Lisa Hunter

A few years ago, professional pedigree was enough to have investors throw money at you. Right now, even experienced devs are having to work for free before investors will look at their games. But there's definitely opportunity for anyone who can afford to do it.

Realistically, they'd likely need to work for free until they have a playable demo. It's super hard to get funding these days before you have a demo (and even then it's much harder than it was a few years ago).

Even people in their 50s/60s came of age when the USSR was collapsing. This cover is just weird (though hilariously so).

Pretty ironic for a company that celebrates "grand theft." Or maybe not...

Why do all teenage girl characters on TV sound like they're from the San Fernando Valley?

It just makes it look more Trumpy/drunk.

The meeting itself is a potential terrorist target. Especially if a shutdown means lower vigilance.

That would be a great mislead line in a horror trailer.

Just remember that behind every pearl is a deeply irritated oyster.

Having worked in TV and film, let me just say that I don't envy the FCC being up against entertainment lawyers.

People say it's dumb to major in liberal arts, but some knowledge of history is pretty effing beneficial right now.

Online politics are how you find out which of your acquaintances are psychopaths.

A lot of video-game publishers spend hundreds of millions of dollars chasing after "realistic graphics" and "massive open-worlds" when what players really want is just a shitload of weird little guys

Earth Wicca and Fire

They don't "believe" in sunblock.

Yes. I inadvertently traumatized a report once when I asked them to come into a private conference room. I was giving them a promotion and raise, and never for a second thought that someone doing so well would worry they were being fired. Now I know better.

Why NY needs change: my old starter apartment (200 sqft microstudio, view of a brick wall, sketch neighborhood) is now so expensive that a junior FDNY firefighter cannot qualify to rent it.

20, lived in 10.

Field trip to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in a couple of years!

Curiously, this movie was made in 1939, and that feels very much like the times we're living through right now.

Yes, perhaps another venue... [coughs politely in Canadian] ✋

Every Day We Fight Review [Early Access] | Gets Better Every Time You Die｜Game8 2025.07.11 Every Day We Fight is a turn-based tactics game where the characters you control are stuck in a time loop. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the early access, and more.

Game8 has some nice things to say about the storytelling in Every Day We Fight (and the rest of it!)(game8.co/articles/rev...):

"There’s a kind of slow-burn storytelling embedded in exploration. The game doesn’t shove exposition in your face. It lets you find it.

Screenwriting, but it's even more unstable. Maybe something like being an Imagineer at Disney/developing theme park experiences?

Delighted to see that the F1 movie gives a credit to Roscoe.

Movies about lone wolf men who don't follow rules and who outsmart experts with "common sense" = making heroes of men with no friends or impulse control who did badly in school.

Gimme introvert heroines with seasonal depression who could maybe lose a few pounds.

I would also add this: when someone's samples are from projects with professional editors/leads who may have rewritten them. I once did a page 1 rewrite of someone's script, and he used it as "his" sample.

Valid uses of writing tests:
1) when someone's samples are in a different genre, so you can't tell if they can write your game
2) when someone has only ever done their own projects, and you don't know if they can write in anyone else's "voice."

Otherwise, just read the damn portfolio.

I love how every narrative person in the games industry knows exactly who this is.

[Exit King.]

What boggles me the most about people using LLMs to brainstorm or write stories is that they're skipping the fun part of the process. That's the good stuff! I see something amazing in my mind that's unlike anything anyone else sees & I craft it using words my unique lived experience has taught me