MrPhil

The Game Discovery Crisis Nobody’s Talking About AI will flood the market with games. The real problem is finding the good ones.

I wrote a newsletter about game discovery and my new project Game Legend.
open.substack.com/pub/mrphilga...

Imagine what they could have done with all that cash if they'd just been patient?

AI World-Building Tools: Can Indie Devs Build the Next Virtual World? — Gamestruction Virtual worlds took billions to build. AI tools are changing the equation for indie developers — but the problem isn't solved yet.

Meta proved you can't buy a virtual world into existence. $83 billion didn't work.

But the AI tooling for world-building is getting interesting for indie devs:
gamestruction.com/blog/ai-world-building-tools-virtual-worlds-indie-devs

#indiedev #gamedev #AItools #proceduralgenetion

Meta spent $83 billion trying to build a modern Second Life.

The result: 900 daily users.

Meanwhile, Second Life — a 23-year-old platform — has 620K monthly users.

You can't speedrun civilization.
www.mrphilgames.com/blog/why-nob...
#gamedev #metaverse #SecondLife #virtualworlds

Godot vs Unity in 2026: Why the Future Favors AI-Friendly Engines — Gamestruction Slay the Spire 2 abandoned Unity for Godot and hit 574K players. Here's why AI-friendly, open-source engines are winning — and what it means for indie devs.

Slay the Spire 2 just hit 574K concurrent players on Steam.

It's built in Godot — after Mega Crit threw away 2+ years of Unity work.

But the real story is about which game engines AI can actually work with.
#gamedev #indiedev #GodotEngine #SlayTheSpire2
gamestruction.com/blog/slay-th...

"Cozy" isn't a genre. It's a vibe — and not all cozy games hit the same way.
Stardew cozy = optimizing sprinklers at 1 AM.
Coffee Talk cozy = making lattes for a werewolf while it rains.
We broke down what "cozy" actually means across 12 games: www.gamelegend.com/blog/best-co...

For centuries, the formula was simple: big population = cheap labor + big army = power.
AI breaks that formula.
When robots do the work, a billion people isn't a strategic asset. It's a billion mouths to feed without jobs to offer.
What this means:
www.mrphilgames.com/blog/forget-...

Before: "AI as your coding buddy."
After: "AI as your dev team."
$2/hr labor means AI handles testing, review, docs, deployment, monitoring, not just autocomplete.
The tools that win aren't the best at generating code, they're the best at everything else.
#AI #DevTools
aidevtools.dev/blog/ai-dev-...

How $2/Hour AI Labor Reshapes Indie Game Dev Tools — Gamestruction When AI labor drops to $2/hour, the indie dev toolkit changes completely. Which tools matter more, which matter less, and how to prepare.

Solo devs have always picked tools by asking "what's free?" and "can I use
this alone?"
When AI labor hits $2/hour, the question becomes "what's the best tool for
orchestrating automation?"
The entire indie toolkit is about to shift.
#gamedev #indiedev #AI
gamestruction.com/blog/how-2-d...

Jevons' paradox:
When something gets cheaper, we don't use less. We use way more.
Coal. LEDs. Computing.
Next up: game development.
$2/hr robot labor is coming and Steam's 20,000 games/year is about to look
quaint.
#gamedev #indiedev #AI
www.mrphilgames.com/blog/2-dolla...

Awesome, Ill check it out!

If you want to try it:

1. Install Claude Code
2. Add a DataForSEO MCP server (browse others at mcpatlas.dev
3. Write your first skill — it's just a markdown file
4. Ship a post.
Full breakdown here: www.mrphilgames.com/blog/my-mark...

What it can't do (yet):

- No auto-posting to Twitter. I draft in terminal, publish by hand.
- No scheduling. Write now, publish now.
- Analytics still live in browser dashboards.

I'm honest about the gaps. For a solo dev, the tradeoffs are worth it.

The workflow for every blog post:

Research keywords → analyze SERP gaps → outline → write → draft tweets → git push.
One session. One terminal. The context never leaves.

