I need y'all to know that every time I send a text without a dad joke in it, it's because I deleted it out before hitting send. Like a sensible adult. Things keep going the way they are in the US, though...
The games guy in the red jacket. Design Lead at indie game studio @chroniclersoftware.com , worked on Minecraft, Halo, O3DE, Valve Proton, WoW Auth, PAX & more. he/him
622 followers 928 following 672 posts
view profile on Bluesky
I need y'all to know that every time I send a text without a dad joke in it, it's because I deleted it out before hitting send. Like a sensible adult. Things keep going the way they are in the US, though...
I think the AAA push for realism made motion capture pipelines the default setup. I know from experience that it got really hard to find dedicated gameplay animation jobs sometime in the mid 2010s. I think a lot of animators who wanted to do stylish things went elsewhere.
Television legend Stephen Colbert has just signed a $13.5 million deal with Netflix for a 7-episode series.
Hey, come work with me! We are looking for an Unreal Build Engineer! www.darkestdungeon.com/careers/job-...
Even if you don't know much about Astroneer, go see Veronica, she's delightful!
It begins! Come see @starseekergame.systemera.net at booth 1613 at @officialpax.bsky.social #PAXwest2025
If validation from the masses was that important to me why on earth would I be a game dev
I do very much enjoy this one! Checking it in on Untappd always puts a grin on my face.
My bones are now made of lemonade
ILLEGAL. County law has fines and jail time for interfering with first responders.
Behold the majesty of my desk Hork #beholdit
There is so much games talent available in the Seattle area right now. I hope more next gen studios with better business planning continue to grow here and hire all these incredible people. I'll be at SLICE and PAX, hit me up if you're serious about making that happen.
Oh jeeze dude, sorry to hear that. So many layoffs in the Seattle area alone. It's heartbreaking.
We've been able to add a couple teams here - Comment if you'd like your game or studio to be added! #gamedev #indiedev
We love it when a plan comes together. From first concept to playable level putting the gears into the first bits of game have been really rewarding #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame
Good news, I've promoted everyone on the team to Game Capture Director. No, there's no pay raise, why do you ask? #indiedev #indiegames #satire
still alive, feelin pretty good 😎 eating food you foraged and/or grew yourself just hits diff.
Thank you @blueskynoise.com for this excellent Gamespot article about co-op with kids! It's truly hard to get across the idea of finding games to play with your kids that aren't Nintendo platformers or Minecraft. Sending this directly to our investors 😁 www.gamespot.com/articles/leg...
Roger that! I'll post about how it goes here. My annual Christmas gift is usually home-made hot sauce for friends who already own all the Steam games.
I was supposed to be there that night with friends. Screw the Florida governor and legislation, take the damn city back. ♥️🧡💛💚💙🩵💜
Awesome! How do you think it would do in a hot sauce? Maybe a pineapple or carrot base?
I can't feel my feet.
It may be double-speak but it is also very clearly racism. I have no fear of being political and every one of these pearl-clutching people I have talked to says something racist very quickly.
" - my feet. Been able to see some lovely people though, so my heart's pretty full!
Hey look, a glimpse of what we are working on at Chronicler.
A second Trek game announced today 🔥 "Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown is coming to PC & consoles! Take the helm, command your crew, and decide the fate of the U.S.S. Voyager in this story-driven survival strategy game." Published by Daedalic Entertainment and developed by gameXcite.
Night coffees! They're one of my wife's favorite things, I love making them for her, and they are very extremely terrible for our sleep 😅
Games have always had the problem of fluctuating needs over the course of production. Partly it's just the nature of big projects and specialization. The failing is that studios are bad at planning for this and treat employees as fungible. There's no easy solution for this.
Nail on the head man, absolutely right. I think we have a good solution at work, but really only time will tell. I'm hopeful because game devs deserve better.
I disagree with a minor point here. Publishers like EA still have live-service "winners" (Apex) pay for "losers" (see most recent titles). To me studio closures are more about forcing games into a gig economy like VFX and overcorrecting from 2020, not failing at publishing AAA.
Yall keep your eyes on Chronicler! The game is unannounced but the sneak peaks are INCREDIBLE #indiegames
As a dev it's easy to forget how much testing goes into a game being ready until we play it over.. and over.. and over.. and over again. All movements lose their meaning. Controls seem fine even bugged, we totally lose our heads. But the combats comin together team. #indiegames #gamedev #scifi
Not French, but I have not yet identified any international bank capable of doing all that. I have heard good things about ZKB but I am sure they still have some restrictions: www.zkb.ch/fr/accueil.h... I would consult a lawyer, we've been recommended a mix of PayPal, EoR, and multiple banks.
