Simon Roth

Hey #Godot people. What are your favourite games using the engine? I'm teaching the engine to some kids this week and I want to show them a good mix of things that could inspire them.

Running a games making workshop for some young people. Going to use Godot but can anyone recommend a good free offline pixel art sprite editor?

what exactly DOES happen to materials from a major studio that’s closed? where do physical hard drives, documents, etc go? who maintains all this pointless secrecy? if you know or have stories, get in touch: nathan@aftermath.site, nathangrayson.666 (signal), aftermathdotsite@proton.me (proton mail)

Hmm. This plan might not work when all the indies are already dead.

So I had to have a whole day without screens due to a cracking migraine... What did I miss? 🥲

I've made 6 open-source @godotengine.org projects perfect for as a base for your first or next game. Completely human-made and easy to understand code & comments. All visuals and sounds included, CC0! kenney.nl/starter-kits

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351/

Wow nursery changed hands and have changed their fees. £1500 a month! So now my mortgage + nursery is going to be 100% of my take home pay. Please make it make sense.

Shout out to all the @specialeffect.org.uk runners at the Oxford half this morning!

So the "Adobe suite cloned by AI agents and open sourced" thing sent me into a mild meltdown. But looking at them... they don't actually work? And will people still be able to do this when the LLM companies stop giving away super computer levels of compute for almost free?

I'm starting to fill up schedule for the new year. Get in touch if you'd like an expert indie gamedev generalist.

!!!!

A big Maia update went out today! Enjoy! store.steampowered.com/news/app/252...

"Looks like A.I." is shorthand among my 9yos peer group for cheap low effort garbage, the kids are all right

The world's most powerful debugging tools at my fingertips and yet...

Got a feedback doc from a client on a project and its a quarter gigabyte powerpoint. Told myself that at some point maybe I will start to enjoy suffering and made myself sad-laugh enough to open it.

I'm a quite worried that I am rapidly approaching my end of working in games. I still get jobs, but every project I am on has a budget 1/4 of what similar games had 3 years ago. I've seen a lot of extremely talented dev friends out of work for months to years. ... and I don't see this improving

When software does not correctly perform its function, it should be considered broken and buggy. It should be withdrawn from use and patched. It annoys me no end that LLM sellers keep spinning it into the hype cycle.

fun addition to this: kotick didn't just threaten publications, he threatened individuals. One of his lawyers was tasked with keeping an eye on every post I wrote about him, and they'd hound ownership about them if they didnt like them.

In recent years, the media has quietly begun to change the way in which it writes about Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard. PMG investigates how Kotick used the threat of defamation to reshape his legacy in the games business, one article at a time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKwp...

The economics *expected* from studios don't make *rational* sense, that's why he and many of us just don't understand it. We can't understand a petulant child who wants everything for nothing.

Finally caved and asked my GP for information on getting an adult ADHD diagnosis. She told me she'd send the info over but it's all been defunded so not to get my hopes up. 🙃

Something I think a lot about is how Aaron Swartz ended up dead after downloading some PDFs from JSTOR while his YC stablemate Sam Altman (who Swartz described as "a sociopath" who "could do anything") downloaded the entire fucking internet and is celebrated as a captain of industry

Ok this guy making copies on a dead format goes to prison for 3 years.. So copyright IS important? Now throw everyone at the AI companies in prison for the rest of their lives then. www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of...

There's a reason many successful cultures have a long history of divination driven by randomness (osteomancy, tea leaves, scrying, etc). Making decisions fast is often far more useful than getting things right all the time.

Sometimes I really hate this country.

Oxford United have apologised for releasing a clothing collection with the slogan ‘United 93’, after the club’s founding date in 1893. United Airlines flight 93 was one of those hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11. OUFC say “we are reviewing our approval processes”.

absolutely buzzed to be announcing that I've been working hard behind the scenes to help kickstart a brand new indie showcase in Brighton the autumn 😎 its been a year in the making and I am so chuffed with the team we've got onboard for this project I think its gonna be a great event!

It's TIME! TO! GET! HYPE! Today, I get to proudly unveil Steam Hype, the project I've been working on with the help of @hookshot.media for the past two and a half months. A new PC gaming site which aims to demystify PC gaming, cut through the 100+ daily releases and spotlight indies as much as AAA

I'm available for work! - Characters - Rigging and Animations - Environments Art I've worked on Teardown, Vampire Crawlers, Moonglow Bay and many more! Feel free to DM me or email zachary.soares@zsinked.com

A billion dollars spent making a video game and all I can see is a bad grip and a bar that isn't aligned properly with her ulna. Poor video game woman is going to injure herself.

I went in blind and enjoyed watching Backrooms. It's a genuinely interesting little horror film with a touch of sci-fi and the metaphysical.

A friend posted a video of me wearing the goth/techwear/anthro hood I made for NYE, and it got so much attention that I am now genuinely considering making more and selling them. Making and selling physical objects in 2026 would be quite a sideways step.

In a painful situation where I have loads of freelance lined up but, due to certain funding groups and publisher quarters, every single bit of it starts in October.

i thought hard about publishing this, since its a game (a james pond rerelease) nobody cares about and the publisher straight up denied using AI, but like come on man, look at this image

As someone who is probably a bit neurodivergent, I love how I had to spend years working on my attention to detail, because the small mistakes I'd make were intolerable and a huge moral failing on my part. Then for LLMs to come along and everybody stops caring about anything being correct at all.

It’s because they use CrowdTangle and other tools that measure virality on Facebook and suggest trending topics. It’s the same shit Gaming Bible use. They do these headlines to force anger/curiosity clicks from social media platforms. It’s cancer.

If you're going to #gamescom and you are: - work in build servers - work in test automation - are excited about how to use engineering to improve quality Then I've got the mixer for you! Come have some drinks, sponsored by BespokeCI, and trade stories with industry pros. luma.com/ges2v38b

England’s ancient oak trees dying in extreme hot and dry weather

So, who’s hiring? (Yes, I was impacted by the Netflix layoffs even though I was the single accessibility person in gaming.)

It’s my turn now! The newsletter didn’t take off so I’ve been laid off. If you’re looking for someone with 15 years of experience as a writer and editor, please get in touch. I’ve also written dozens of mock reviews and my clients say they’re good.