Chris Filip

everyone knows my stances so i'm out here just posting topics

📖 THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW!

www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope

100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max...

ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope launches this Wednesday!

Over 100+ essays on the craft of game writing and narrative design; affordable priced.

… AND we’ll also launch with the first two episodes of the podcast series, where we talk to the article writers about their craft.

This was yesterday morning. It would have been 100% green (0% gas) if the UK energy infrastructure would have been built to whitstand the 1 GWh they had to curtail from the Scottish wind farms

This is really interesting, wasn't aware of it. If only the UK had some sort of Videogames Council who would meet with ministers once or twice a year to talk policy... @andrewcrawshaw.bsky.social

Oh my god were 12 and Clara really that long ago 😱

hi, I worked in indie games for 10 years and sorry, they're also burning down. you just don't hear about it because it doesn't make the news when a studio of 19 lays off 7, even when it's 200 small studios doing that

This is my library system. The central branch has a nine storey building with multiple roof terraces, a basement, a children's area, breakout rooms, soundproofed recording spaces, event spaces, an attached plaza and even a row of cafés.

We don't have to spend our tax money on bombs and cops.

The left tried for decades to pass green energy subsidies, passed them, the subsidies worked, and now literally the entire planet's electricity grid is going to convert to solar+battery. It just doesn't feel like "tech" because it mostly produces kinda boring blue collar jobs instead of billionaires

I am going to go to my grave quietly crying 'please put your email in every bio' if you are a smaller content creator.

If it takes more than four clicks to find an email, a piece of me walks into the sea. People want to give you opportunities!!!!

Our murder mystery adventure game The Mermaid Mask is coming Summer 2026!

That means we're going to be in the upcoming Steam NextFest, with a refreshed demo (see Adam's post below) and more to share soon!

The demo is up on Steam already:

store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/...

Scottish game dev after the next Silent Hill was announced as being made by Glasgow game devs is just sublime 😙🤌

THANK YOU! I've been saying this for years. Pubs are a 3-in-1 service: money, marketing, services. You can find each of them separately as well, just takes more time and is more faff and most devs just want to make game, but IT IS DOABLE.

Is this pre or post-planning approvals for those 201 projects?

I feel like they've moved a lot of features behind the "Google Workspaces" paywall that's meant to rival Office365, but like lol, that's why I was using Google to begin with, it was browser-based and free.

gasping audibly at the racing livery for the polestar 5

agency in video games

This has so much potential, especially looking at how 90% of East-West journeys are still diesel while most of the North-South (London, it's to and from London) is electrified. @techconnectify.bsky.social

The reason why I'm suggesting "mainstream" and "indie" is because that seems to be the case in the other screen sectors: there are economic reports on "independent film" which don't take "AAA films" into account, similar with TV commissions quite often skipping non-UK owned companies.

Awh, thanks for the kind words folks!

Yeah. I've heard it so many times in 2024 and 2025 recaps and "Game of the Year" lists: a good year for games if you were a player, a bad year if you were a developer 😅

Aggregate independent UK studios' games on Steam for games released 2023-2025, average the sales using IMPRESS, then do the same for 2017-2019 is what I would do. More studios making more games means on average every game will sell less. I'm trying to stay far far away from the 2020-2022 distortion

And that both need help: we do NEED more levers and ways of incentivising investment in videogame companies, same as we NEED funding that allows "games-as-culture" to be created without the expectation of return on investment.

9/9

So what do? We must start recognising games for what they are, same as we do for film: "mainstream" and "indie". The sooner the Games industry itself starts doing this, including collecting stats, the sooner we can make a case that one part of the industry is failing, while the other grows 8/9

Arts Council doesn't see "games" as a thing, rather just a way to "experiment" to benefit the "real" forms of art, funds require games to make a case as to why they'll be profitable, there is no regional Enlish funding to make games while Yorkshire Film Fund is £500k per project 7/9

But compared to the other screen industries, they don't have access to "cultural" funding. With one exception - Wales - all the other funding for games comes via the "economic" path that requires growth. Games MUST sell, not merely be "needed" the way books or films are. 6/9

Games have access to the same investment "levers" as all the other screen industries: SEIS for raising equity, a good tax credit, access to R&D tax relief if needed, highly skilled labour and graduates. 5/9

But how can both be true?

We need to see the industry for what it is: a dual sector, where the "mainstream games" are growing propped by mobile and games-as-a-service models, and also where "indie games" are faring the worst they've ever had, due to rising costs and falling revenue 4/9

But games are also facing market failure:
- Layoffs and studio shutdowns have been the norm for the last 3-4 years
- Sales of games have declined for PC and console, and it's harder and harder to stand out (cost of user acquisition has gone up marketing-wise)
- Studios lack access to investment 3/9

And the reality is, both are true:

Games are much lower-risk than any other creative industry because they are also tech-focused, and with a B2C business model, games have much more stable revenues (due to long tails) than film, TV, books etc.

Studios see analytics, not wide-spread elsewhere 2/9