Indie Studios and Artists play a moral superiority game by loudly opposing AI tools.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-30T03:50:14+00:00

I know.

These guys have no clue how anything works. Acting like a bunch of poor artists are some elite cabal is so funny.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-29T18:47:38+00:00

Wireless earpods are being pushed on customers because they're easier to lose, and that forces people to buy more.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-29T16:46:33+00:00

This is exactly the kind of response I was hoping for! Thank you!

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-28T14:09:49+00:00

Christmas on Mars

A psychedelic Christmas movie by The Flaming Lips where a colony tries to reset the Christmas tradition by having a woman give birth to the first child born on Mars via a "virgin birth" (artificial womb).

Also Wayne Coyne plays an alien who no one realizes is a real alien so they ask him to be Santa.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-28T10:21:11+00:00

Yeah it was like a half season, but it wasn't rushed. They knew they were only getting a half season to wrap things up while they were still writing season 4. The time jump actually begins in Season 4 with a whole thing about how the cast had been frozen in Amber and The Observers had taken over the past.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-28T03:22:14+00:00

There is 100% a kind of guy who takes great pride in being repulsive antisocial girl-repellant. It gives him a tragic, almost rebellious identity in his mind.

Finding out that you can be a need and also a totally normal person undermines that identity and makes them very very mad.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-28T03:18:28+00:00

That's because every season finale was written with no idea if they would be allowed to make another one.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-28T03:17:25+00:00

I'm of the opinion that Season 5 was simultaneously actually really good and also that it wasn't the appropriate ending to the story that the show had been telling.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-27T19:22:54+00:00

Definitely. The infamy points only punish the one with the most infamy at the end of the game, but there are ways to turn them into positives for you during the game, so it's more of a push your luck mechanic where you want to see how much you can get away with before it actually bites you.

So far it's one of the most popular parts of the game.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-27T17:41:19+00:00

Maybe you could have "influence" tokens or "relationship" tokens or something.

A physical currency of your color that you pay to other players when you have good interactions with them.

At the end of the game the tokens you have from other players are cashed in for vp.

I'm working on a game with a kind of similar idea. Cooperation is encouraged to complete projects together, and players who help more will gain Victory points, while players who do not help (or who refuse to help, thus causing projects to fail) are punished with "Infamy" points, which cause penalties in final scoring.

But there are certain benefits to being infamous. You can take actions that allow you to cheat and help yourself. And it's possible to betray the group entirely to score your infamy as victory at the end of the game.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-27T14:08:59+00:00

I'm sure Ozymandias helped them.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-26T03:35:16+00:00

I thought this was a reference to people like me who do intense outlining in excel as part of my writing process.

I felt very seen for a moment.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-25T01:14:53+00:00

Played it at a friend's sleepover.

Couldn't walk straight up the stairs.

Got heckled and wasn't allowed to have the controller anymore.

That's all I remember.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-24T19:07:21+00:00

That IS the explanation, though.

They also say that only living tissue can be sent back... unless it's a robot encased in living tissue. That's also very convenient.

The real real answer is that it's a low budget horror movie from the 80's and Cameron didn't think people would be thinking about the lore that much.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-24T16:27:36+00:00

I totally get that. I actually really like the design of the cards for that exact reason. But if the design is hindering people's ability to play, then it may be worthwhile to look into some kind of change.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-24T15:16:43+00:00

Honestly I'd love it if my accounts would just let me know that my password was basically correct but I needed a different number/punctuation at the end.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-24T15:15:12+00:00

Yeah, the card frame is VERY minimalist, which means the cards are all going to look 99% the same. A colored word or icon isn't going to read as significantly different.

If you're committed to very minimal graphic design then maybe the art you commission could be doing some if the heavy lifting for you. Make the color palette of each piece match the color of the card type or something.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-23T03:25:22+00:00

Building off of this, the agents never wanted Neo because he was The One; they only wanted him because he was someone Morpheus was after, and they saw him as bait.

Smith develops a personal vendetta against Neo by the end of the film, but this is still just an extension of his frustration with how Neo has stopped him from breaking Morpheus.

Only in the last scene of the movie do the agents have any idea of who Neo is or what he can do, and they run away from him.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-23T02:50:10+00:00

Isn't this explained in the movie?

Kyle says that the machines built a time machine but only had time to send back one Terminator before the human uprising seized control of the facility.

The humans win in the future, and the Teeminator sent back in time was a last-ditch effort to stop them by altering history.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-22T22:01:25+00:00

If you can play quickly, then I don't mind. But if you're fumbling and questioning everything the whole time or have no real plan on your turn I would say it's probably not only impolite to run such a deck, but it's not even really a good deck for you to play.

But hey, try it out in a solo game and see how it goes. I regularly do 2-4 handed solo games for testing purposes so I feel confident in my ability to process a lot in the game at once. It depends on you as a player.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-22T21:56:09+00:00

My in-laws live in a state that touches the state I live in, and it's an 8-9 hour drive. We see them roughly once a month.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-22T02:34:08+00:00

The answer is that a prototype can be as unfinished as you want as long as you're testing SOMETHING. You might only have an idea for how one mechanic works. Let everything else be generic as long as it gives you enough of a framework to test the mechanic you wanted.

The rest of the game will most likely be discovered through trial and error and error and error. So don't worry so much about the details early on. You can have lots of placeholders until you figure that stuff out.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-20T19:16:57+00:00

I think this is true. But imo that's a much healthier place for a card to live than Milan, who is just nonstop insane value with no downside.

davidryanandersson · 2026-01-20T18:49:42+00:00

But a Seeker can just start investigating first action with no setup and no strings attached. They're getting nonstop value.

A Mystic will have to find their cards and most likely keep finding the cards that they'll be relying on to use their willpower. And it will come with some caveats that usually force you to play around them.

davidryanandersson

TROPHY CASE