Question to all my French indie #gamedevs: have you opened a bank account specifically for your royalties and paying contractors? If so, which bank do you recommend as I've had nothing but bad experiences with French establishments. Re skeet appreciated
Oh! Been there. It comes from trying to mess with Nuget (you or a Visual Studio update, or an installed library). I think it ended up being faster to clean the repo of all temp files and reinstall the engine, then rebuild in VS, sorry 😔
Sweet. We've got a private meeting room at the Hyatt, would be fun to have you play the closed doors demo if there's time!
As someone who has become a semi-expert in Dyson Spheres because of the game we're building, HAHA WHAT?! It takes a Kardashev Type 2 civilization to move the insane amount of raw material necessary to encapsulate even a dwarf star. Baby we're not even Type 1 yet.
Absolute peak comic art. I mean, peek? 😉
Ahahah yes. Canvas panel is only for weird layouts, like the top layer of a HUD. Otherwise it's a trap from being over-flexible and a drag, use a Border or something similar instead. Same thing with scroll boxes, use a vertical list instead. Fun undocumented shenanigans in Slate + Common UI.
And VCs most often don't want to hear that. They want to hear instead how you've found a way to make child labor sound more palatable and ethical, because that's much more scalable.
Funding is the tough part. We've got the tech and an approach that we think works, but there's a long road to bringing this stuff to market. The other issue being, without child labor, the Roblox model doesn't work. So you're left with the much more curated approach that Minecraft etc. has.
we just posted a role for a Sr. AI Engineer- come work with me, and check out our other jobs too!! I have to specify this is like "make horses play with beach balls"* AI, not like chatGPT AI. *there are no horses playing with beach balls in this game. yet job-boards.greenhouse.io/sonyinteract...
Can you imagine if 25% of the US turned out for something? It's amazing that even with all this misinformation around, people can still suss the truth from the internet in the face of state-controlled media.
I left little critiques on lots of game trailers so here's a thread with the most common issues (and additional reading) 🧵 1. Don't put logos at the start. It's just dead air that could be gameplay, which is 100000000X more interesting. www.derek-lieu.com/blog/2021/3/...
I've been trying to figure out a good age to introduce it to my now 13yo stepson. This thread makes me want to rewatch it with my now wife anyways.
Unless you did the marketing on Zune, put that IN! The Zune was incredible, ages ahead of the iPod, and beloved by anyone who had one before they were shut down. I tried to buy one the second a friend demoed it to me - turns out they were already out of production. Not the dev team's fault.
Healing *is* kicking ass! I know you already know this, but hopefully it reminds some other people. 😁
"I'm very proud of my rich Irish heritage" The rich Irish heritage:
I loved that ride so very much! Thank you for sharing, this is an absolute treasure.
If you're looking for more, the genre is most often called "Math Rock". Always an interesting listen, for sure!
This time of year, I’m used to lots of optimistic, hopeful game studios and publishers talking about new releases, and showing off cool things. More of that, please.
on that note 😉 www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/8/...
If you’re attending Devcom next week, consider making time for my talk on Monday - you won’t be disappointed :) #ddc2025
Literally all of the above (except brother, I'm the only boy out of my siblings) are already in the Chronicler Club playing WoW 😅
Barbie license is too expensive these days? (Serious? Not serious? I'm not sure...) I had Barbie Riding Club, it was great. We're a decade out from trying anything in the fantasy genre yet but you can bet your stirrups when we do it will have fun, authentic riding mechanics.
Oh, wonderful! It's been a huge inspiration for the game we're building.
highly recommend you do something nice for someone else tomorrow and see how it goes
We plan to go really ham-fisted about it. Dev team on the Steam trailer, big ol explainer on game launch, F6 menu for feedback, roadmap on unfinished features. It'll be a good case study on modern Early Access. One thing that we know will help is we invested in tools to build content very quickly.
Yikes man! So sorry to hear that. Take care of yourself, recovery is no joke either.
Ah, good ol' life in the PNW. I accidentally a heat pump two summers ago, best vendor mix-up ever.
Just a little something our extremely talented young intern is working on! #gamedev #games #gamescom #indiegame
Congrats! And among excellent company too!
Context: Minor profitability and a massive cash runway is right on target if sustainability is your goal. Slow, controlled growth of overall profit is a sign of targeted, intelligent risk-taking. If your trying to enrich investors as quickly as possible, well, that's a completely different goal.
My teammates are so damn cool. Just a sneak preview of what to expect playtesting our vertical slice demo at Gamescom 😉
Ahhhhhhhh We're about to start a big roadshow for the next funding round and of course this is gonna drop in the middle of it. This winter break is just gonna be BG3 and Riftbreaker co-op 24/7.
💯 Missouri has a nightmarish registration system and fee schedule for payroll taxes. Like, SORRY we wanted to pay some of your residents a full salary, gosh. It's cheaper to give them $20k to relocate than deal with that crap.
and if i could hammer this down in the head of everyone that has to pass through there, i would. despite you wanting to feel valued there, you aren't. a failing studio will have a failing culture. stop trying to cope
Progress on the HZD LEGO Advent Calendar. Did the ruined wind turbine, the Spire and a metal flower on stream today. Close to having them all done.
