Robin-Yann Storm

Writing up an email on my phone using the Gmail app, and I cannot insert a link as text. Weird. So I google where the button is. There isn't one. It's 2026, and Google can apparently spend billions on marketing AI, but cannot even insert a basic email editing button. What is going on there?

This is also the easiest way to negate anyone who says genAI has made software development better. Simply ask: Has your daily use software gotten faster, easier, or received the features you need, over the last 4 years? It hasn’t, so, what’s all the talk about AI in development about?

I have lived long enough to know that if a company tells me I now have "More ways to personalize" I can auto-translate that to "We found more ways for you to pay for things." Anyway, the time of free food and drinks on KLM flights is over.

Apple juice costs money now. Does that mean tomato juice will cost money too? If so, get ready for a riot, as United made the same mistake before: www.forbes.com/sites/marisa...

I have lived long enough to know that if a company tells me I now have "More ways to personalize" I can auto-translate that to "We found more ways for you to pay for things." Anyway, the time of free food and drinks on KLM flights is over.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

The other way around, of trying to squeeze a game through an unfit pipeline to try and achieve a 'vision' no matter what, usually ends in crunch, delays, and a worse quality experience. There is no upside.

This video should be required viewing for every game design class and game design team: youtu.be/nUENBU0UVOA As much as it is meant comedic, there is so much great information here about balance, intention, player circumvention, visuals, and unintended side effects of design.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

Oftentimes my work as a consultant is literally to look at what the pipeline needs, at the concept phase. It's to look at these issues as someone who has worked on many games, with many timelines. You can see what's missing, or what will cause issues. But fixing it takes time.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

Also, the absolute work case scenario is letting a bunch of people go, and then requiring the team to change genres. Remember that ball of yarn I mentioned? Now everyone who knows what's at the center of it, no longer works there. Which means your pipeline is now rotting at the core. It will die.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

Let's look at positives instead: If you have a team that is used to building certain games, and used to working with a certain pipeline, things can work out great. I think Hazelight is a wonderful example of this. They make split-screen co-op games. They've had 3 and 4 year development times! Nuts!

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

If at that point you think "Well, they have code, a node graph, a VFX editor..." etc, then the ask to switch the game around will look on the surface as 'Just switch things around slightly!' Especially if Unreal is involved, which folks then think is 'Able to do everything!'

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

When entirely switching genres it can sometimes literally be better to build a new pipeline from scratch rather than use an existing one, because an existing one is a ball of yarn in which you now have to surgically insert yourself to fix the bit of yarn at the middle. Possible! But time intensive.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

We have seen many studios run into these problems over the last few decades. Yes, decades. This is an ancient pipeline problem that somehow keeps being repeated, similarly to how well function teams getting separated despite it being an obviously bad thing to do.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

It is very easy to look at a pipeline and say "You have code, you have node graphs, you have a VFX editor and a material editor, so just use those!" But that's inexperience talking! Anyone who has been in the depths of pipeline development will know this is not feasible without a lot of time.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

This isn't just a problem for the experience of folks at the studio, who haven't made games like that before, but it's also the pipeline. For example: A cinematic FPS pipeline is very good and focused on first person perspectives, blending those into cinematics, and up-close environmental detail.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

Often times a studio gets to ask not to make the games they are good at, but instead to 'Fill up the portfolio' from the publisher. So the studio is asked to, for example, make a live service game even though the studio is very good at singleplayer games.

Folks have mentioned teams need to stick together over long periods, to make sure they can keep their knowledge and expertise and apply that to future games. This is true. Similarly, the tools & pipeline also needs to stick together. You cannot just grab an FPS game pipeline and make an RPG.

I think Americans often misunderstand, or simply do not know, how good European laws can get. Especially labor laws.

It is very easy to thinkthat however it works in the US, is how it must work everywhere, but every country in Europe has particularly unique laws. Many a US HR person has made the mistake of thinking only the US exists, and found that to be an expensive mistake while serving Europeans.