I am gestating (ha) a theory that some of the backlash to Alien: Earth is because people still aren’t dealing with how craven and dysfunctional our world is today.
Writer of games shows movies books. Nothing is inevitable. linktr.ee/westinlee
299 followers 623 following 1,153 posts
view profile on Bluesky
I am gestating (ha) a theory that some of the backlash to Alien: Earth is because people still aren’t dealing with how craven and dysfunctional our world is today.
tbf it was a popular game before :motions around:
This is getting ridiculous so I'll just repeat it: trans rights are human rights.
the bug reports over the year were so funny to me that I paid homage with a short story about a misbehaved, omnipotent school notebook
Some nice heft to that debris
this looks SO good
They are 100% using this as a way to field test a new headset thing like the cardboard without losing money (and because they are Nintendo)
I’m having a confused response to a Helldivers stratagem code being an aspect of a real world assassination. That’s to be expected I guess.
now that I know the context I love it
Congratulations!
At one point I was thinking about a game where you go around to communities like that with an ice cream truck.
I wonder why all these great indie games are coming out of Australia where they have a massive public funding effort for videogame creators
The writeup was excellent, looking forward to listening to this
I’m wondering what the hospital would have been gameplay-wise if it weren’t a tutorial.
And…she is RIGHT BACK WHERE SHE WAS! The thing she was reacting to was human stuff built into her from childhood! It’ll just come back stronger!
Yep it just keeps going
God episode 6 of alien earth is like all the backloaded super interesting scenes at once boom boom boom
Alien Earth may have just nailed a thematic statement for the franchise as good as any entry has
Booooo how is this stuff so context unaware? This should be solvable in design and yet
Did anyone ever break down what it would’ve been like without the split between Ground Zeroes and this? Mostly cinematic thing? Hard stealth level?
"Hey bro if I give you $560 will u give me $35 back? I am starting a business. Need to show revenue."
Anyone else fascinated by the junior engineer on the Maginot in Alien Earth? It’s like sci-fi avoids that type any chance it has. They do the street smart choom or the future cop or the chuckleheads with their own ship, not some exploited, undereducated moron.
I think the mission was designed so that our team was supposed to hit a single group, knock them out, get to the VIP, then hit the boss, and 2-3 more groups while they were also wading through zombies. But I avoided the first guys and ended up fighting everyone at once. Womp womp.
Update: the mission is done. Zero fatalities, 55 kills, Berserker Queen is toast.
My XCOM 2 replay has finally arrived at one of *those* missions that are just a nightmare slog of zombies and tanky boss enemies. Has me thinking about strategy game design.
Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.
Yes please
Also forgot how with the Lost and the Chosen stuff gets remarkably insane. Stresses me out
I am replaying XCOM 2 on Switch 2 and yes it looks and runs much better but man did I forget how many bugs and performance problems this game had. Audio cuts out, weird jank, and the hourly drops-to-6fps-until-you-restart issue
Alright, so I've been afraid to say this out loud, but I think after today, I can say it: In the first Battle of Los Angeles, the good people of LA County have prevailed. We beat ICE back. 1/
Hey if I don’t know anything about opera and I say opera isn’t good and we should translate opera into “more artistic mediums” or something, that doesn’t invalidate your appreciation for opera or its artistic value. This is a subskeet.
Oh it’s going to be one of those!
!
I think it’s worth fighting even if Anthropic goes under with the bubble bursting. The big companies definitely stole work for their models too.
Iiiinteresting
It looked like it was a stretch but the pages look great. Just promise you’ll do more 70s Italy stuff (no kweet)
Reading this arc reminded me of a powerful webcomic thing I haven’t experienced in a while: the downtime between updates creates an investment in the reader similar to serialized TV, but something about the medium gives it its own juice.
this is really incredible and it's finally all the way done
I have many barbed things to say about this chart
I need to play this huh
What’s left of my moral center is bouncing around in my empty soul like the eyeball monster in Alien: Earth.
I have got to see every single detail about this one
The 90s energy in that show is 🙌
blown back through the fence with the fire hose blast of denim in this image
Alas, it’s hard to get the Helles in Los Angeles. ☹️
handing the same $20 bill to myself over an over until i am a millionaire
I started SMOKING AGAIN during my last Kickstarter.
Weird how "restructuring" almost always involves narrative
bring back Blaseball
Do Augustinas come with the bag
It’s true.
I’ll just say this is a place where them doing Alien again might have been better served by something more in between Prometheus and here.
