the planet and harming working people don’t want a party in power who’ll hold them to account.

Play the whole thing, then buy the soundtrack. You will then know what heaven is.

Just read a BBC article about thieves who targeted gay men using Grindr. They threatened and humiliated their targets, hoping they'd be too ashamed to report the crimes. The blatant homophobia used by lawyers in court about the victims is really awful! It basically reads as 'they deserved it'!

One last thing from us this year! A cheeky Switch sale on all of our games. It'll last two weeks. Enjoy.

You know the "eerily polite family is a clan of cannibals" trope. Failbetter will have their eerily polite family want you to stay and sleep so your dreams about the sun will cause a crystal to slowly form in your brain that will later be painfully extracted and traded for a story of blood

The Failbetter sunless games are one of those deals where I don't think everyone will love them but if they ARE your thing they will become a part of your personality. If you like worldbuilding, weird bullshit, reading a lot of text, and feeling very small and out of your depth, give em a look

These are perfect "play while vaguely nodding and saying 'uhuh' around relatives over Christmas" games. Highly recommend.

I do think this is true. I'm often guilty myself of underplaying what the work I do looks like or how much time and effort it takes. Research isn't 'just reading' or a question of sucking up summaries others have created. It's knowledge creation. So let me go through the process with an example 1/

The winds are wild, the lacre deep. The snarling stones arise from sleep. The Fifth's tales may exalt the suns but never hope to halt what comes.

Final post office run before Christmas. Order in the next couple of hours and yours will be going out too. www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4...

If your don't know why AI isn't good at research, you're already not doing good research

This is an inside baseball question about a Big Potato game but perhaps someone on here would know Are they not making Ok Play Duel anymore? I need those yellow and purple tiles!

Came across Clarissa Dickson-Wright’s autobiography in a charity shop. It is everything a devotee of weird history could hope for

Christian Clothing CEO: You finish that sweatshirt about saving as many souls as possible? Christian Clothing Designer: Sure did, boss. Real fuckin’ ominous and with an implied threat of mass murder, just like you asked. Christian Clothing CEO: What.

a little bit of hope means you want to know about the world, no matter what it's done to you

For anyone that was worrying that Mandrake might be too cute for their tastes x