Feb 01

• If you're interested in knowing more about what was on the Commodore 128 disks from my youth: http://t.co/xNb5QzsU
• TL;DR version: I was a terrible game designer when I was 12.
• Like Watchmen, but wish it was just about beating up evildoers month after month? DC has you covered: http://t.co/iZBS2eM1
• Good achievement design fills the same role as the friend sitting next to you, saying "Dude, that was awesome!" and "Hey, try this!"
• Bad achievement design is the friend who says "Are you a BAD ENOUGH DUDE to find all 100 hidden orbs? I'll be at the bar."
• @westquote Thanks! Yeah, that would've been fun, though I don't trust Jim-1992 to have been socialized well enough to be a fun D&D partner.
• "Artist Mark Jenkins is fond of installing sculptures in public that hurtle you screaming into the uncanny valley." http://t.co/6i0wktag
• Twitter's URL shortener has blocked Amazon's "Simple Storage Service" as unsafe. Real useful, guys. You might as well block "web hosts."

Feb 02

• Here's a question that probably has to be refined before it's answerable: why do mirrors reverse images horizontally but not vertically?
• @ExpiredPopsicle Feynman! This is about as good as an answer as I could possibly have expected. Thanks.
• Computer vision camouflage: http://t.co/EIs88I9A

Feb 03

• @KayinNasaki That makes sense, thanks. A couple people linked me Feynman's explanation -- I can't imagine finding a more thorough answer :)
• Billy Wilson's actual gravestone. I'm pretty sure that was Voodoo Extreme's logo back in the late 90s. http://t.co/AeHila1U
• This is only going to get worse as long as there's corporate incentive to incarcerate more and more people. http://t.co/aj5jkOZQ
• Ubisoft is turning off all PC games you bought from them this Tuesday. Pirated games will, of course, keep working. http://t.co/lRFKVUhQ
• Russian scientists about to drill Antarctic, subglacial "most alien lake on earth" haven't been heard from for 5 days. http://t.co/HQzZBZjY
• Cancel that! They're fine. http://t.co/4WUKqd1T
• I haven't street-passed with anybody at Unknown Worlds game jam. Sad. I was counting on you guys to give me Mario 3D level times to beat!
• RT @danbruno I overwrote this melody and now it has little 2+3 groupings everywhere. I have to cut that stuff out the way writers have to cut out adverbs

Feb 04

• Overheard: "DJ Planned Parenthood."
• Watch tourists recreate the Abbey Road album cover, live! http://t.co/KndhzupG

Feb 06

• Alan Wake finally coming to PC. http://t.co/jlbstQkX
• Unknown Worlds jam went really well. Helped put together a game that's surprisingly fun and playable. Local multiplayer only, unfortunately.
• Four-player only, in fact. I don't think I even have three friends, much less three friends in the same room at the same time.
• TSA finds not-bombs; confiscates them anyway; next shift notices them lying around and calls the bomb squad. http://t.co/FzRRGLI7
• For your consideration: a cat that laughs like Jeff Goldblum. http://t.co/kM2MBlcU

Feb 07

• Is this Youtube comment evidence for or against the Oxford comma? "I remember these young coders, liked yogurt, and Christina Applegate."
• @Vanther If you take out all the commas it becomes a sentence, but I'm pretty sure the guy was talking about his past self.
• "Optimizing for Fan Noise." Code efficiency still matters, and multicore actually just makes things *worse.* http://t.co/OOBZHEmy
• "After drilling through a 4km-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake." http://t.co/YjT1dhlf

Feb 08

• RT @ActualPerson084 ADVERTISERS PAY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO OFFER VIEWERS A FEW SECONDS PEACE FROM THE CONSTANT HORRIFYING SUPERB OWL VIOLENCE. #SUPERBOWL
• RT @FakeCat_Fancy cat sheds her winter coat to expose a slinky tube top
• Simon Parkin tells the story of Microsoft's acquisition of Rare, and its outcome. http://t.co/ut8LMnnF

Feb 09

• Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer created a kickstarter to fund a Lucasarts-style adventure game. It was funded within hours. http://t.co/aEtj9Y5A
• RT @Greenspeak Double Fine managed to avoid about 57 meetings with publishing execs who would have told them that no one wants an adventure game anymore.
• "Ender's Game" and "The Quiet American" as two opposing answers to the same moral question. http://t.co/mVlHMbNQ
• Robot vision. http://t.co/B7CmMEXL
• RT @FakeCat_Fancy is your cat ready for the afterlife
• Planning out the size requirements for the Frog Fractions music. Um, does anyone know if there's Flash-targeted S3M/XM/IT player out there?
• @GameMusicBundle Would be great to have a "torrent all" button. I still haven't gotten everything from the last bundle because it's a PITA.
• Re Flash module playback, Ian pointed me at this: http://t.co/pNsc3aQV -- looks promising!
• RT @TimOfLegend $955k! Guys, I'll make you a deal. If we hit $980k I'll add RTS elements to the game! And if we hit $1M, I'll take them back out!
• Indie game music bundle #2 is available. Jamestown and Sword & Sworcery soundtracks on there. http://t.co/fVzELFyD
• RT @ign_ebooks More of the same good at a slightly elevated price isn't anything to disregard
• MIDI file format: sussed.
• Overheard: "... in one foul swoop."

