Words, games, and word games. https://www.narramblings.com/ Dublin/Kraków
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You are conducting a performance review of Gregg Pendleton, your direct report. The other party is the GenAI-powered software trying to replace you. Also, Gregg died last week. If you got 5 minutes, I'd love for you to play my free twine game about grief: For Gregg. barilleon.itch.io/for-gregg
After a busy 2025 so far, I will soon have an opening for a new game writing client. Making something atmospheric? I've written bestselling crime fiction, No Man's Sky, Dark Souls: TEOD and more. I'm a PhD (literally!) in this stuff. Contact me at gregbuchanangames.com/about Shares appreciated!
What's the most amount of red flags you can fit in a paragraph?
very direct evidence that video game piracy is important in the preservation of video games
“That's 40 *cents*. Cents are a form of currency one hundred times smaller than the reál. I'm not even going to take this. Come back when you have 130 reál.” Isn't it... evil? The order of magnitude between what is asked of a person -- and what they have?
Oh hey, that's me! Running a game of Campfire!
Looks fire!
Happy @cmatbaby.bsky.social album day!! Let's go open.spotify.com/album/6p8GFQ...
excuse you, this is an adult male crocodile onesie! 😤🐊 #mgsdelta
WHAT A THRILL
and he would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids
vacuuming is now called roomscrolling
At this point I'm convinced a game of peekaboo would shake him to the core
Metal Gear Solid Delta is coming out on Thursday so to distract myself from counting down minutes I wrote about *the* ladder scene in MGS 3. And about using music in gameplay. www.narramblings.com/narramblings...
Metal Gear Solid Delta is coming out on Thursday so to distract myself from counting down minutes I wrote about *the* ladder scene in MGS 3. And about using music in gameplay. www.narramblings.com/narramblings...
My "Not a racist bone in my body" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
Making rich people believe they are smart is one of the worst crimes of capitalism
Orlando Furioso, reading your posts
Avoiding talking about issues, a famously foolproof political platform
This is a great question! I think we'll need to face that if we (rightly!) condemnd LLMs for the environmental damage, we should perhaps also look all the HD and 4k instantly streamable video we consume for hours on end on TikTok, YouTube, Netflix etc
[politics understander just read the niemoller poem] oh hell yeah thats loads of people before they come for me that will buy loads of time , sick
EGG HEAD - “Skibadee, skibadanger! I am the rearranger!”
Oh no! Get better soon!
I made a 60-seconds micro game for #SingleChoiceJam It is cheerfully called LETTERS FROM THE DAY WE DIED If you could send one letter on the day before the world ends, what would you write - and to whom? Enjoy the end of the world! wojtekborowicz.itch.io/letters-from...
'This is going to be a great business... if it only more than doubles the customer base and grows revenue by a mere order of magnitude!' Truly have to be the finest business minds out there banking on AI
Few years back there was a Polish minister who insisted the French learned how to eat with a fork from the Poles. I guess the French are very easy to just make up weird shit about.
Just think - if one million people turned off their wifi for one hour it would save enough electricity to run one ChatGPT data center for ten seconds
Millennial retirement planning
Thanks a lot! We playtested it within the community a bunch and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out
Continuing our annual tradition as the Indie RPGs Dublin community, we created a game for the @onepagerpgjam.bsky.social Spider! is a horror game about facing two particular terrors: monsters and maintenance fees at rental apartments. Enjoy! naths-creative-corner.itch.io/spider-the-rpg
“And you’re sure he’s mine? How can you be so certain?”
That's rad!
Curious how other languages treat it. In Polish you would use the same verb for playing instruments and games (and that verb derives from the noun 'game'!) but different for, say, children playing in a sandbox (derived from 'amusement'). As always Poles make everything worse.
I didn't continue with Hades past the first 'ending" because I could never beat it with anything else than the shield and it wasn't as fun only using one weapon 😭
this is what happens to strangers in this town
Funny how when it comes to AI people are all "adapt or be left behind" but when it comes to remote work the same people insist that things must go back to how they were at all cost.
