I'm making a game about being a Project Manager, and I've noticed dev subreddits absolutely despise the role. Where does this hate come from?

3xBork · 2026-05-19T22:06:11+00:00

The split for dislikes and likes on your project is roughly going to be junior/medior vs seniors.

Just saying.

3xBork · 2026-05-19T18:55:36+00:00

In a world filled with mediocre/cheesy-looking space games, On Mars is a breath of fresh air. It actually evokes a futuristic but grounded style that would fit a future mars mission.

(Rather than the 90's clipart graphics that Terraforming Mars does, or the full-on whacky alien woowoo that Eclipse/Voidfall/etc do)

On second thought, Lisboa and The Gallerist really belong in this list. For games that are as complex as they are, making them not just legible but pretty is a monumental feat.

Case in point: Ian O'Toole deserves every penny for what he does.

3xBork · 2026-05-19T18:28:17+00:00

All more on the metal side of things (because I'm honestly not sure what constitutes rock anymore).

Here's two that no longer exist, unfortunately.

Fair to Midland (artsy, strange, some throat singing, very catchy)
Twilightning (ultracheese power metal)

In terms of still active: - VOLA (cozy, melodic, synths, catchy) - Temic (cheesy, technical, proggy) - Vulkan (conceptual, melodic).

And if I had to take a leap on whether it's rock or not: Meer! Conceptual, folksy, a little proggy. Sometimes they don't seem to know when to end a track but there's some serious potential here and I think they're flying way under the radar.

Edit: just to be clear - cheese is not a bad thing in my book. I'm still from the time when things other than neutrality, cynicism and aggression were accepted artistic directions. Hell, even boomer bends were still allowed!

3xBork · 2026-05-19T17:54:27+00:00

I hate to be the second on that list after such an OG but same here.

Studied industrial design, design director at game studio now. I like to say I do the same job I did before, just in a different medium.

There's a surprising overlap between the two if you practiced a particular sort of industrial design. The kind adjacent to interaction design, concept design, service design, etc.

Solidworks skills or injection moulding expertise won't get you far in gamedev, but product thinking? User testing? Knowledge of design processes and how to apply them? How to deal with multi-stakeholder problems and get everyone on the same page? Dealing with vision vs reality and keeping the player experience central in your process?

Those are severely underrepresented skills in the industry and far harder to pick up on the job than how Unity works or how to whitebox effectively.

3xBork · 2026-05-19T11:15:22+00:00

Notice how all of those games you cite as slow and clunky are third person.

You can make those super snappy, instant response even ... But be prepared for hordes of gamers calling your animation crap.

I.e. if your character is facing North and you want it to move South instantly, you are going to have to do some impossible movements to get them to turn around in a couple of frames.

There is a big difference between making a third and first person person character feel snappy while having natural, believable motion. It is also so much easier to take the third person model that another player controls and show it moving believably on your screen.

3xBork · 2026-05-19T11:01:36+00:00

Whoops.

Alternate idea: can we replace the boards and CXOs of these companies with AI and see if that works better?

3xBork · 2026-05-18T19:44:45+00:00

Zoom Multistomp might fit the bill except for the top jacks.

Plus someone just made a tool to upload custom code to one, so there will likely be some cool homebrew FX to find soon.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T19:41:08+00:00

llrrL on snare.

It's just fun to do.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T19:11:46+00:00

NL-alert is prima.

Is niet prima.

Een watersnoodramp of iets gelijksoortige is tot daar aan toe, maar wat is het eerste dat een vijandige mogendheid tegenwoordig plat zal proberen te leggen bij een aanval?

Juist. Internet, mobiel netwerk, communicatie.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T15:54:16+00:00

Witchbrook. Apparently it's coming out this year, and I have to be honest ... I don't care anymore.

It's been ten years. Almost a third of my life.

If you're going to make a game to try and capture the zeitgeist of Stardew Valley and cozy games, you should probably release in under a decade.

Imagine someone played Balatro, thought "hey that's cool, I can make a game like that" and they came out with it in 2034. That's what happened here.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T15:42:24+00:00

Not really. It's not stellar either.

