Douglas

Totally forgot I was part of this because time has no meaning in 2026, but had a wonderful evening alongside the brilliant @hollynielsen.bsky.social, @cashdecuir.bsky.social & @flom.bsky.social for the @writersguildgb.bsky.social panel on editing videogames - you can watch the whole thing below 👇🏿

Ahh can’t wait to read this, who better to write about weird game events than Marie

Keeping bike lanes was my personal single issue till late in the race, but imo it finally turned into a referendum on "strong mayor powers" (Michigan-style direct provincial control). Folks got that the same authority to kill bike lanes was also gonna do residential datacenters and privatized water

Finishing Journey for the first time, walking side-by-side with a stranger, and the major turning point in Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons. Still thinking about both over a decade later.

One of the most important things a scenario writer learns from playtest is which entirely throwaway details players obsessively latch onto and spend a ton of time and thought on.

It's like peanut butter and jelly

when I see programs that used to be educational entering agreements to buy all students and faculty AI licenses, spending time guiding students to use it and requiring (often under duress, not blaming them either) faculty to reposted/reworded to be clear it's usually not teacher's choice or fault ❤️

I THINK one of the things we're really seeing is a continent, maybe industry-wide shift away from full-time employees and towards gig/codev work. And that transition looks like layoffs across the board even from studios that just had big successes.

Ahhh so nice to see Ace & Aro: One Night Early in this selection of awesome (gen AI free) indie games! 💜💚

The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.

Ideas and worlds live way beyond their creators, that's like the entire thing human culture IS. What are you all even talking about lol.

I mean I don't really think it's true AT ALL that a thing is its creators, that seems facially untrue and basically completely tied to our concept of commercial copyright and authorship; but like I don't think there's any reason to think EA would do a good job with a new mass effect haha.

I feel like I could write an entire book on platform tuning considerations by this point

Damn, really sad to see this. I have a Proton subscription, but if this is the way the company is managed, I won't be renewing. This is not a practice I can support.

I am minded once again of the principle that if a company has to force its employees to use a tool, that tool is probably not fit for purpose

Show me a picture on your phone that has your energy but isn't a selfie.

Watching the rest of the world wake up and fight for a better future while Canada keeps electing the conservatives who work for the four price-fixing families who own everything in this country is a bittersweet thing 😐

The mobilization itself was already not something I ever expected to see, but to actually win? Hell, to double the winning margin from the 2022 runoff? Genuinely surreal. Maybe child raping billionaires *don't* have to run the world with a shit-eating grin. Maybe that can stop.

this is kinda funny but it is also the first evidence of the 2 tiered system AI customer service et al is meant to instantiate. normal people: stuck with bots, shit out of luck, reaching out to journalists to get anyone to listen to them. ppl with money will simply reach out to the people in charge

I’ve gotten a bunch of these from people, and I’m just… some guy. They’re very obviously people just copying & pasting messages that AI wrote for them, saying “send them to this guy, and he’ll complain for you, and then maybe a big tech company will help you”. It’s real fuckin’ terrible.

I dream of a world where people buy games they're interested in at full price rather than waiting for deep discounts and hoarding them in backlogs, never to be played

A pretty solid list of things being constantly attacked by the Ford government would you look at that

12 languages now. 😎🐘 Feel free to look at the thread if you're looking to localize your own game! Even easier than going to look in the credits. (Though everyone here is also there of course! 🫡)

Want a say in what Hand Eye does in 2027? Come to the AGM at Ubisoft Toronto on Sunday, Nov 1, 2-5 PM. Free, in person or online 🎮. www.handeyesociety.com/event/hes-an...

This kinda stuff is why I just won't go anywhere near that shit, ethics or no I don't know what (if anything) is different in Big Tech jobs. Test coverage? Many undependent micro services? Maybe you've huge QA teams? But lol games ain't got none of that and we actually gotta support our shit yeah?

Glad I set up an igloo interior workflow long ago - Really saving my life now! When I tweak things, all the cuts, tesselation, and tiles update non-destructively. Imagine doing this all by hand because you need to move a piece of furniture. *shudder* #gamedev #indiedev #b3d

Ontario folks: don't forget to vote in your municipal election today! Polls are open 10am-8pm. Your municipal government affects so much of your day to day life, so have a say in who they are!

this made me laugh.. " a person libelled by LA Times waives the right to prosecute the LA times if they read the libel in the LA Times." nice take on catch 22 (not) ROFLMFAO

It’s Ace Week and we're celebrating with the ✨FIRST EVER✨ festival dedicated to Ace Games and Developers on Steam – Games That Ace It! There are demos, sales and streams! Catch it all here: store.steampowered.com/curator/4614... 🖤🩶🤍💜

Spaceteam 3.1 is ready for beta testing on Android and iOS! Read more here: spaceteamadmirals.club/blog/spacete...

Just got sent this screenshot from a friend who uses bsky.app (I don't). Apparently if you like a post bluesky has started snitching to your followers that you liked it. I cannot describe how much I loathe this. STOP. TURNING. SOCIAL. MEDIA. INTO. A SURVEILLANCE. PANOPTICON.

In honor of the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences reaching 400,000 sequences, the editors took suggestions for which sequence should be honored with the A-number A400000. The winner and the runners-up have been announced! You can see them all by following the link or reading the thread.

needs a tune-up

It is important to separate the idea of a "clean UI" from a clear or usable UI. "Clean UI" is an aesthetic choice and not intrinsically more usable. It may be less clear (e.g. have hidden functions and/or lack labels). To check clarity and usability you need to test with players. #Gamedev #UI

I don't really understand why the Democrats are so aggressively telling their voters the party doesn't care about them. It needs to stop. I'm not voting for anyone who is comfortable.saying some people don't matter. It's that simple.

vertLab for Blender available now 🥳

GenAI can take advantage of the limits of empathy. I've seen devs say don't use GenAI for the artistic side of games. The human creative side. But then saying it is ok for the science side like making sense of playtest data. But I get creative joy out of making sense of playtest data! #gamedev

I always loved the star-shaped bloom/streak patterns in BioShock and thought it was weird that we never saw that in more games. I went down a research rabbit hole tonight and oh of course it was originally a Masaki Kawase technique. Dude basically invented bloom in games. Anyway, now I can do this.

IMO, a good screenshot of a video game isn't just one that shows off the best assets in the best lighting. It's one that makes the viewer ask "I wonder what's around that corner?"

Music from Knots

i owe a dept of gratitude to the Ruffle contributors + supporters for saving my old work in a way that it can still play in its native environment. not only that but making Flash gamedev accessible again. what a beautiful surprise. a true ray of light rn!

omg i just updated the emulated version of BlueSuburbia (the original flash one from ~1999) with the latest Ruffle player. originally i was bummed about how bad it emulated. it's flawless now! recently i made a bunch of Flash games (in Flash 8), and they emulate beautifully too! like 🤯

"Fort Book" is hilarious, I hadn't heard that before. :) I can't recommend this book enough, it gets into the history of why Toronto has so much concrete (also, cool pics) chbooks.com/Books/C/Conc... "Tadao Ando: The Colours of Light" was another big inspiration IIRC (and, another cool book). ;)

A fantastic and well written piece.