People are lonelier than ever, so here is a robot you can talk to. It won't make you less lonely but it will drive you insane. That will be five thousand dollars.
I made a 60-seconds micro game for #SingleChoiceJam It is cheerfully called LETTERS FROM THE DAY WE DIED If you could send one letter on the day before the world ends, what would you write - and to whom? Enjoy the end of the world! wojtekborowicz.itch.io/letters-from...
Using a vague "we" every time I post about doing something or going somewhere in order to make people think that I'm either in a relationship, or Queen Victoria
This takes about one minute to do, it’s extremely simple, just a few simple questions, and you don’t need to be an artist to do it, it’s open to the general public. And the far right are trying to load it, so please take a moment and fill it out
Now that’s advertising
An executive for The Masked Singer snorts an entire rail in one go and prepares to make the pitch of his life
Irish artists/ supporters of the arts, please check out and fill in this short survey. The Gript/ far right dudes are already sharing it on X and I'd be worried it'll get brigaded. If we want it to be retained and expanded we gotta drown them out.
Incredible. Did they follow through on that threat?
Sorry to hear that Ash! Donated and hoping for the best
As some of you already know, my little brother has a rare cancer. Less than 200 people are recorded having it since the 70's. In just a month, it's progressed to stage 3. He's only 20. It's been SO hard. If my game dev advice was ever useful to you, please consider: www.mealtrain.com/trains/y5z8yy
His solicitor lives in Canada, you wouldn't know him
reverse heist movie where a single snake has to chase all the priests back into ireland
Rent-O-Meter news! Rent is due TOMORROW, and we still need to make €750. The week has been up and down and we're lucky to be this far along, but if we get to a good €400 today then hopefully online orders in our off hours will push us over the line. Littledeercomics.ie
Honestly it feels like trying to move around an image inside a heavily formatted Word file. You try to do one small thing and untold horrors unfold
Every time I need to edit a website I am reminded about how much I hate CSS. Web designers I love you but also you must be deeply unwell to do this for a living seek help
I would usually have some general beats that I want to hit but the emotions specifically emerge at the table from what all players (including GM) bring into the story.
How your email finds me.
you should be limiting yourself to 12 thoughts a day
The music in the title screen to the original Tomb Raider always gets me. Many a time I have just stared at the screen to listen to it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=X90R...
Designers, artists, APers, zine writers, newsletter writers/editors, critics, podcasters... any and all are welcome.
Tech bro shaken to the core when he finds out most people actually enjoy talking to their partners
🎉LUDOCENE LAUNCHED 🎉 So excited (and nervous) to send our game-finder into the world. Ludocene.com If you want a better way to find amazing games that rewards experts and is in the hands of players, this is our shot. Thank you to the 1000's backers and supporters.This is just the beginning.
Grounds for divorce imo
So here for the Switch release!!
Sorry why is @irishtimes.com devoting an entire news item to random rants of a boomer from the disney villain reject pile? That entire piece is just a collection of quotes. What makes it newsworthy? He is just a banker with a creepy stache.
Hello again, tabletop RPG designers! The second Bannerless Games Tabletop RPG Grant is now taking applications! I'm looking to award up to 10 grants at $200 apiece. Applications open until the end of the month. Apply here: bannerless.games/grants
say less
I mean what am I gonna do, NOT press the button?
I’ve just finished my latest project so I’m now available for game writing and narrative design work! Specialities: UK dialogue, historical drama, and comedy characters! 4 shipped titles and a couple more in the wings (plus several more personal projects like A Crisis of Fae). DM for a portfolio!
This is very true for the 'are games art' discourse that just refuses to die but also for every 'is X a game' discourse. It is a wrong question and Stacey's framing is much more useful.
logging onto Bluesky
Narrative monogamy is a wonderful thing in theory, but imagination is inherently and automatically a cheating bastard with a wandering eye, because that's what imagination IS. Part 2 of my series on living as a freelance writer of games >> gregbuchanan.substack.com/p/freelance-...
Asked my daughter what she thought of her first viewing of THE THING and got this in response.