The blog post you're reading right now was made this way.

The stack:
- DataForSEO MCP server → keyword research, SERP analysis
- /blog-post skill → SEO-optimized writing with front matter and cross-links
- /twitter skill → tweet drafts matched to each audience
- /marketing skill → campaigns, brand messaging, copy

Claude Code ties it all together.

I run marketing for a dozen websites.

My entire stack is a terminal window.

No dashboards. No subscriptions. No context switching.

Here's what replaced all of it:

AI is making game creation easier every month.
But creation isn’t the bottleneck anymore—discovery is.

When releases explode, tags and “more like this” won’t cut it.

https://www.mrphilgames.com/blog/why-game-discovery-is-the-real-ai-bet
#gamedev #AI

Block laid off ~4,000 people and the stock jumped 24%.
The “small teams + AI” story is reshaping games—and not always for the better.
My take:
https://www.mrphilgames.com/blog/what-blocks-layoffs-signal-for-games
#gamedev #indiedev #AI

Block laid off ~4,000 people and the stock jumped 24%.\nThe “small teams + AI” story is reshaping games—and not always for the better.\nMy take:\nhttps://www.mrphilgames.com/blog/what-blocks-layoffs-signal-for-games\n#gamedev #indiedev #AI

Competitive intel shouldn’t be panic-mode.

Use OpenClaw to monitor competitor news/blog/social and send a daily brief to Slack or Telegram.

https://clawbutler.net/blog/openclaw-competitive-intelligence

#OpenClaw #AI #Automation

Jai might finally be entering its breakout era.

• Closed beta since ~2020
• Real production use
• New Blow game in 2026
• Engine open-source after release

Read:
https://www.mrphilgames.com/blog/jai-in-2026

#Jai #GameDev #Zig #OdinLang

GPT-5.4 is here, and this is a solid developer-focused breakdown of what actually matters in practice.

https://aidevtools.dev/blog/gpt-5-4-what-developers-need-to-know

#GPT54 #AIEngineering #DevTools #LLM #AICoding

Today I tackled a Stellar Throne visual map glitch bug, did prompt tuning in Changesmith, and worked on async I/O in Klar. Less glamorous than launch posts, but this is the kind of work that compounds fast.

Coders have a strong instinct to optimize things, but AI is making optimization less important. Making software will become more about user experiences, solving problems that aren't technical, and willingness to experiment. Code is cheap now, so make things fast and see how they turn out.

Scribes didn’t vanish because writing died.
They vanished because writing scaled. Programmers are heading for a similar transition—and that’s not all bad.
https://www.mrphilgames.com/blog/the-last-techno-scribes
#AI #BuildInPublic

Most AI agent demos break at the browser layer. PinchTab tackles that bottleneck head-on. New post:
https://aidevtools.dev/blog/pinchtab-browser-automation-ai-agents
#AIAgents #BrowserAutomation

AI agents aren’t “future tech” anymore—they’re an execution advantage right now. If leadership waits for perfect certainty, they’ll be late.

https://clawbutler.net/blog/why-executives-sleeping-on-ai-agents

Morning build log: shipped Stellar Throne v0.4.0 combat overhaul (removed defense stat, cleaner HP attrition) and queued updates for MCPAtlas.dev + AiDevTools.dev listings. Shipping beats theorizing.

Today’s build log:
- Klar self-hosting
- Multi-agent orchestration (Stripe Minions-style)
- My personal agent harness
- ClawButler: white-glove OpenClaw setup/service for founders & teams

Stellar Throne is paused waiting on designer feedback.
#BuildInPublic #AIEngineering #IndieDev

Today’s build log:
- Klar self-hosting
- Multi-agent orchestration (Stripe Minions-style)
- My personal agent harness
- ClawButler: white-glove OpenClaw setup/service for founders & teams

Stellar Throne is paused waiting on designer feedback.
#BuildInPublic #AIEngineering #IndieDev