rj will be at Gamescom soon

today ill be giving a fav (commonly also known as a "like") to accounts

i usually use the same plate but getting a new one is objectively more sanitary so idk man. ultimately it's fine either way

this one's gonna get traction

forever twenty one...four

debating whether i should make new business cards for gamescom but getting trauma flashbacks to this

anyway you have to be really arrogant and stupid to think you're able to talk with authority on a subject like this. lucky for me,

this is. not how games are made

i've soft pitched it before but, yeah, who knows. the biggest issue is it's not an expensive game to make but it's a SLOW game to make; if i did a formal pitch to a partner, i'm asking them to fund tons of in-person conversations, writing a lot for two years, and then FINALLY two years in production

it's a weird project because like unbeatable it requires me to do a lot a lot a lot of writing AND it requires a huge amount of bespoke systems for demonstration's sake, but it's Educational (?)

also it's not the kind of thing that's just an instruction manual; it's less valuable if it IS that

i'd either need funding for it (mostly for animation and programming, i'd handle the rest of the work) or unbeatable would need to do crazy so i can solo bankroll it, but i'd want to talk to a lot of people who think too much about games and game devs who think too much about people

i've said this to a few friends already but an idea i've been obsessed with making as a slow project is something like Understanding Comics but for video games. nothing like that exists, partially because it's not really a Fun project, and partially because it's extremely difficult to execute on

ugh i gotta go see it. dunno if i want to catch it now or wait to check it with d-cell folx during gamescom.... hmmmmmm

Let's fix that properly.

honestly what sucks the most is how easily it maps. every episode is hank healing in a small way from a sadness he holds close

*boomhauer is relieved there's someone he can finally have a real conversation with*

*donald duck says literally anything*

*dale gribble's eyes narrow*

a video game franchise hank hill is capable of appearing in

KotH? oh you must be talking about Kingdom of the Hearts

demons cool

CONGRATS TO @dark1x.bsky.social and co!!!

btw if you ever hear stuff talked about like it "came out of nowhere" or was an "overnight success" the 95% likelihood is that it was actually a very slow burn that nobody paid attention to until it was impossible to ignore

anyway with that in mind time for everyone in the entire world to watch a nintendo ad simultaneously

i think this is a huge part of how superstitious execs get about numbers; you can be smart enough to recognize all of this but still not have an intuition for how to navigate making something that has a real connection, which is scary when you realize there's no correlation between these things

there is a veneer of an extant monoculture, you know? a comforting blanket of "yeah, everyone knows about this" that's existed forever. and it used to be wholly true. but buddy, there are people who've never heard taylor swift's music in their lives. that wasn't even true for britney spears.

on the other hand i've seen TONS of conversation about other games i've been involved with that have way, way, way fewer people invested under the surface and/or end up having pretty muted launches. and that feels weird until you realize just how stratified everything actually is these days.

i got thinking about this bc unbeatable is by any metric one of the most wishlisted games out there (we're at many multiples of balatro's launch wishlists already!) and our community is big and invested...but we're also relatively invisible in the Conversation, overall.

makes me think a lot about articles where the conceit is just "[crazy number of people] are playing this game you've never heard of" and how ultimately that's because everyone's got blind spots bigger than their eyeballs and nobody realizes it

the process of working in games these last few years has reinforced so much a gut feeling i've always held that the Upcoming Games People Talk About are not the same thing necessarily as the Upcoming Games People Are Actually Excited For.

rewatching the original naked guns and despite all the slapstick visual jokes and physical comedy setpieces the best stuff in it remains the dumb subtle dialogue gags. like the "you're late/depends on what i'm late for" exchange is perfect. it's the stuff the simpsons learned from

terry get your head in the fucking game