Thesaurus Rex (They/Them)

Hi writers! I’m looking to assign a couple of features for Slate before the end of the year. If you have anything in mind that you think would be a fit please send me a pitch! Jenée.Desmond- harris@slate.com or dm me.

RTs are appreciated so this can reach more people. Thanks!

Isn't he also the one always telling people that they don't have the cards in negotiations? So, he knows they have negotiating leverage, and would be willing to meet and negotiate only if they give up all of their cards. "It's so easy."

Ditto for professional writing, but add marketing and branding.

I wish being a critic didn't include so many adjacent skills. A majority of the things I need to learn have the best shot at professionally doing criticism have little to do with media literacy and writing craft, and much more to do with production and monetization.

Something I grapple with is how games are designed for players to succeed. You verb in a game, you get an appropriate reward. Input-output is sensible. Cozy games map this to real-world analogs while keeping game sensibility. If we made our worth in life, we would probably find the same value in it.

have you ever created a video game mod to make characters "look better" (whatever that means to you)? i want to talk to you for an article i'm writing! get at me via maddymyerswrites at gmail dot com. or repost this if it's not you and you just wanna help me spread the word. thanks <3

Another issue with this is it's also competing with the alternative. It's so hard for 100,000 people to afford $10 a month, in place of one furiously rich asshole bankrolling something worse for $1,000,000 they won't miss, making the worse thing super available, and it's not the 100,000's fault.

Even if I agreed with this sentiment—which I don't—I would probably find any of this more compelling if this exact cohort wasn't going out of their way to cut mental health medications, resources, research, practitioners. Identifying another cause and then cutting that too is still ghoul behavior.

I always find it fascinating how disconnected those things seem from even casual observation. Almost every game crit person I know posts regularly about looking for jobs, being worried about their job or outlet, posting about their second job. It is casually apparent everyone in this field is poor.

Are you a freelancer near GDC? We got an opportunity!!!

After missing several dozen days, I think I've decided to hang up the towel on 365Games. I'm sure I've played more than enough games, but I don't know if I have that many I feel really strongly about discussing. I want to revisit the concept, but with fewer games and more said about each later.

Sometimes I feel this way describing to other people what being an American is like. "No, we have a bunch of private companies that sell tax preparation to us. And when we try to make taxes easier so the companies don't need to exist, they pay politicians to keep it complicated."

In the wake of the government being picked apart, giant piece by giant piece, I can't help but wonder. When this is all over, what sort of massive undertaking will it be to rebuild something functional in the aftermath, assuming enough of it is left to salvage by survivors?

I know it's very little comfort now, but I hope every person even loosely adjacent to this administration becomes radioactive. I hope when the awful stops happening at full speed, everyone with a foot on the pedal gets hammered with consequences: No more service in public. Never getting hired again.

kermit the frog is typing on a typewriter in an office . ALT: kermit the frog is typing on a typewriter in an office .

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It's the tiniest little thing, but now feels more relevant than ever to make my pronouns even more visible.

Even when their philosophies crash, and their social and legislative efforts fail, it still sucks to know that there a non-negligible number of people out there who want other humans to suffer to death simply for being different than what they want.

I try not to lean too hard into doom spiraling, but it's hard to see headline after headline of the least empathetic or loudest cruelties day, after day, after day. I know this won't be forever, but it's hard for me to really grapple with the idea that these are the people sharing life with me.

And I hope, above all, we can find enough reasons to be kind even if this world seems like it's unwilling to give us anything but. To each other, most especially to ourselves, and that we'll do our best to help each other get through it.

Because there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope otherwise.

I hope people who have so many reasons to feel vulnerable don't have to, that they can find safety and equilibrium despite what the world is desperate to throw outward.

I hope that everyone can find a break from the relentlessness of it all, the news, the grind, the poverty, the misery.

I'm going to do a little hoping right now, instead of leaning into the sadness everywhere.

I hope that ignorant, conservative voters can start to feel less scared soon. Less scared of people who aren't a threat to anyone, be they across a border or in a bathroom.

One thing I find very telling is that a lot of publishers were forcing everything to have infinite hours mechanics with microtransactions, even for otherwise single-player experiences. Which makes me think no price number can be large enough if infinite money is an option they can crowbar in.

For me personally, I feel like "Both can be true." applies. Yes, in order for this to be sustainable, the cost of games will have to increase. Yes, also, that game development is too expensive, often for reasons that are not customer-driven, so it shouldn't be on the customer to shoulder that cost.

I personally want a Switch Micro, that's just the Switch on a smaller, lighter OLED unit. The same size factor as something like a PS Vita or non-XL 3DS.

However, the market is all moving away from this kind of tech, so this is the obvious correct move for Nintendo. Just not me personally.

I'll admit I'm personally let down the the Switch 2 just looks like a physically larger, likely more powerful version of the Switch.

However, every complaint I've seen about the Switch is that it doesn't look better or run more modern software. Switch 2 looks like it will do exactly those things.

If I could buy this kind of confidence bottled, I would have been a much better freelancer. Jeez.

I miss a more amateur internet. I think we're losing something that every website has professional templates, web forums are a lost part of internet discussions, and it was possible to see YouTube videos that don't have professional lighting, make-up, camera, and editing for hobbyist videos.

With as much emphasis as I can give to this word choice: Jesus Christ.

Screenshot from the first stage of Chaos Field, a top-down action shooter in which the player's ship carefully navigates around bullets fired from a larger enemy ship.

Chaos Field: I've always enjoyed how conducive the ballet of bullets is to erasing the friction between player and controller. Once you're in, how easy it is to reduce your entire focus onto a single pixel. The sci-fi style and great soundtrack help.

3/365 #365Games

The protagonist of the Super Nintendo version of Harvest Moon in a field overgrown with weeds, tree stumps, and the farmer's dog.

Harvest Moon (SNES): Though it has long since been improved upon by sequels, this game was my first in the farm, life, and romance-sim genre. They're surprisingly crunchy games if you let them be, but the texture gives me the same feeling of opportunity I always felt after-school on a Friday.

2/365