Rose Willard

Donate to Help Us Catch Up On Bills & Pay Rent, organized by Rose Willard Update 11/23: Jane got laid off so we are back to just my income for the foreseeable… Rose Willard needs your support for Help Us Catch Up On Bills & Pay Rent

It has been a while since I was on but Jane is still out of work and we have been managing but getting some help would be awesome.
www.gofundme.com/f/help-Rose-...

Donate to Help Andrew & Savannah's Family Stay Afloat, organized by Andrew Elmore Hey there! I'm Andrew, this is my wife Savannah. We have two kids, and we're… Andrew Elmore needs your support for Help Andrew & Savannah's Family Stay Afloat

I am so deeply sorry to be in the position to have to pull this lever again, but I just watched my car get towed away and I don't really know what else to do anymore.

More details in the update & description, but if you're able to help out or share, we would be grateful beyond words.

John Carmack's been openly a huge dirtbag on twitter for years and years and it drives me absolutely mad how seemingly no one ever notices. I hate John Carmack. All my homies hate John Carmack.

This week in generative AI being good for things:

Childrens toy safety: God no.
Mental health: Nope.
Water supplies to towns: Nooooope.
Global warming: haha fuck that.
Employment: Not on your life.
Medical decisions: hahaha no.
Judges decisions: nope
Power bills, energy consumption: fuuuuck nooooo

Saddened to hear that Rebecca Heineman has passed away. She was a true legend and all my interactions with her were insightful, fun and inspiring. A true one of a kind. RIP Burger Becky.

Rebecca Heineman passed today.

She was a unique talent, to understate things. Anyone could see that in her long list of accomplishments.

But we are not just our catalogs of retail products. She was a force of nature, a light in the darkness.

This is an unimaginable sadness.

If you get to a trillion dollars you should have to start the game over from the beginning at a higher difficulty like your parents not owning a bunch of emerald mines or whatever idk that’s just a random example

Rebecca Heineman's bluesky profile picture.

RIP to a games industry pioneer and legend, Rebecca Heineman (@burgerbecky.bsky.social) If your unfamiliar, look her up. Her career is like the story of videogames itself.

Absolutely devastating that our industry has lost the incredible Laralyn McWilliams, Jennell Jaquays, and now Rebecca Heineman within a couple of short years. We really will never truly be the same. We forge on in the shadows of giants, y’all.

A digital drawing of one of those drawing tutorials that says 'don't do this, do this.' The drawing is of an almost naked middle-aged man doing a flying kick. The 'Don't do this' one has a bunch of areas circled and a cross under it. The 'Do this' one is exactly the same but without the circles and a tick instead of a cross. The text reads 'Needlessly adding red circles will ruin your art' and a smaller bit of text at the bottom reads 'Bonus tip! Add a tick under all your art so people think you did it right.'

#3157 A helpful tutorial

It's also the coolest and most fun part of the job, why would you want to cut it out!?

AI can't do that. It can't understand the words or the characters it's "voicing." It can't understand your intent and has no intent of its own. You need a real actor to do this.

If your game has voice acting, then working with the voice actors is half of your writing process. It's not complete until you've heard it interpreted and reimagined by a voice actor. And they always reimagine it in ways that elevate the writing, in ways you never would have imagined yourself.

"AI is a tool."

No. Empirically not. A tool empowers people; helps people. It solves an extant problem. Generative AI in creative mediums is being used as a cudgel that diminishes and eliminates people, and the only "problem" being solved is fiscal.

Stop validating it, even in passing.

Just want you to know that when I asked Geoff why he gave the silent treatment to an open letter written by his own "future of games" program (& co-signed by 3000+ industry peers), he replied:

"Because that's my show and nobody gets to tell me how I should use my platform". 💀💀💀

We have this man so many opportunities to prove us wrong and he inevitably disappoints us again and again. The decision below proves that he doesn't care about people. He cares about profits.

The price of tickets, the sponsorships, the amount folks pay for trailers, features and more... So yeah

It's purely managers wanting to live in a world where ideas guys write a prompt and a fully-formed game comes out of the machine (and people buy that slop because their ideas are soooo goooood of course). I don't ascribe it serious motives. It's coming from a place of hating creatives, period.

The thing that strikes me about replacing voice actors with AI slop is that, in the scope of a big AA/AAA production it barely saves money? These people aren't even full time. It's immizerating people because immizerating people is your goal, nothing more.

"geoff's a bad person? who woulda known!!"
yeah well that snark doesn't help the marginalized folks who wanted to give him a chance, and who wanted to give this program the benefit of the doubt :)

I will never use AI.

Square Enix Announces Mass Layoffs As It Reorganizes to Consolidate Development in Japan - IGN Square Enix has announced mass layoffs today, potentially impacting over 100 individuals, alongside a broader effort to consolidate its publishing organization and focus its development work in Japan.

So not only is Square Enix going to try to replace 70% of its QA with AI, it's also apparently laying off at least 100 people (possibly significantly more) as it continues to consolidate its operations further and further:
www.ign.com/articles/squ...

Trans folks reading this: don't panic too much, the supreme court thing is about injunctions pending a larger court case

Cis folks reading this: Try to understand how terrifying it is to be a minority the government openly hates, and they start fucking with your ability to *leave the country*

That's not to say those of us in Future Class are done. If anything, they made the mistake of putting us all in the same room together because together, we're unstoppable.

Love my ❤️ at Future Class.

As a reminder: we are not props.

The Game Awards' "Future Class" might be dead The Future Class cohort was both an award and an incubator for admirable individuals in the gaming industry, until this year

Might? It's BEEN dead.

www.polygon.com/the-game-awa...

It's important that we name it when we see it. That we say it so it lives in the open. Not just in the way that the Future Class has been abandoned, but the half-baked acknowledgment of the turmoil in the industry by The Game Awards. All of it.

Don't claim what you don't care about. (5/5)

You do not actually care about honoring developers or their sacrifices or their toil. You just want to prop up the names that stand to let you gain. You want social assets.

No more and no less.

And I know a lot of skeptics already knew this about award shows in general, but even so... (4/5)

If you're not willing to even keep up an *archived list* of the game developers you touted as future stars in the industry, let alone a notably *underprivileged* list of developers who were supposed to get resources *from your organization*, then you're not serious about that work. (3/5)