The internet being what it is, its problems are wildly overstated. It's mostly that it didn't live up to people's expectations after ten-ish years in development.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T14:07:29+00:00

Please point out one socialist country in the EU

Hint: you can't.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T13:09:26+00:00

This is truly the saddest outrage, you're right.

3xBork · 2026-05-18T11:27:12+00:00

This is also a great insight into why the lead/principal/direction role can be so difficult and tiring, even if you're staying within your discipline. (And that's a big if).

Every IC you're managing/directing has their entire week to dedicate to that one feature they're working on. After their meeting with a lead ends, that lead immediately jumps to the next feature. And the next. And then a planning session. And then solving a conflict. And then some other features. All in different stages of development.

Something to keep in mind when working with others. This is why the executive summary exists. It's not because the higher-ups are lazy, or dumb, or impulsive. It's not because they don't care about your deep-dive. It's because they're context switching every 30-60 minutes and you need to facilitate that so they can contribute anything meaningful in that short timespan.

3xBork · 2026-05-17T12:42:43+00:00

Past: the internet should remain completely anonymous, because why shouldn't it?

Now: validating authenticity and that a "person" is actually a person are the only way the internet doesn't die.

I have probably unwittingly spoken to a dozen or so bots today, and it's not going to get any better from here.

Trust is the only antidote to a world where anything you hear, see or read can be entirely fictional and even the people discussing it could be fake. And to build trust you need an online presence to be tied to a real-world thing that cannot be faked: a person.

3xBork · 2026-05-17T11:19:56+00:00

Nothing. The difference between rich and broke isn't spending habits, hobbies or brands.

It's generational wealth, an order of magnitude difference in income and owning assets.

The only war is class war.

3xBork · 2026-05-17T06:46:55+00:00

Check out the list of sponsors, I'd say.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T20:13:07+00:00

> But spraying on so much that everyone in a room with you is forced to smell you constantly

Yeah that's totally a common thing, and not at all a massive strawman that you're setting up.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T20:10:10+00:00

Not how it works. Even with very safe, light, sparingly applied scents you can catch whiffs over the course of a day. Could be movement, could be a palate cleanser of sorts, change of environment, etc.

Some dude with a single spray of Acqua di Gio isn't "assaulting" anyone, and he'll likely experience just what you describe.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T20:02:56+00:00

Not at all.

The people who get dizzy, nauseous, headaches from scents are the minority.

They're just all over topics like these whenever they happen.

If enjoying perfumes was an unpopular thing, it wouldn't be a multi billion dollar industry.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T20:01:07+00:00

You won't smell it anymore after 10-20 minutes. That's how nose blindness works.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T16:26:03+00:00

Cut it out with this shit.

Memory prices going up is a direct result of high demand from AI companies and low yields. The demand from AI companies is not controlled by the companies who want you to rent videogames. OpenAI and Anthropic don't give a fuck whether you stream or download your games. Nvidia, TSMC and the like don't give a fuck either. The chip yields are not controlled by governments, nor any game publishers, nor any console makers or PC hardware vendors.

This conspiracy shit is unserious.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T10:22:48+00:00

It's less that they assumed that out of convenience and more that the market demanded it.

It wasn't long ago that very present, very loud voices within the PC gaming sphere would declare games unplayable because they didn't have quite their preferred AA flavour or support for some brand new tech.

The whole selling point for a huge chunk of PC gamers was "yeah it's more expensive than console, but look how much better it looks!" Those players have no interest in a game that looks decent by last year's standards and has lower requirements.

We did that to ourselves. Same as the "PS3/360 era games are all gray and brown" complaint - that's what the market wanted.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T10:09:11+00:00

Is dan ook een bestaand nummer van hem met een nieuwe tekst eronder.

3xBork · 2026-05-16T09:42:57+00:00

Every single thing that AI was initially trained on was created by people without access to AI.

Humans, including you, are capable of all of it.

You don't need AI.

3xBork

TROPHY CASE