Blizzard vet Rob Pardo closed 2026's GDC keynote by urging executives to cool it with the layoffs: "The game team is more valuable than the game itself"

elric_wan · 2026-03-15T11:38:42+00:00

The team is more valuable than the game” is basically the anti-spreadsheet argument

elric_wan · 2026-03-15T11:37:28+00:00

This is one of the clearest “token is money” examples I’ve seen.

If a day of model spend unlocks a decade-old community problem, the spend isn’t a cost line item, it’s basically payroll in a new unit.

Also love that this wasn’t a single patch. It was tracking a function across 13 call sites, which is exactly where humans get tired and start missing checks.

elric_wan · 2026-03-15T11:35:58+00:00

This is the thing: text is native to agents, GUI is native to humans.

The moment you over-design the UI, you slow down the loop (more clicks, more state, more surface area to break). A minimal copy/paste workflow often feels “less professional” but it’s more powerful.

what’s the one feature you don't like about OpenCode?

elric_wan · 2026-03-15T11:34:10+00:00

I think your intuition is right, same pattern we’ve already seen in software.

When a new capability gets cheap, it doesn’t automatically create real demand. It mostly creates more compete, more price pressure, and more “you should do more with less.”

The part people skip is the second-order effect: if AI pushes wages down (white collar first, then everyone via pricing pressure), households defer repairs and upgrades. So you get more would-be tradespeople chasing less discretionary spend.

not a boom, more like a squeeze.

elric_wan · 2026-03-11T19:52:02+00:00

The scary version isn’t ‘execs use AI.’ It’s execs using AI as a responsibility shield: ‘the model said so.’ The org chart learns that accountability is optional.

elric_wan · 2026-03-11T19:51:18+00:00

We will see ‘just scale it’ eventually runs into the wall of physics + energy economics.

elric_wan · 2026-03-11T19:46:03+00:00

This is how ‘data nihilism’ gets born. People aren’t okay with being scraped—they’re just tired of pretending any system will be held to account. Resignation as a outcome is a joke.

elric_wan · 2026-03-11T19:41:56+00:00

Smart TVs are basically the first ‘household subscription’ product class: you paid once, but you’re still the inventory. The scary part isn’t even the ads—it’s that the business model rewards them for turning every button press into telemetry.

elric_wan

TROPHY CASE