Bryant Francis

Hey, I'm Bryant! I'm a writer, narrative designer, and journalist with over a decade of experience in video games and entertainment. I've written for: 🤖 - Zephon 🚀 - Down With The Ship 🌌 - Endless Space 2 🎮 - @gamedeveloper.bsky.social

Be jealous: I got to explain to my boss what Grand Theft Auto 6 is today because it's getting NYT coverage

🫩 don’t make me tap the sign.

Loved this essay from @ijeomaoluo.bsky.social ijeomaoluo.substack.com/p/the-symbio...

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Friendly reminder not to sleep on your Steam OST sales Freelance composers better be negotiating to keep it, DO NOT settle with just streaming service royalties. You earn AT LEAST 100x more from Steam sales than from a broken streaming industry It also aint hard to calculate:

Oh my god, he just was in Coyote V. Acme as like, half the cast—way, way too soon. Feel awful for his family. 😣

Congraaaaaaaatssss Brazil!!

…are we starting to have a Religious Left again?

I'm old enough to be the dad who takes Gerard Way to the city to see the marching band.

Stories like this speak to how we aren’t *just* dealing with a supply/demand crisis—people’s individual decisions, how we treat each other, how we approach our jobs, etc. Especially true of execs, many of whom I find…wanting.

Let me share some positive news for a change: Despite all the gloomy headlines today, my understanding is that there are multiple paths actively being explored that would save Arkane Lyon. Anything can happen during negotiations, but at this point I'd be surprised if the studio is shut down.

Games news in 2026 Last week: you can hang dong in Grand Theft Auto This week: we regret to inform you that the video games industry is discontinuing its popular product, video games

The Mass Effect: Universe trailer gave me a better sense of what the gameplay would be than any of GTA 6's trailers.

Opinion: Why words matter when we prioritize 'core teams' in game development

Open-world football game? So you mean 17776?

Putting on the Doom Guy suit to hunt down Jefferson and Washington for participating in slavery and genocide

Going liiiiive.

A grim day for game devs, but we're gonna do a little hangout on Discord tonight with Julie McConnell from Escape Velocity entertainment if anyone needs a warm fire to keep warm by tonight.

(but once again important to note this is less about what bioware fucked up and more about the high likelihood that kushner and his cronies convinced their consortium they could take EA private and reduce their human spend by like 40 percent with "AI-driven efficiency".)

As someone who was shunted out of BW in Jan '25, all I'll say is - the writing was on the wall when we were kicked out. I'm still wildly angry and bitter, almost 2 years out. My heart is with all the people losing their jobs. Reach out if you want support / venting / etc, my DMs are open for you.

Holy shit

Why do people want their entire tech stacks built on unprofitable software?

new funniest spam email just dropped

wait so the game that's been cloned the most and which is now hard to find among the clones and is now a cautionary tale to all devs is called Needle in a Haystack for real if physicists want to convert agnostics to atheists they better discover the Fundamental Law of Universal Dark Humor fast

I've got a column coming about the "core team" thing but the codev/exdev/outsourcing framework that Fuse Games uses is like--the thing?! that I've been trying to describe?! For a year?! There's a lot to *improve* on this model but it's a way to distribute risk on games made by hundreds of people.

Had an amazing time recording this podcast episode with @brunodias.dev, @ayshaufarah.bsky.social, and @asaraviapt.bsky.social—all three of them have such amazing ways to think about the process of game writing. Give it a listen!

Was gonna joke about this guy wanting his kid to grow up to be John Riccitiello but all I can think about is how for so many money people, this is what they think game development *is.* No “wouldn’t it be cool if” or “why doesn’t this door work?” just user funnel tracking, bug fixing, and ads

Also, if you love a plugin for Unreal, Unity, Godot, or anything else for gaming, please tag the creator and tell them to submit!

For next year's GDCA's there is a category for "Best Gaming Tech" There is still a "best technology" award, which goes to a game, but "Best Gaming Tech" can go to any technology So please submit your tech! Your plugins! Your tools! Your work! Submit before November 1st: gamechoiceawards.com

developers, is this a concern for you when it comes to next fest or any other sort of demo? has it influenced your recent decision making? if so, get in touch. DMs are open, email is nathan@aftermath.site, and I’m nathangrayson.666 on signal

Another case study for my thesis of "generative AI is a tool for fraud and lies."

Important news. @bryantfrancis.me and I came up with the definitive Star Wars ranking: characters ranked by coolness in four categories.

this is also why you can’t trust what you see on any platform as representative of broader thought or consensus. you are being shown what they want you to see, and now more than ever, that conforms to exactly one worldview

Drove up to Montréal for a Shatterpoint tournament!!