Should clarify, and this is the best part: I was there for a minor thing probably caused by being old
Man I forgot how much the MRI machine is like being an Eva pilot. Just big imposing industrial weirdness and loud noises and like five people are shuttling you around. Did anyone write up Eva pilot as metaphor for dealing with a chronic illness?
I didn’t actually know The Beach Boys discography in 2013 because I’m not a boomer so that whole thing in Bioshock Infinite went completely over my head.
I figured they don’t call them out because Cursor is by far the biggest and everyone else is sub $1m (or likely sub $200k). But hey look at all these case studies! These are definitely all huge customers right? www.anthropic.com/customers
That bit about >$100k customers growing by 7x... They went from like 2 to 14 didn't they?
Oh this looks real good
oh no
Have you considered replaying old games instead of playing new ones
Sweet spot when I bought mine last year was the Bambu Lab P1S. Enclosed for compatibility with a lot of filaments but simple to use. Bambu is doing walled garden stuff with their software though, it’s worth looking into.
Don't forget to enjoy Swan Boy at swanboy.com
Very funny anecdote from a filmmaker yesterday about Runway.AI. What are they even working on with these studio deals?
From what I’ve seen that prediction has been in decline for a while now. Did I miss one?
This new Gemini newsletter advertises using AI to turn a kid's drawing into a storybook and the resulting book cover uses Times New Roman for the title. Why are the demos always so rancid? This is official marketing!
I played through Gunstar Heroes for the first time at college listening to demo versions of Millionaire and No One Knows on Winamp.
Hi authors! Please remember to file a claim!
Why didn’t the new Superman have more tier 1 operators?
I’m not going to say disliking Alien Earth is a moral or intellectual failing but
It's such a performance. I can see that face when I close my eyes.
CW: suicide Criminally negligent and horrifying.
“Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.” walzr.com/IMG_0001 this is beautiful 🥲
Don’t stop why did you stop
Why am I getting served endless “we are not doing a genocide” ads on YouTube? is a thing I would not have thought I would be saying back in the year of our lord two thousand and ten
Okay fine I’ll play it
So when does California do deals to receive mail from the countries blockading the US? Let’s go. I want to buy camera lenses.
Also: a friend who enjoys using AI and I spent time over the weekend both mocking how bad ChatGPT's agent is. GPT5 and the agent launch went over bad, excited to see what annualized revenue numbers show up in the coming month.
Today's newsletter from @edzitron.com is a similar toolset to the writing I've done about AI for pro writers. If you need some actual context when you're drowning in hype, here's your cheat sheet. www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue...
I hope you keep doing these, you're really finding some great stuff for her
If you gotta use meth to get your pages in that will be a problem eventually
It's become increasingly clear that the Internet Archive is magic and must be protected. An invaluable institution.
"someone who is good at the economy please help me"
Are we talking about the same AI tools that the data shows slows down professional users?
I’m talking about a project this is not subskeeting The News
Jimothy
Johnothy
Aw, I’m sorry Nessa
Dobson's famous interview with Bundy was mostly a hoax. Bundy told Dobson everything he wanted to hear about porn being why he murdered all those women and did so because Dobson promised to get the governor to grant him a stay. Dobson reneged. He sold that interview for years for $25 a tape.
Hell gets an exciting new premium resident.
See also: the streaming bubble and numerous other bubbles, they flip on a dime
bad news u gotta get good at both 😔
Yep, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole. Their conversion rate is terrible and it’s possible their monthly users number isn’t much higher than the weekly number they give.
I wonder if this 2B paid users expectation is why OpenAI was so desperately trying to hide MAUs. If your userbase is already north of a billion but paid makes up like .8% of that and the ratio isn’t changing, the honeymoon is o v e r
This sort of makes sense if you’re an investor idiot who knows Facebook reports like 3B monthly users and you don’t understand anything about the product or the technology.
Just a reminder that these layoffs were to make their quarterly earnings look growth-y to investors. Xbox hardware was down 20% YOY and AI revenue numbers were so terrible they didn’t even announce any.
I do not hate these Gen X needle drops in Alien: Earth.
Don’t touch that crank — it’s only 2 DAYS until the Blippo+ broadcast starts again! Tune in Thursday 8/21 on @play.date to get with the program. Free for S2 owners & now available on Catalog! play.date/games/blippo/
Also when the game came out I wasn’t a huge synth nerd so maybe I didn’t appreciate the Moog-ness of that bass arpeggio 🤤