meredith 🙂‍↕️ 🔜MIGW & SXSW

Make sure you come along to this! Going to be a super valuable session.

The second PlayStation Indie Partners session is on the Wednesday morning of MIGW, and has been made possible with the help of our friends at VicScreen. Applications to attend this event can be submitted at the following link.

forms.cloud.microsoft/r/yaJQN4gJ6r

It's so so so so good hahaha.

You'll pay for this!!!!!! (in reality, I now get Paid for this, and it's YOUR FAULT)

hell yeah legend

Johan is personally responsible for my grades for two years and probably my career. Great game.

you're so fine, sorry I couldn't get it in this send!

you're the sweetest!!

The title for Malys in an inky red on a black background, below are the words: V1.0 releasing this October.

It's time... the candles are lit... 🕯️

Our exorcism roguelite Malys is coming OUT of Early Access into 1.0 on the 24th of October!

There's so much more to discover, including the FULL story as penned by David Gaider, more demons, more cards, and more content.

Announcing... DOGPILE!!! ✨🦴

Dogpile is a roguelike deckbuilder about merging DOGS. Play dogs, get money, customize your dogs with special traits, refine your deck, PLAY MORE DOGS!

Free demo is live on Steam, WISHLIST NOW!!!
store.steampowered.com/app/3839300/...

Like Jason says, I don't know that there's a solution, and I think it's part of a much bigger suite of problems, but I also think we have to keep trying. So come find me please and let's talk about it okay thank you love you all very much. Whenever I have a take online I know I need to log off.

There is no point to this post, it's just something I think about a lot in terms of games and audience and the conversations we have, and I want to talk about it more.

There are too many games. There are too many good games. There are too many great games. What you make might be commercially insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. Because for the one person who finds it, works to try, and is moved by it, that investment will buoy them forward.

Or, you'll sit on your phone and doomscroll because the idea of doing the emotional work to choose between the 20/21% time spend feels harder than doing the thing itself. You languish in the not-making of a decision, because of decision fatigue and emotional drain.

You will play the 60 hour game if you feel it will give you 60 hours worth of feeling the thing you desire to feel right now. You will play that 60 hour game for hundreds of hours if it continues to scratch that itch.

Doing that work to decide in an attention economy, while witnessing a genocide, while balancing your own personal challenges and struggles, is too much to ask of a lot of people right now. So we play the things everyone agrees are worth it because we trust our emotional investment will pay off.

It is no wonder we are disconnected, frustrated, exhausted, irritated. There is not only too many games, but there is too much of everything, and much of it is truly genuinely worth an individuals time, but discerning what requires 20% of your heart vs 21% is near impossible without work.

The champions of each entertainment media - theatre, music, games, film, TV - are people who know that it serves them an emotional outcome overall, and are connected to being in the know and aware in those spaces, so the emotional input is worth it even if the experience (of a show or game) isn't.

We're in the sequel era because our emotional bandwidth has been deeply eroded. It's not that new IP can't succeed, it's that it is asking you to trust it will be worth it, and few have that emotional bandwidth right now. Extend that to the emotional demands more broadly on an individual.

As someone balancing numerous goals at any one time, being able to switch off my decision making brain beyond 'get kills' 'heal' 'tank' lets me feel like I'm doing something active and valuable in a competitive environment, while also meaning absolutely nothing, having no real stakes beyond a match.

Whether that emotion is anger, joy, sadness, disassociation - whatever - there are too many games that are good at meeting an emotional need, sometimes over and over again. I say this as someone with 1000s of hours in Overwatch. My muscle memory allows me to disassociate with a clear singular goal.

That structure doesn't ask you to work to understand it again. It doesn't ask you to decide how you FEEL about it. You pick up the games your friends recommend because they have already vetted the emotional input as being worth it in terms of the emotional output you get back.

You have to GIVE something of yourself in order to connect and receive emotion back. For many people, that is a limited and finite resource. You play the same things not because they're a game as a service, but because they're a foundation you understand, that puts in new windows now and then.

This article is accurate. The other part I think that comes into this is pure emotion. We talk about time a lot but rarely do we talk about emotion being the same.

Everyone is exhausted, and connecting with anything truly new requires a level of personal investment and attachment.

Thank you!!! <3

YAY thank you!!!

thank you legend!! <3

you are too good to me

HAHAH 'that was a HUGE issue. absolutely problematic. whats wrong with you woman'

if anything is wrong in the IDD email dont tell me thank u