Wow. I’ve always trusted games published by Annapurna to be something exciting, new, and high quality. I’m devastated to hear that this publishing company is floundering.

I found a technique that worked well for me. I want to share with you and others, but I don’t want to come across as judging you in anyway. It’s hard to find great candidates of any sort. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my technique to every company, because it’s just not reasonable in all cases.

I’ve found that the best way to get a good mix of people hired onto the team is to do more than hope that it happens.

I had to get out to workshops, conferences, and meetups. Local universities had groups that I got in touch with. I had to make connections with the communities that I was looking to hire from. It was a lot of hard work.

But once you’ve developed those connections, candidates roll in with surprising regularity for a long time. After two years I had a team of 10 great devs with a 50/50 split between genders and a huge range of background and cultures. It was the most fun team to work with and we made awesome stuff.

I play a lot of board games. And I own a lot of board games. Not all of my games get played very much, so I like to track each play and over time see which games are forgotten gems or which games I’d be best to just trade away.

In the board game community, you might come across people talking about the “Friendless” metric of their collection. It’s a totally made up measurement, invented by a person with the user name Friendless. In that way, it’s like the Elo rating in chess and other games. I find it’s useful to know when I’m “done” with something that doesn’t really have an end, like playing board games. You can always play one more game.

Friendless hypothesized that if you play a game 10 times, you’ve gained 90% of its remaining utility. So after 10 plays, you consumed 90% of the game play that game provides. After another 10 plays, you’re at 99%. By the time you reach 30 plays, you’ve consumed 99.9% of the game.

You can do the same with games. Maybe the number of plays changes a bit. Maybe it’s not the number of plays, but the number of hours. I would say that games of Civ are like games of any other board game: 10 = 90% utility gained. Matches in COD, probably not the same.

Thank you for this! Lots of people online have pushed forward the idea that Google search results are not as useful as before. This was the first article that I’ve read that did a good job of quantifying what that actually means and providing context as to why it is happening.

Thanks for this! I had no idea about the history of the game.

Damn. I had forgotten what actual journalism looks like. There was actual work done here to investigate and acquire facts. I’ve been reading “articles” that are just paraphrased PR statements for so long. This was a breath of fresh air.

That sounds incredibly difficult. From some of your other comments, it seems like you’re being really transparent with partners about your own challenges. That’s impressive.

You are worthy of being loved, regardless of whether or not someone is actually showing you that love. Things can and will change all throughout your life. There’s good reason to have hope. Take care.

Wandersong is a game about happiness that made me really happy while I was playing it. Not all the way through; there are parts that are sad too. But I’m thinking of replaying it because it made me feel really happy when I played it the first time.

I’ve been enjoying my Fairphone 4 a lot since getting it last year. This camera update really improved the experience of taking photos.

Yes! For most genres of games, I’ve noped out of some games but completed others. It wasn’t until you mentioned it that I realized I’ve never completed a Zachtronic game. I absolutely adore what Witness was doing, but I haven’t finished it. I should go back to it.

I read those when I was younger and re-read them recently. They are surprisingly good considering they were written by game developers.

Loved this game! Got completely consumed by it.

If I had been the one to decide what features this sequel should have, I never would have considered including a playable New Jerusalem or having NPC companions or any of the new stuff. And if you had asked me what I thought about those features before the game came out, I would have said it sounds like they don’t understand what people liked about the first game.

But this game surprised me in numerous ways and I honestly loved every hour of my playthrough.

This is fascinating and I would have never heard about it without you. Thanks!

Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed this article!

Gonna jump in to agree that Moon+ Reader seems to be the most commonly used. And for good reason: it’s very customizable and it does a great job presenting text in an easy to consume way.

OP, I’m sure you’ve already tried it, but consider giving it another go. You can make it do nearly all the things on your list.

I love seeing recommendations for Wandersong. It’s a completely different type of adventure game with a unique, and lovely, plot.

Thanks for sharing this interview and article. It was a really interesting read. I feel like I understand a lot more about how the game came to be now that I’ve read it

One game I played a few years ago had a really neat rule that I’ve used in a lot of other games and contexts.

The game came with a 1 minute sand timer that didn’t have to be used to play the game. But the rules said “If any player feels like the turn is taking too long, they can turn over this timer. This is a signal to the current player that they should wrap things up”. I can’t recall which game it was. Codename, I think? I’m sure someone here will let us know.

I’ve used that rule in a lot of different places. If you have a healthy relationship with your co-workers, it makes for a really useful tool for keeping meetings rolling. We occasionally mime turning over the same timer to each other to say “I respect what you’re saying, please continue, but also let’s get this back on track”.

I’ve also ported it to many boardgames. In my circle of players, turning over an imaginary sand timer is a way of politely saying “we like playing with you, but we’re feeling bored so please make a turn”.

Maybe something like that can work for your group? It requires some communication up front to ensure that people know the spirit of what’s being communicated.

Edit: re-reading this, I’m not sure I conveyed what I was suggesting well. Cosmic Encounters has a 1 minute timer you’re supposed to use. I’m suggesting making that timer optional. Let people barter until someone at the table feels like enough time has passed, then flip the timer as a polite way of saying “please wrap it up”.

Thanks for that! I actually had to put the game down for several months because my child had just been born and I couldn’t handle one of the scenes in the game. It was heavily telegraphed, so I had time to stop the game before anything upsetting happened. And when I went back to it months later it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. But yeah, it’s a game about the death of many family members, told through metaphor and fanatical imagery.

Oh man, I just want to give a shout out to the Splatoon ink mechanic.

The game is a competitive arena shooter. That would be pretty uninteresting, but instead of competing for kills or holding objectives, the teams are competing to cover the largest surface area with ink or paint. That’s pretty neat. But there’s more.

Every player has a special “squid mode” they can use when standing on ink of their colour. When in squid mode players travel much faster, can travel up walls, and are extremely hard to spot, but can not attack or lay new ink.

This makes the laying ink in specific areas valuable, as it makes it faster to get from the spawn point to the front faster and easier. It also rewards holding contiguous trails of ink, or conversely, cutting off your opponent’s ink trails.