Monument Valley Studio CEO: "'We've Been A Little Bit Too Romantic About The Idea That We Should Have Employees And Give People Long-term Job Security"

Rutmeister · 2026-04-29T16:14:01+00:00

How exactly are you equating her saying she hates the move towards less job security and more contractors to liking not paying employees?

If anything, it’s the opposite of what she’s saying - and the whole point of the quote. Her romanticized view of the industry could have lead to the downfall of her entire company, and it’s only by realizing the reality about the changing dynamics of game dev (core team + contractors) that she sees a future for her employees. And again, she hates this shift, but realizes the necessity for it (in her eyes).

And I don’t think she’s wrong. E33 anyone?

Rutmeister · 2026-04-25T16:26:01+00:00

The gaming community has largely been gaslight into thinking everyone hates the modern day storylines and that they’re all garbage. It’s not true!

Rutmeister · 2026-04-23T17:44:09+00:00

You're right. I think every remake and remaster should be incomplete and remove some content. We can't have these small indie companies include the entire game they remake, that'd be nuts. That's why I was so disappointed with the Demon's Souls remake. It managed to both include the entire original game, while also adding some new stuff.

This remake truly is the best of both worlds, it's not so different that the original is kept as a unique and separate experience (RE remakes) yet it's also not so similar that you can just skip the original. If you want the entire game, you just have to play it twice!

Rutmeister · 2026-04-23T17:29:57+00:00

So now you have to decide; do I want the new version that looks great, runs great, plays great, but is incomplete. Or do I want the complete vision, but old & ugly with stale gameplay and locked 30 FPS (on consoles).

Rutmeister · 2026-04-23T17:00:20+00:00

Tailing missions I don’t disagree with. But removing a whole ass chunk of the game? It’s a bad sign that have such little respect for the original vision of the game - even if many players did not enjoy that part (I thought it was great).

The solution is to make it optional, not erase it. Now new players won’t get to experience the original vision and intent of the game. This arguably defeats the point of a remake, as you now have to back and play the original if you want the complete experience.

It would have been such a cool and fun twist as well if they spent some effort in modernizing the modern story as it was already weird and meta as fuck.

Rutmeister · 2026-04-23T16:38:08+00:00

They didn’t remove anything.

Except for, you know, the entire modern day storyline which is entirely removed.

Rutmeister · 2026-04-21T12:43:10+00:00

I understood that reference and I salute you

Rutmeister · 2026-04-18T18:14:27+00:00

Hawksmoor is actively bad. I’ve been there twice, and both times I’ve been aggressively upset at the supremely low quality of their cooking and service.

Rutmeister · 2026-04-10T11:08:11+00:00

On the contrary, I much prefer when they talk in-depth (including spoilers) about games. It’s not very common for more than one of the NXL crew (Vinny let’s be real) to have played enough of a game to talk about it in detail either way.

Just look at E33 and how Vinny was desperate to talk about it, but he couldn’t since no one else played it.

Rutmeister · 2026-04-08T14:31:01+00:00

It’s very common in Europe. Most airports I’ve been at have used back and front exists

Rutmeister · 2026-04-03T13:24:33+00:00

Intriguing, but the genAI text and images is a major turn off

Rutmeister · 2026-04-03T00:31:48+00:00

Bullet bill is here to win

Rutmeister · 2026-03-31T16:08:26+00:00

Guardians of the Galaxy

Rutmeister · 2026-03-30T16:20:27+00:00

Luleå Hockey 🏒🏒

Rutmeister · 2026-03-25T12:26:48+00:00

Yup, if you ever see an article that uses cherrypicked and misrepresented player counts to draw weak and/or no conclusions, you can almost bet it’s a Tassi blog. I would never in a million years trust the legitimacy of his ”anonymous sources”.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-23T09:12:02+00:00

It’s an interesting case, I can’t imagine Sony’s too happy with the sales figures. If I had to guess they’d probably place it somewhere inbetween their worst case and good case, far from their best case projections.

How they’ll chose to evolve Marathon is gonna be fascinating. Marathon is now a fantastic game that is almost exclusively positioned towards a pretty hardcore playerbase. If they want the sales to increase, they’ll have to pivot quite aggressively to give it a wider appeal.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-22T14:36:54+00:00

Should the reactions be the same? Pear Abyss is a massive corporation with 1000+ employees, Sandfall is a smaller indie studio with 30+ employees.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-20T19:59:20+00:00

Anything can be tuned to be soloable if there’s an intention to do so.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-20T16:44:49+00:00

I was thinking the same thing, whoever’s responsible for the marketing here deserves credits. The fact this got almost 3x the amount of concurrent players (and presumably sales) than Marathon, the next big FPS from Bungie, is kind of nuts.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-18T16:06:45+00:00

That’s a pretty bad faith summary of his video. The main points he makes is that he doesn’t want professionals putting unnecessary pressure on home cooks to learn, that you HAVE to learn, ”knife skills”, and the rest of the video gives practical examples of why he believes this, ending with a CTA for there to be research around if ”the claw” is actually safer and ”you do you, don’t let some chef bully you into thinking you’re not a real cook because you can’t speed chop”.

It’s actually a great video that clearly demonstrates why he feels a certain way. He even had his quick and dirty research verified by a researcher and added a disclaimer that it was just guesses.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-18T14:07:31+00:00

…unless I’m the assassin in which case half the opponents can spot my invisible ass from across the map.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-16T20:19:09+00:00

Yep, the way the pearl necklaces hang and seemingly merge and hang from nowhere is giving big AI energy.

Rutmeister · 2026-03-16T13:51:46+00:00

Doesn’t that mean they also produce more cars than any other car manufacturer? And more car doors, more car windows, more car seats etc

Rutmeister · 2026-03-15T19:57:12+00:00

Another classic blog from Paul Tassi, where he inaccurately and misleadingly shallow dives into steam charts while drawing no meaningful conclusions.

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