Slides for my GDC talk "Game Design Patterns for Designing Friendships"
Just for you. Because I like you.
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Daniel Cook (also on mastodon)
@danctheduck
Chief Creative Officer: Spryfox.com
Blog: lostgarden.home.blog
@Danc@mastodon.gamedev.place
Game Design: Triple Town, Alphabear, Road Not Taken, Cozy Grove, etc
Daniel Cook (also on mastodon)’s Tweets
A new blog post on Quantic Foundry on the preference between 1st-person and 3rd-person perspective among gamers, broken down by age, gender, and game genre:
quanticfoundry.com/2023/01/27/per
#gaming #gamedev #gamers
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Want to help bring a bunch of life to our ghostly bears in Cozy Grove 2? is looking for a Senior 2D Tech Artist and Animator, come work with us! spryfox.com/2023/01/13/wer
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The folks at are looking for a skilled human to help them bring to life the sequel to their life-sim game, Cozy Grove!
🦊 Senior 2D Tech Artist / Animator
🌐 Remote
⭐ Great benefits (they’re part of Netflix now – big company benefits are pretty nice)
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👏This is what happened👏 I'm in the unit, I'm pro-labor, and I wanted a vote because the OC was not transparent with us. It's hard to work together with your peers when the CWA is fanning the flames they lit twitter.com/diannuzzelli/s
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okay fine here's why weapon durability is important in BoTW:
For the game to work (per its vision) it needs to be really dense. You're supposed to be able to pick it up, play 15 minutes, and find interesting stuff anywhere in its world.
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Finally got around to writing another devlog! You can read it here: automationstationgame.com/blog/devlog-4-
This one takes a close look at building construction in automation games and determining the best choice for Automation Station. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
#indiedev #devlog
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We're looking for a Senior 2D Technical Artist and Animator to help us bring Cozy Grove 2 to life!
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Birthday today. Question: What should I do with the time remaining? How can I be useful/helpful to others?
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FLIPPFLY ANNOUNCEMENT:
Thrilled to announce Whisker Squadron: Survivor, the first game in the WS universe. A roguelite corridor shooter w/a focus on surviving in a continuous world against increasingly difficult waves of robot bugs. Demo on Steam now: store.steampowered.com/app/2140100/Wh
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I bang on about algorithmic art not being "intelligent", but what do I mean? Let's get specific...
Squint at this prompt art, and you might think it's by an accomplished artist: lovely atmosphere, beautiful palette, calming aesthetic, nicely rendered.
But it's a mess...
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Thrilled to share more from my most anticipated wholesome game, !
This trailer showcases tons of new content from the game, including characters, shops, and mini-games. Best of all, you can play the demo RIGHT NOW on Steam via #TheGameAwards Demo Fest!
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you: ai won't be able to make stuff as good as a human
me: people don't like good things
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a YouTube comment about the way AI destroyed the field of translation years ago
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⛏STRIKE THE EARTH! ⛏
The legendary Dwarf Fortress by is out now for Steam and itch.io
Steam: bit.ly/2PY0P0w
itchio: bit.ly/3usRn5L
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Researchers studied the impact of meetings on our brains.
This is fascinating…
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🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT ⛏️
We're making a full Dwarf Fortress Documentary and filming at next week as they launch the game on Steam - 20 years after they first struck ground.
Blog: patreon.com/posts/75222989
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Very interesting analysis of the recent Diplomacy AI breakthrough from open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/o
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Programming is chaotic magic. There are no rules. You ask a game dev “Can the player summon a giant demon that bursts from the ground in an explosion of lava?” and they’ll say “sure, that’s easy” and then you’ll ask “can the player wear a scarf?” and they’ll go “oof”
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There are 4 guaranteed ways to make successful independent games:
1. Take a popular AAA game and remove the combat
2. Take specific Nintendo designs and translate them to an entirely new design space
3. Make a roguelike deck-builder
4. Make a pornographic CGI visual novel
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1/ Ten years ago, editors on Wikipedia began deleting articles about BBS door games. In response, I forked all the door game articles onto a brand-new website. I called it "Break Into Chat".
breakintochat.com
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Organic trade economies with a unofficial currency have been popping up in social spaces for decades.