No more slots for August, but I still have a few slots left to help in September. If you're sweating the ethics of being an MS partner, PlayFab, custom Azure, etc. you can migrate without changing your codebase. I can make you a simple shim service on AWS or the cloud of your choice.
Today’s glamorous #gamedev work consists of following up with service providers and a former contractor, and translating messy spreadsheets into pretty slides. Not a game engine in sight but still part of the process.
Progress on one of the most important issues affecting climate! If we can get lithium oxide out as energy-efficiently as brine evaporation, it will be the equivalent of finding 7 billion tons of gold in the US. Game changer for transitioning to greener energy. www.earth.com/news/scienti...
Around ~10% of wishlists are followers. At least this number came up more often when doing research.
We are super deep into this, and it's very annoying. 1st: It's mostly a post-process effect, so make sure you have your anti-aliasing settings tuned with TSR. 2nd: There's a bunch of render params to tweak. 3rd: Reduce lights, tweak light+postprocess settings. Happy to jump on a call and help.
In collaboration with id Software, we're excited to announce the definitive re-release of Heretic + Hexen — available NOW on all platforms! 💥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqH3...
Do you work at a game studio? Does your team need help migrating backend or version control off of Microsoft Azure? Or from Perforce on MS to Git? I'm waiving all consulting fees for studios moving off Microsoft-owned platforms. You've got my help. Just DM me.
Wonder what the average % relationship of Followers to Wishlists is... anyone know?
Nothing like NextDoor to make you realize your neighbors are nasty because they have nothing better to do than post online all day. I keep trying to invite them along to do volunteering instead but these people would rather die than lift a finger for another soul. Infuriating.
It's skeet, mostly because the dev team hated the term so it blew up.
8. Making the game is only really half of the work. Getting the game out into the world is the other half of the work. Or to joke about it, making a game is 90% of the work. Selling the game is the other 90% of the work.
Dr. Whomsoever
Look, I'm A/B testing posts! And yeah we discussed internally about mental health and online safety before-hand. This team is awesome.
JFC our marketing lead really did it. She made X and LinkedIn pages for our game's corpo villains and they're completely unhinged. Can't get AI bros harder than they already got themselves, but we can try! Lets gooooo
Co-op mods for Subnautica and Elden Ring have been fantastic. My guilty pleasure is RimWorld Co-op mod. But I for one want to see co-op Horizon! Arrows in robot dinosaurs together please and thank you.
It's a bit weird thinking about moving chunks of bits in and out of boxes as 'programming', but I guess at the end of the day that's all of modern production, software or not.
It's a modern horse girl movie with a little wonderful rainbow sprinkle of horror. Absolutely loved it.
I'm so tired of being asked for advice by guys, and then they balk at the changes I suggest. It's self-enforced "martyrdom" driven by fear. They cling to toxic masculinity like it's the only social strata they could ever be accepted in.
We've been working on a comic book for the backstory of our game universe's villain, and... I am so in love with it. It's GORGEOUS. Can't wait to share the whole thing and introduce all the artists behind @chroniclersoftware.com 's upcoming title.
Look, I would check some assumptions on your first statement there. Not sure what you mean by usually, but it's presented pretty disingenuously on first read. If you've also had a career centered around IP development, then cool you've had a different experience. If not, this is a pretty bad take.
Sure, fans do this *all* the time. Companies should know better, they're the IP experts with lawyers and research budgets. Fans just do what they love.
Thankfully not one of the things I'm worried about. We feel in pretty great hands with y'all! It'll be fun cultivating the IP and community together.
Right?! You can get in this position with exclusive licenses for merch, but not doing a carve-out clause for custom goods and promotions is amateur hour in IP licensing. Shame.
Wrong move from Games Workshop. When will brands learn?! The best way to protect a license is to grant them to community members, not C&D them. Cherish your fans and they'll take care of you. Threaten them - they'll find somewhere else to go. youtu.be/LXnF6A0nlaE
Morning philosophical question: Why is there never enough coffee in the mug?
Hey! I resemble this comment. #DoIRegretHiringAMarketingPersonYet #GuessWe'llFindOut
So many of today's investors are just slot machine addicts with a different name. Shout out to the real ones who work together to create solutions to problems. You may not be on X tweeting valley AI hot-takes, but you're actually making a difference in people's lives. Super grateful for our team.
Continuing in my series on "stuff students are asking me", here's a written tutorial about using a histogram to determine Contrast and Exposure in an image, and then how to tweak it to get a better range of brightness values www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/... #compositing #arttip #color
If you move to Patreon please post about it so I can go subscribe. Writers and artists deserve independent funding and safe platforms.
YES THIS! My first job out of college I took to avoid moving back in with my parents. It was writing MSSQL for a COBOL-CC codebase in healthcare. That stuff is seared into my brain. Saved them $15M/yr in reporting costs and got nothing for it so that was cool.