Ian Holstead

Apex Legends' annual championship made me fall in love with esports I've always thought esports were overrated, but I'm happy to report I was wrong

I've always thought esports were overrated, but I'm happy to report I was wrong

YOUR RING CAMERA IS AN ICE AGENT [a drawing of a ring camera with an ice agent dragging a person away in its field of vision] "In October of 2025, Amazon's Ring announced its partnership with FLOCK, an A.I. surveillance group that freely shares its footage with ICE, the secret service, and the navy. Flock customers can use A.I. tools to sift through footage to assist in all manner of operations (like raids and deportations) without a warrant. Unplug Ring! Melt ICE! Protect your neighbors! See: https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-expands-community-requests-to-additional-community-safety-partners/ https://www.404media.co/ice-secret-service-navy-all-had-access-to-flocks-nationwide-network-of-cameras/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ https://www.aclum.org/campaigns-initiatives/get-the-flock-out-resource-guide/

jack asked if i would sketch up a poster to tell people in nearby neighborhoods about the partnership between flock and ring, and this is what i came up with. it can be printed on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

Absolutely and utterly tragic loss. My sincere condolences to Vince’s family and friends, as well as to the others in the accident who didn’t make it. This is heart wrenching.

I gotta hand it to whatever advertising firm Informa hired to make these, there really is something almost poetic about GDC's advertising being "an AI-looking depiction of an industry staple being destroyed with no clear elaboration of what comes after." Masterclass in unintentionally nailing it.

I realized I’ve been sort of mourning the internet lately. It’s odd. This ‘place’ that used to contain a wealth of actually valuable information, and introduced me to many people I now call friends, and which paved the way for my career, has almost completely rotted away. It’s not coming back.

Bloody hell, well played

The WORST thing about getting published by Devolver is that we had to get rid of this

Gamedev peeps!
You should go give Soupy a follow!
Fantastic designer from OG Infinity Ward/Respawn; he made Rust in COD MW2 (2009), he made Into the Abyss (the factory level) in Titanfall 2 (among other things), he's done a GDC talk (youtu.be/CkHGuHd9BgU), and he somehow has under 100 followers here

screenshot of alter's game model showing her regular teeth

i mean they can change what they want it's just weird to give he fangs out of nowhere

A day late but 👋

GDC talk submissions are open and just wanted to point out to people that if you were planning to apply to talk at a summit (like indie summit, narrative summit, tools summit, etc.) that there's only one call for submissions now and it's only open for a month: gdconf.com/gdc-call-for...

A four-zone chart used to place puzzle video games, where one axis is "use of normal logic is legal" to "divorce yourself from reality" and the other is "just keep your eyes open" to "gotta galaxy brain that shit." There are also colored blobs that paint different sectors of the chart, including "feel stupid zone," "how the fuck zone," "satisfaction zone," "classic zone," "easy-going zone," and "mind blown zone."

introducing the "puzzle compass," a certifiably correct and statistically proven chart of my infallible opinion

what games need added? let me know, because i am the authority on this purely objective study

#gamedev #indiedev #indiegames #gamestudies

YouTube video by Danger - Topic 9:22 Bully Ballad

Windblown fully went under my radar because I saw it was early access and did the usual "I'll wait 'till 1.0" thing, which also caused me to miss that

a) Danger did the OST
b) it's less a soundtrack and more a new original album. it BANGS

I left this studio in the spring but this still feels so fucking bad. Some of the most talented people I have ever worked with were at this studio. If you want some truly incredible designers, engineers, programmers on your team, consider the folks from Cliffhanger.

Seriously, do not buy, stream, or otherwise support of promote more Harry Potter bullshit. It is no longer theoretical - Rowling is funelling those wizard bucks into getting the law changed to actively oppress an already-vulnerable minority.

Some of the skins... Take some artistic liberty 😅

Cosplay Guide - Alter Cosplay Guide - Alter

The tail isn't a part of her. I believe we described it 'rolling up like a tape measure' inside the little pack.

It's controlled by the antenna/head piece. If you look closely on the original skin, has wires that run down to the tail.

Close ups if you haven't seen them www.ea.com/games/apex-l...

𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝟭𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿😈💚🩷
実装して1年ですね！
#ApexLegendsFanart #ApexLegends

Exercise your right to vote today, Canadians! Own your democracy! 🇨🇦🗳️

My 2025 GDC talk has been posted to the vault! I'm quite proud of how it turned out, and hope that any gameplay engineer could take something away from it!

If you have vault access, check it out!
gdcvault.com/play/1035276...

Imagine Ben shows up at your studio's door with one of the most staggering digital art portfolios in games, and it falls apart because someone wants him feeding the AI prompt mines instead of, you know, making actual art.

Clown town.

My son works for this company here in the U.K.

It was playing the video game ‘Deus Ex’ that set him on the path to becoming a Biomechanical Engineer.

Sometimes, it’s nice to highlight the good things that video games can do. And also remind myself just how proud of him I am.

YouTube video by Dazs Apex Guide: Quick Tips To Improve Using Alters Tactical

Great video of tips for using Alter's tac! youtu.be/Qay8CsdOZ2M?...

Alt text added:

A true heater 48 hours for The Onion, in my unbiased opinion.

hey so uh one of the main Nintendo Switch 2 Direct streams completely ate our trailer due to I guess technical difficulties?? so if you guys could share this it would mean a lot 😅

Nessie is here to say:
TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

It’s wild to me that the most useful thing - debugging code - is wildly out of reach for AI but these hucksters keep saying bigger and bigger promises. Do your engineers spend more time typing new code or debugging?