"We see our game designs as hypotheses and our playtests as experiments to validate these hypothesis." - Mike Ambinder, Valve
Stockholm, Sweden
Joined October 2013
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“There is no such thing as blockchain and non-blockchain games. There are only good games and bad games.” - Milton Friedman
The most important thing you, yes you, the dev, can do right now: give every employee AI tool read-only access to the production codebase. XP curves, score values, all that stale static data? Now one question away. Git history lets you replay the economy and map it to KPIs.
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For a variety of reasons, I'm extremely deep into this problem set, and I can tell you that you should absolutely not believe this tweet.
Someone I know asked Astra to play Factorio. It wins, but it takes forever and guzzles tokens. If you ask Astra instead to “design a system to win Factorio,” it builds software that runs 1000x faster. Mechanistic software gives you cheap leverage, and LLMs can write mechanistic software on demand.
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Just to clarify, this was a massive success. Helldivers will pay for all of these and more. Remember to reject Gamers™ analysis prima facie, anywhere and everywhere.
PlayStation's live service push this gen will go down in history.
• Helldivers 2 - Breakout success
• Concord - Pulled after one week
• The Last of Us Online - Cancelled
• Spider-Man: The Great Web - Cancelled
• Fairgame$ - Cancelled
• Twisted Metal reboot - Cancelled
• Bend Studio Live Service - Cancelled
• Deviation Games New IP - Cancelled
• God of War Online - Cancelled (Bluepoint closed)
• Project Camden - Cancelled (London Studio closed)
• Marathon - Still online
• Destiny 2 - End of service
• Horizon Hunters Gathering - Rebooted
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Inability to make any comparisons to Europe is complete utter tunnel vision. It's a data point, good or bad, that no one seems interested in examining. Seriously, walk into any bar in Spain, and you might see slots or blackjack.
Not long ago, broadcasters avoided even a hint of gambling conversation. These days, N.B.A. games feature FanDuel betting odds onscreen, while LeBron James has starred in DraftKings ads. A gambling expert noted the parallels between the normalization of gambling culture and the Joe Camel ads that helped make smoking cool among young people. “In five, ten years, we’re going to look back and be, like, Why the fuck is LeBron James doing these ads?” he said. Read the full story: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/vq…
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.@Econ_4_Everyone Hiring an experimental economist to work on product, optimizing things like the default strength of reasoning or how accessible it is to change, could be worth millions. Why are many economists always seemingly condemned to public policy roles in these firms?
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confirmed in the the game industry; it will shock your American mind
Anecdotally, I think cheating is far more common in Asia.
Plenty of guys who have their wife and kids living in the US/Canada, while they do business in Asia and have another girlfriend or even family in a 二奶村.
Most of the time their wife knows about this too. Not saying any of this is right but just what I've seen and heard 🤷
Just randomly came across this article
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Mario, Markets, and Microtransactions retweeted
Not a SINGLE gamer wants developers to spend more time and money making a worse game just to say they didn't use AI.
AI allows developers to move faster and deliver better experiences. Refusing to use it isn't a selling point.
what 20 years removed from the industry does to a dev
EA co-founder @bingfish says Fortnite solved a problem casinos figured out decades ago by giving people a second currency that lets them lose and still feel like they won:
"I'm kinda blown away that in Fortnite everybody feels like a winner even though 100 players, only one wins, but everybody gets career score."
"I met a designer from a Las Vegas casino and he said, 'You know what our secret is? The second currency.' I go, 'There's only one currency, it's US dollars.' He goes, 'No, there's VIP points.'"
"People can lose money at the table, but level up their VIP, get a free room, get a free drink, and suddenly those hundreds of dollars they lost feel like a bargain."
"We did a slot machine game on Club Pogo where on average everybody won. Instead of being Vegas kinda 98% return, we were 102% return, and it was massively popular."
@EA @kleinerperkins
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Mario, Markets, and Microtransactions retweeted
India saw about 496 million people lifted out of poverty between 2011 and 2023 in one of the world’s fastest declines in this metric, the World Bank said, although the gains remain uneven. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Over the last five years, Tim Sweeney has become the face of Western Game Development - something that was solely needed - a founder-engineer. I don't always agree with him, but we desperately need someone who isn’t afraid of Reddit and investors' shadows.
Mario, Markets, and Microtransactions retweeted
It’s the end stages of the classic message board death spiral we saw with predecessors over the decades. Over time the passion for the topics gives way to the moderator power dynamic, then haters, bots, and hall monitors prevail. What’s surprising is that it lasted this long.
Mario, Markets, and Microtransactions retweeted
I speak for gamers everywhere: We want MORE AI in gaming, not less.
Faster bug fixes. More content. Better games.
AI can help devs turn real player feedback into meaningful updates faster than ever.
No more excuses.
Mario, Markets, and Microtransactions retweeted
Three FPS veterans broke the game down in Deconstructor of Fun's Shooter Monthly episode 10: podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcas…
