Author’s Note: This was written the day of the election. Obviously, by Wednesday morning, the sentiments and predictions that it was based on are out of date, and we’re waking up to a whole new world. I’m still doing my usual repost to Medium and leaving the content of the original post as-is. Once again, …
The Day After: Election 2024, Gaming, and Beyond Read More »
95% of the time, this blog is about games, game development, and game design. I had the usual sort of article half-written yesterday – a design dissection of why CD Projekt RED’s masterful games, The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk, are so great on a second and third playthrough despite replayability not being a primary game …
The Calm Before the Storm: Hurricanes and Elections Collide Read More »
Unlike my typical lengthy discourses on the joys of niche games, this week’s blog is a brief one. I couldn’t let a week go by without commenting on a couple of recent industry headlines. The first stunner was word that Microsoft recognized a union formed by the staff at several Bethesda studios. The second, following …
Slice of the Pie: The Game Industry Gets Organized Read More »
The game industry – and the world in general – continues to grapple with the implications of increasingly-impressive generative AI technology. I touched on the intersection of AI and game development in earlier articles, but since then the tech has only become more prevalent and mainstream. Chatbots are now the first line of defense for …
Robot Overlords: Developing Games in a Future of Generative AI Read More »
I spent a little time over the weekend playing Ker Nethalas. It’s a solo-focused pen-and-paper dungeon crawler, thematically dark with a heavy emphasis on dice-chucking combat. There’s not a lot of story to the game. If you’re looking for the great narratives that systems like Ironsworn generate, you won’t find them wandering through the endless …
Spring Cleaning: Tidying-Up Time for the Game Industry Read More »
In 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mehmed II. The end of the long siege marked the final chapter of the Byzantine Empire. But the writing had been on the wall for the Byzantines for at least a couple of centuries prior – ever since the devastating plundering of …
Shadows of the Past: Great Games with Historical Themes Read More »
I’m keeping it short this week. As the New Year began, I mentioned wanting to write less often about the industry’s problems. Last year was exhausting and I was determined to kick off 2024 with a more hopeful outlook. I still feel good about the long-term future of the game industry. A decade or two …
Winter of our Discontent: The Game Industry’s Churn Continues Read More »
So first, a quick refresher on recent events: In late spring of 2023, a major funding deal between the Swedish company Embracer Group and Savvy Games – a group backed by money from the Saudi government – spectacularly collapsed. The deal was supposedly worth two billion dollars in development funding over six years and had …
Here we go again. Last week, the game industry was rocked by 800 layoffs at Epic Games, nearly 16% of their total workforce. The announcement is just the latest in a string of “reductions in force” across the game industry – Striking Distance, Relic, Amazon, and Probably Monsters among them. I can’t remember a more …
Destructive Imbalance: The Need for Game Developers to Organize Read More »
My son started eighth grade in the Texas public school system last week – trudging to the bus with an overladen backpack on a muggy August morning, returning in the afternoon’s 100-degree heat exhausted and overwhelmed. My son is a great student. He’s rules-bound, focused, and more concerned about his grades and pleasing his teachers …