Scott Hartsman

Well, damn. Really sorry to hear, Damion

The MMO granddaddy you've never heard of is celebrating its 35th anniversary, and it still pulls in 'a few thousand active players' and needs a staff of over 40 to run: 'We want to be able to survive for another 35 years' GemStone IV feels like a glorious artefact of the internet of old, still somehow enduring.

Wow. It's not every day a game you worked on in high school shows up on PCGamer. Feels like a nostalgia bomb just blew up in here.

www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/th...

This is insanely hard. (4/4)

You have to know which game they're playing and how you're going to fulfill a critical need that isn't being met, and effectively steal them by being just that compelling or unique, at the time you're conceiving of your game. Not in testing. Not at launch. (3/4)

There are no longer huge pockets of people who just haven't discovered live games yet and would love to play them. If you want an audience today, you have to steal them from something else. Quality alone no longer beats gravity. (2/4)

Nothing against the Dreamhaven folks, who are beyond legendary. And nothing against the developers, who are ridiculously talented and truly want to entertain players.

This is about where games are right now: Everyone already has access to infinite entertainment. (1/4)

Happy bday!

That got a legitimate lol

FF14 patch note: In Sinus Ardorum, a player could get disconnected if they put an item up for sale between 44,442 gil and 49,087 gil

Absolutely every MMO is haunted in its own special way, and I think that's beautiful. (ff14)

I love this. I use: if everything is cozy, nothing is cozy. I like Valheim invasions or night in Minecraft as examples of how I (personally) perceive cozy: You're cozy because of the warmth and safety that's relative to the decidedly non-cozy moments.

Also, I'm done saying cozy now.

Chatted with GDC about live games the other day - Talk's up!

How Feature Flags Enable Safer, Faster, and Controlled Rollouts Understanding Effective Rollouts Using Feature Flags in Distributed Systems

My favorite genre of non-games tech writeup is "describing innovation that MMOs & live games have been doing for 20+ years"

newsletter.scalablethread.com/p/how-featur... (Not to pick on this person - I've heard this same thing recommended as new at least three other times this year)

MAN. So proud of you all 😀

As I clicked this, I'm thinking, "I bet Mike found a funny."

No. No, Mike found something much worse

I know the feeling, Darth. www.gamefile.news/p/fortnite-a...

Likelihood's surprisingly good, really! And thanks. 🙂Extremely kind of you to say. It'll always hold a special place in many of our hearts too.

I'm really hoping "both" is an acceptable answer here

Great to see you as always. Really glad we get to do that every now and again!

❤️😆 How'd I miss this

Excellent thread. tl;dr Publishers are signing games that don't need publishers, and that's about it.

It sucks, but this is the way it is for the time being.

Entire coincidentally, this is also a line in my GDC talk next monday morning @ 9:30

You either just passed or failed the litmus test -- I haven't decided which is which

If you clip this thread just right, you can paste it to your friends to see who did and didn't spend time in the absolute wrongest places on the internet in their formative years

This is a great callout - And so generally massively misunderstood. I wince whenever I hear "Well why didn't they just give it X more months?" Those months are the most expensive ones a game will ever see, usually by a whole lot.

How'd you know when I started turning it up past Obnoxious 😄

I love when videos come out where I can slowly turn them up until I hear "okay what the HELL" from the other room.

This is 100% one of those. Maybe 300%

hahahahaha - Okay, yeah

Help a friend out. Kick in a buck if you can!

100% cannot wait for this. Man, did these books ever grab me

you WHAT?

banned.

friendship ban is now in effect

"Let’s just hope that the good news starts outweighing the bad." Amen to that, @deantak.bsky.social