Alex Oxspring

I'm going to keep saying 'you can't just throw a random assortment of AAA devs together and expect a GOTY, that's an outlier you can't count on, most teams need time (about 1-3 mediocre games!) before they hit their stride, stop shutting them down the moment they release a 6/10' until it sinks in.

I've had massive irreparable blow-up arguments with people I've worked on games with in the past... Will I still credit them properly? Damn right I will. It's the right thing to do regardless of personal issues.

🫩 don’t make me tap the sign.

NEW: I spoke with current and former EA employees to understand how the latest layoff round played out and the realities of daily life at the U.S. publisher. The short version? EA is controlled by an executive class that "cannot fail, only be failed." Workers, then, will always pay the price.

I love being reminded that the audience really doesn’t give a shit about the developers. Like, forget that one of the most influential studios in our industry was just executed by its publisher, just make sure the product continues on the assembly lines!

Gaming in the big 2026 🙂‍↕️

why do they call it indie when uyou in the game then die instead hot out die the in

And, while its weird to watch a bunch of folks I used to admire set their businesses alight because a robot told them to... Ultimately, I don't think this will be the death of art, movies, or games. Creativity will prosper, but the age of the 'idea guy' is coming to an end. Thank god.

Tim sees creation as a choice between: Use AI and 'make thing I want now, no mistakes' Or Deal with a bunch of uppity artists and coders making you 'wait for months' for your prototype. AI psychosis has convinced the 'idea guys' that they don't need anyone else, just money to burn for tokens.

There's a certain type of manager that sees their designers and engineers as obstacles and not assets. To them, AI seems magic- there's no pushback about 'scope' or if something is 'good' - and there's no waiting for lazy devs to implement *your vision*.

It always comes back to this for me; if AI was so good, such a disclosure would be a selling point. If AI was everything these slop jockeys said it was, they should be proud to let people know their game was AI made. But the proof is in the pudding, and they can't stand that people don't want it.

The big boss @thestupendium.bsky.social writes a little about why they wanted to make a game in the first place in their first article for our website: stupendiumsoftworks.com/hello-i-like...

Oh this is just delightful! 🧡

Feeling down about the AI focused re-launch of a certain game jam? fear not, I am putting together a week long gamejam celebrating Human Made creations, come join us and make some cool stuff in the Hand Crafted Jam. itch.io/jam/hand-cra... #GameDev #IndieDev

It's a rough time to be an indie dev, so we got to thinking what we could do about it... Announcing MATES' RATES 🍻 We're offering 12 month-long co-dev engagements where we work on whatever you need to succeed! Very permissive terms. Flat rate of US$5,000ea (+ taxes). 🎟️ yarnspinner.dev/mates-rates

Thing is, if we expect storefronts to let people inform their purchasing decisions with AI disclosures then where does it end? Listing the developer and the publisher? Minimum spec requirements? Age ratings? Controller support? You gotta think this through

I'm still thinking about the Bioware closure. I wouldn't be making videogames nowadays if I hadn't cut my teeth building scenarios in the Aurora Toolset for Neverwinter Nights when I was a teenager. I owe the devs at that studio for sparking my entire career, really.

Why do we persist in making games despite weeks like this one? This:

This is just insanity. One of the best studios to ever do it, with a big-budget immersive sim based on a major Marvel property ALMOST FINISHED, and nobody wants to release it!? The big business side of this industry has gone completely mad.

Our lead writer @annacwebs.bsky.social has written an article on our website about the production pipelines we use to write our grand and convoluted narratives: stupendiumsoftworks.com/writing-a-mu...

This is my one consolation: BioWare won't be forgotten, because it exists in the DNA of every single game designer who was influenced by their games. Everything we make exists in the shadow of greatness we once sat in. I can't forget.

I had to go on Twitter to confirm this was real because Ship Awesome Games In A Weekend having a hand with six fingers was so on the nose I was about to pass out

EA give me Mass Effect you can't be trusted with it.

mainstream entertainment

ea confirms that is its destroying the reason you fell in love with games to begin with and redirecting resources to a new open world madden football rocket league live service fortnite game as service moba game money card pack revenue game money

Went to Halloween Horror Nights tonight, I think it might be the British Stiff Upper Lip doing it's work but I really didn't feel very spooked. 😂

Less than 12 weeks ago, EA was effectively purchased by Saudi Arabia and Donald Trump's son-in-law for $55B in a deal that saddled the company with around $20B in debt. 12 weeks. That's how long it took for them to shutter a decades-old studio in BioWare and deem people surplus to requirements.

it's really frustrating to explain to my non-games industry, offline friends why their favorite game studios keep shuttering. a lot of them think I'm being dramatic when I start yelling about late stage capitalism because they think their favorite childhood hobby must be disconnected from reality

If you let your studio get bought out by one of these ghoulish corpo superstructures you are essentially signing you and your workers up for the slow and painful death of everything you've built together. What a terrible day for creativity and art in this medium.

There is something so soul crushing about creating art that pushes the needle in the games industry, only to be thanked by using the capital gained from said art to push the ones who created it out of a job.

I love writing video games. It’s one of the best jobs in the world. I just cannot stand the current shape of the industry we have to do it in.

Thanks to everyone who has reached out to me with kind words about this devlog for the Seventh Screening! Process and pedagogy have become really important to me the longer im in this career and I’m so glad that love shines through 🧡

At long last, we have created a way for you to take away Nikki's free will, from the classic horror movie "don't take away Nikki's free will"

O-oh fuck hnggg I’m gonna Cheg!

This weekend we announced the first title from @stupendiumsoftwork.bsky.social this weekend - a first person survival horror set in a 1950s Hollywood Cinema. 🍿 Check out the title reveal trailer now! youtu.be/Qrh6hMZmlDE?...

Those first few days/weeks/months of being on the store is when you need to hustle and shout and holler and try to get as many human eyeballs on it as possible. You get no help Also no, Valve don't moderate your Steam forums. I've seen people claiming that they do. Those people are entirely wrong.

I still regularly see indie developers sure that once they've put a product on Steam that the store's algorithms and systems will handle promotion and visibility. I mean, that's what the 30% cut is for, right? No. Your game is barely even considered real until you hit 100 user reviews. 500 ideally.

I made the mistake of thinking that using Advil would make my sore foot better. I had no idea that all it would do was set fire to my whole foot. I suppose I'm not thinking about the tendonitis anymore, because all I can feel is SEARING BLISTERING PAIN. 🔥

Lovely to see this out in the wild. Check out the debut trailer for The Seventh Screening, the flagship game developed by the awesome team at @stupendiumsoftwork.bsky.social. Very pleased to have been involved in animating for this project. Enjoy a tantalising first glimpse! youtu.be/Qrh6hMZmlDE

SO SO glad to announce i'm a writer on @stupendiumsoftwork.bsky.social's first game The Seventh Screening! 🧡🎬 check us out ➡️ youtu.be/Qrh6hMZmlDE?...