This is great! I've never seen one done with video.
But also interesting how predictable these are. People + any symbol = trade culture. (Zero need for any of the crypto BS)
Quote Tweet
My daughter informs me that over the past two days kids on TikTok have made a completely player-generated, decentralized game where people buy things with "doubloons."
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For your convenience, over the weekend I've collected all the dev blogs I wrote for #unexplored2 in one location:
ludomotion.com/devblogs.html
It's mostly about design and content generation.
You should read them!
#gamedev #gamedesign #indiedev #pcg
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When a game character gestures as it talks, does it feel lifelike? And how do you benchmark the realism of co-speech gestures? This was the purpose of the GENEA Challenge 2022. Check out the paper and video. It's presented this week at ICMI 2022. ea.com/seed/news/gene
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Dev: Oh no, I have too much going on in the game and don't wanna overwhelm... I know, I'll put some stuff behind a small progression system to space it out 🎉
Players: Feels like the dev is trying to use dark patterns to trick me into playing longer than I want 😡
Dev: 😐
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someone linked this to me yesterday and I can't stop coming back to it and re-scrolling through. maybe I don't need social media anymore. I have Nabokov's irritable literary criticism and that's close enough. wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-reco
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(Another fun thing about chiropractic is it is an 'inferior good'. There are clearly better alternatives like a good physical therapist. But because chiropractors are cheaper and easier, poor people select them.
I think about this a lot when it comes to games and mental illness)
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Instead: If you do want to sell a service, maybe ask how you can add something positive to a person's life?
And honestly, it should be okay if they ultimately graduate from your service. There's more to giving back value to the world than maximizing revenue until your users die
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Instead: If a user need is based is suffering, what does it take to actually fix the pain?
Sure, this means that you can't sell them a service for the rest of their life. But hey. That should be table stakes for an ethical business.
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A lot of chiropractors believe in what they do. Just like how a lot of GaaS folks, whose services don't satisfy user needs, believe in their work.
It is an identity trap that is hard to escape because it turns all your powers of motivated reasoning to proving 'You' are right.
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When I think of the ethics of selling a service, I think of chiropractors.
If someone is in pain, you can profit off them. By promising them a long term solution with small moments of relief, you make it seems like you are providing a real service.
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Many people go to chiropractors is because they fell for a long term care sales pitch when they were in pain.
The pitch is compelling. But there's no evidence chiropractors help. And any fix is short term at best. The pain continues for years.
A parasitic service business. 🧵
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Announcing our brand new game...
✨Jumplight Odyssey🚀 - the starship adventure sim!
Keep Hope alive. Gather survivors. Repair & build out your starship. Navigate chaos. Lead your colorful crew.
Escape to the Forever Star. 💕
Wishlist now: bit.ly/JumplightOdyss
RT pls 🥰
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Describing your game in terms of technical features with abstract potential is an example of a developer being high on their own process.
Instead frame features in terms of player fantasies. They can be small "I wish I could decorate tables!" Or "I want a cute cake on a plate."
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Invest in me.
I've worked for a lot of companies founded by men who were able to secure millions without any previous experience in the kinds of games they wanted to make. And not for nothing, but I've led teams on mobile titles that total over four billion downloads.
With a B. twitter.com/cheryllynneato
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New paper in Science today on playing the classic negotiation game "Diplomacy" at a human level, by connecting language models with strategic reasoning! Our agent engages in intense and lengthy dialogues to persuade other players to follow its plans. This was really hard! 1/5
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This is one of the 🤯🤯🤯 experiments we ran on the Duolingo Retention team :
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