David Masnato

Indie Games Night Market — New Mill Industries

The vendors for the Indie Games Night Market have been selected and notified!

Check out what's coming!

www.newmillindustries.com/ignm

@marcelineleiman.bsky.social and others have been doing great work countering this with some info flyers. If the two of you haven't connected yet, you absolutely should because you're both wonderful!

I'm sure CGE invested a lot to attend GenCon so they're trying to make the most of an avoidable mess, but it's genuinely bizarre to see them "posting through it" while they're on the receiving end of a pretty vocal boycott. All while doing zero moderation of their comments section? Yikes.

A zine printed on yellow paper with a Mr Yuk that looks like the CGE logo. The logo around it says “Yuk Yuk Says Stay Away” with the CGE letters below it. Below that, a hashtag: #BlacklistCGE

During Gen Con, I will have 250 of these zines with me.

The goal is to inform normies about what’s going on with CGE and a call to action to join the blacklist.

No buying, pitching, or covering CGE games until they give the community a proper apology and response on how they plan to make good. 🎲✂️

The leadership of the Tabletop Game Designers Association was disappointed to see the publisher CGE touting Codenames: Back to Hogwarts, a new Harry Potter-themed version of Codenames.

While it is true that most booth staff are not fulltime employees and not responsible for the actions of the company, they usually aren't volunteers. It would be a labor law violation for a for-profit company to use volunteer labor at one of these events.

On one hand, I'm a big advocate for curating your space online.

But the rules aren't identical for brand accounts, especially when the comments you're blocking are from people begging you to see them as human. CGE has completely failed at every step of this unforced error.

Over the last two days, the Bluesky account for Codenames has blocked 204 users. A substantial number of those accounts have Trans Pride flags in their user names.

If you hadn't already made a call on where you stood with CGE, it's impossible to ignore the optics of how cowardly and gross this is.

This might be the answer!

A photo of an LED info sign on the highway. It reads "You're in for summertime sadness" in all caps. Some trees, highway walls, and sky surround the sign.

I love my current Kate Bush profile banner. It's been with me pretty much the entire time I put an ounce of effort into my Online Presence™.

But I passed this sign on the highway yesterday and I think this might be the new winner. What do we think?

(PS: I wasn't the one driving!)

A photo of my cat. He's an orange long hair tabby sitting on a colorful striped pillow. A window, some plants, and some furniture are arranged behind him.

What a day. How about a timeline cleanse?

According to the adoption paperwork from the shelter, my cat turned 20 today! He's almost definitely not that old but he's been in my life for 12 wild years.

Happy Birthday, Baran!

YouTube video by Las Culturistas The 2025 LCCA Nominations Announcement PART TWO (w/ Matt + Bowen)

If you're still devoted to an IP for children who's creator has specifically stated that she siphons her wealth into harming trans people, congratulations! You were nominated for a 2025 Las Culturistas Culture Award!

youtu.be/Hc4Zw_P9SX8?...

I've stopped buying from publishers who continue to profit off the Harry Potter IP. As a designer, I've also stopped pitching to those publishers.

I don't want my games in a studio portfolio next to games that fund anti-trans legislation. CGE is now on my no buy/no pitch list. Very disappointing.

At this point, it's no secret that @dropout.tv is the funniest and most thoughtfully crafted streaming subscription out there.

But if you've been sleeping on Gastronauts, you're missing one of the low key best shows on the platform.

Publishers usually just ask me for a sell sheet, but I got enough requests for business cards from playtesters that I decided to make them. It felt weird not having a good response to "How can I follow along to see the progress of this game?"

One of my favorite prototypes I played during Cardboard Edison judging last year was a roll and color that used pencil dice. These would be perfect for that game!

Image making smug disdain and cruelty towards your peers and customers your entire brand.

Dan Yarrington was one of the first people industry folks warned me to stay far away from when I was first getting started. This interview does absolutely nothing to convince me those folks were wrong.

"If you’re not happy, you can leave. If you want more control over the company, it’s like, last I checked, I’m the tycoon. I think I’m wearing the hat – that’s my plan. So, if you wanted to run your own company, you should go do that."

This is Dan's response to "Working for and with you sucks."

Very late to the party, but I really enjoyed this interview with @ericdittmore.bsky.social on pivoting a competitive design into an unranked or victorless game. Definitely resonated with a lot of the thoughts and approaches here.

When I'm working on a game that isn't firing yet, I don't try to solve problems with "conventional wisdom" approaches anymore.

I look for opportunities to make the game indistinguishably mine. This gives me a more compelling result every time. Know what your game design fingerprint is. 🎲✂️

Animal Well and Tunic!

SAME! 🥹

I can't wait for you to play the latest version of this! PAX Unplugged is the last stop planned on my con itinerary this year!

My hand holding a little paper booklet opened to two pages. The pages are white with black text and some minor graphic flourishes. The text reads: Monday - End of Day Were you able to overcome today’s challenge? No worries if not, you have all week to get it done. I’m proud of what you’ve done so far! How about a lil' snack before bedtime? Each player may add 1 Cookie from the supply to their Satchel. Tuesday - Start of Day You may have noticed that sometimes Aura can get in your way while practicing magics. Aura is the residual magic leftover from spells and mystical creatures. Let’s clean some up before starting our day. Players collectively choose an area and remove up to 2 Aura. Great work! Let’s get started with today’s activities. What will you learn today? Draw 1 card from the Event deck and place it next to the board. Flip page over at end of day.

I just got out of another wonderful playtest of #SpellWeek!

There's so much I want to talk about, but for now I'll just reveal this fun little booklet that acts as your storyteller, game timer, onboarding, and upkeep tracker.

It's just a ton of fun!

So far, my hack is repeatedly telling the billing department that I'm not paying for questions related to preventive care during a preventative care appointment. They seem to just adjust the due date each time.

Currently learning the hard way that if you ask your primary care physician questions about your health during an annual check up, you'll be responsible for additional fees.

Asking about your health is "out of scope" of preventative care. Our healthcare system is a failure.

If you're only sending ~4 newsletters per year to fewer than 10k subscribers, I think you might be able to get away with the free Newsletter tier of Kit. Thats said, if you need access to multiple email sequences and automations, it might not be enough.

Thanks for checking it out!

YouTube video by JADE - Topic Frozen

Dropping this in your timeline because you deserve to hear what might be the greatest Madonna cover of all time.

youtu.be/OrGRmONOPws?...

Had a great time chatting with Clint about the lessons board game designers are learning from TTRPGs, victorless and unranked games, my design process, and how I incorporate all of the above into my own work.

Thanks again for having me on!