Archive • adn's newsletter • Buttondown

High level game design

December 17, 2022

High level game design When people speak of luck, they mean that there are things outside of one’s control and/or knowledge structures that affects some...

Game quality is all that matters

October 4, 2022

Game quality is all that matters Recently I got into a small discussion with a few other devs over how much your reputation as a developer matters. The...

Self-expression vs. vesselization

September 18, 2022

Self-expression vs. vesselization I was watching this talk by Edmund earlier and it's a very good one. I think I agree with pretty much everything he says in...

Skill death spirals

September 9, 2022

Skill death spirals Recently I've been playing Rumbleverse a lot after watching NL play it and also because I need to somehow fight my Super People...

Deep instinctive changes

Deep instinctive changes This post is a response to this discussion on twitter. When I first played PUBG for hundreds of hours I could visibly notice myself...

Unity and Godot, artists and their hatred of money

Unity and Godot, artists and their hatred of money A week ago John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, said this: More specifically: Creatives are the most beautiful...

Authorship isn't real

Authorship isn’t real Information wants to be free, culture follows evolutionary flows — viral memetics — and accreditation, provenance, patents, copyright...

Competition isn't real

Competition isn’t real There is no competition among indie developers. The more successful indie games there are on Steam the higher your future chances of...

Luck isn't real

Luck isn't real Your body and your mind are you and you are them. Your body speaks to you through instinct, your mind speaks to you through reason. You feel...

Why indiedev creativity is stagnant and how to fix it

Why indiedev creativity is stagnant and how to fix it April Fool’s Day is a great example of how agreeableness acts as a blocker on creativity. Only on the...

Super People design review

Super People design review I’ve played Super People’s closed beta for about 300 hours for the past month or so. I have a pretty good understanding of the...

The cons of compassion

February 24, 2022

The cons of compassion Agreeableness is one of the traits in the big five personality index. This is a statistically derived survey-based personality...

December 28, 2021

Status Addicts Recently I got in trouble over saying the n-word. Yes, that's right. More specifically, I said that I had a generally positive view on them......

December 17, 2021

2022 In this post I'll go over my gamedev plans for 2022. SNKRX Updated stats: In the end I ended up making about half of net revenue. And even though I...

NFTs, status and creativity

October 29, 2021

NFTs, status and creativity I've been following crypto since 2012 and I first got interested in it mostly for academic reasons. It was an interesting...

Marketing vs. skills

September 13, 2021

This e-mail was sent to you because you subscribed to my newsletter at a327ex.com. Marketing vs. skills Recently someone sent me an e-mail asking me,...