I think a lot about how people built Wikipedia for free, how many people do volunteer work, and how artists keep making art even if it doesn't pay. And I'm supposed to believe nobody would work if we had UBI? I don't buy it. People want to work, they just don't want to work themselves to death.
Well done!
My wife is in Vogue shitting on your AI-generated "art" 💜 www.vogue.com/article/matt...
![Well, everything. The death of art. [Laughs.] A thing that I’ve been struck by in the last year of tech development around art is that what makes us human is making art, even if you’re not a professional artist. This is kind of corny, but I think about cavemen, right? One of the first things we ever did as a species was put our handprints on a wall, and it’s just this drive that has always been there. It’ll always be there. And I think it’s preposterous that these people are suggesting that they develop this technology, and the first thing they want to eliminate is art, so you have more time to…what, email? I don’t know what they think I’m going to do with my fucking day. Most of the population is not artists, but a lot of the population has artistic hobbies, and if you replace that with a computer doing it for you or whatever, it’s just pointless. I think there’s a death drive in these people, almost, and an actual hatred of artists; they are jealous of people with imagination because they don’t have one, and they almost consciously want to eliminate it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:obalt57atoxc2zooldtuur75/bafkreifnjtvupzmkqg7cggiv2z5nckzpp5yd2sm7h5gg2kq3plbwv2btuy@jpeg "Click to view full size")
This! The 'generating ideas' application is so silly because... if you're already stuck in your creative process at the *ideas* step, a machine can't help you. Even if it could come up with some, how could you develop them if you needed a computer to get you to this point in the first place.
“Some of us aren’t creative enough to brainstorm without ChatGPT!” Well then maybe you should sit this one out.
Congrats!!
WELCOME TO NUREMBERG said in the tone of opening the Hunger Games sure is a choice
The Irish Games Fund is a new staged accelerator designed to empower Irish studios through funding, mentorship, and development support. This is your chance to validate your project, build a prototype, and prepare for release. EOI Form Now Available. Read more below. www.imirt.ie/irish-games-...
Vertical integration
Disco Elysium: EXTRA Disco
I'm sorry, but this may be the funniest Facebook AI slop I have ever seen. Bury me sideways in my coffin, brother. Let my dog see
also where are all those drug dealers giving out free samples
Well said!!
Trying to use any application nowadays.
Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.
“Please send us emails instead” means “we can put key words from your script on our corporate spam filter and ignore you, but calls shut down our entire contact infrastructure” Keep fucking calling.
Hi Luna! Campfire is a one-shot based game I designed with first-time GMs in mind. No prep required, just dive straight into the adventures. Werewolf cults, audacious heists, zombie apocalypse and more. Would love if you gave it a try. witch-pleas-publishing.itch.io/campfire-the...
'he champions communism (in at least one jokey photo)' wow nothing hides from Bari Weiss' investigative journalism. Has there ever been a bigger skeleton in someone's closet than at least one jokey photo about communism
I don’t have a 401k (lolsob) but if you do, here’s some useful information on calling Visa/Mastercard and leverage that sweet “shareholder privilege” (yep it counts!) to tell them you’re not happy with them pressuring Steam/Itchio into dropping NSFW content. Please do it.
If you want to actually solve the problem, instead of punishing itch, start calling payment cos Collective Shout, which is run by people who get published by Spinifex, a very terf-seeming organization, apparently needed 1,000 people to yell at visa to get this done. We got more than 1000 people.
Imirt and @ardan-ie.bsky.social are delighted to confirm our incubation programmes are returning in September! Managed by Imirt and Ardán as a part of the @screenireland.bsky.social Digital Games Portfolio, The Irish Games Talent Incubators are the next step in our support of the Irish Games Sector
Itch.io did a statement. They were forced to remove VNs because of Collective Shout. If you enjoy queer or adult visual novels or games, please sign the ACLU petition. They're gunning for 100k signatures and are very close! So, so close! action.aclu.org/petition/mas...
Come to Ireland ro vacation. Our heatwave lasted a weekend and by heatwave I mean it was sunny
Fantastic stuff, go check it out!