Feb 10

• Man, remember the polish and perfectionism that Uncharted 2 exemplified? 3 is back to the ol' "rough edges and glitches everywhere" routine.
• The world needs more cookies. This is a surprisingly hard problem to address, because every cookie I add to the world soon gets subtracted.
• Waiting in line to save the world. http://t.co/5zXIDUVu
• "Pinterest is spamming your Facebook friends' email with fake connection requests" http://t.co/nitEcIkZ
• Web companies spend millions in legal fees successfully fighting off patent troll. The system works! Unless he appeals. http://t.co/zlQkXyll

Feb 11

• RT @ibogost Q*Bert was one of 26 lab-synthesized bipedal cephalopoda. A-P*Bert were deemed erroneous and euthanized. Nobody knows what came of R-Z*Bert.
• Wait, there are apps that ask to OAuth into your Gmail? And people are actually authorizing them? Who are these idiots? http://t.co/dTa5Qmq0
• RT @ID_AA_Carmack Adding film grain, chromatic aberration, and rendering at 24 hz for film look is like putting horse shit in a car for the buggy experience.
• Best part of Uncharted 3: being lost in the desert. Good contender for best game moment of 2011. Worst part: anything involving guns (tie).
• In fact, I'm pretty much past firing projectiles of any kind in games. New means of conflict resolution pls. (New i.e. not melee combat.)

Feb 12

• "Legalizing child pornography is linked to lower rates of child sex abuse" http://t.co/GqVXyXBo
• @Satchamobob @aerothopter I hear both of those still involve guiding a reticule onto your target using the mouse. Welcome to the 90s!
• @mrasmus @aerothopter @Satchamobob And pushing leaves around with a broom is really just melee combat. (So is hitting people with a broom.)
• @ZenPsycho Being in an altered mental state can be just as frustrating. Hell, my *normal* state is of frustration at my poor decisionmaking.
• @ZenPsycho Stimulus that the player receives can also alter the decision process. Too few games have experimented with lying to the player.
• Wind-up AA batteries. http://t.co/6bXkeOHZ

Feb 13

• Hah, they really called it "Sandlantis" in the Uncharted 3 making-of.
• It's official! Guiness World Records says Call of Duty: Blacks Ops has the best game ending in the
• Can't personally vouch for the ending, but it does get the award for best interactive interrogation scene to make Jim queasily stop playing.
• @KayinNasaki It's bad, but honestly, trying to objectively determine the "best game ending ever," you're kinda screwed from square one.
• With this new data point, the whole "Who is Arcade Fire" thing is suddenly no longer interesting. http://t.co/A8AXOeLS
• Only 50k people have backed the Doublefine kickstarter, but that's more regular customers than it takes to keep making 1993-budget games.
• You can totally make a good living creating niche products, but I imagine it's hard to accept that role when you were top dog 20 years ago.

Feb 14

• "I’ll bet more entrepreneurs model their behavior on Captain Picard from Star Trek than any nonfiction human." http://t.co/U23gatN8
• Beek / ChrisJH just put out a new chip disk for the first time in about a decade. Is good stuff! http://t.co/BLsw4ykz
• Figured out how to reconcile a calorie limit with unexpected dinner with friends: count the day as starting at 4pm.
• RT @progrium Looking at re-watching Twister on Netflix. It's rated PG-13 for "Intense depiction of very bad weather"

Feb 15

• "Fearing God, Fearing the Body: The Theology of 'The Binding of Isaac'" http://t.co/Ss9qvsws
• Trying to get animation synced to music to to run smoothly in Flash. Might be futile twice: once for Flash development and once for PC.
• Trying Darksiders again. Trying to look past the horrendous art design this time.
• Presumably not every story/setting that looks like this is completely retarded. Just every one I've seen or heard of. http://t.co/aNTiPPCh
• @MammonMachine I was *just* pulling up the Wikipedia page to see if I could blame him. Evidently he wasn't involved!
• @MammonMachine An excellent point.
• @robertashley http://t.co/2nQ0gPqh
• "(The extension of DIZ actually stands for Description In Zip)." -- Who'd've guessed that it actually meant something? textfiles.com/computers...
• I hope that with the next generation of consoles we'll finally have enough RAM to keep both the game and the pause menu in memory at once.

Feb 16

• What's wrong with the Zelda series? Pretty much everything since the first game in the series. http://t.co/hYipl0Wu
• This affluent white american male has no privacy concerns or need for anonymity, so why should you? http://t.co/lHNX58yy
• "Researchers told him about a real-world random number generator that produced just seven different random numbers." http://t.co/6AsskEPs
• RT @UtilityLimb What society thinks I do: [THE ABYSS, GAZING BACK]. What I REALLY do: [IT DOES NOT RETURN THE GAZE. WE HAVE NO COMPANION, NOT EVEN THE VOID]
• Of what use are moral convictions if you don't stand by them even when it makes you both dumb and an asshole? http://t.co/jwNRc1JB
• Next MacOS update locks you out of non app-store software by default. Wait, they didn't already do that? http://t.co/OR67omhU
• Picture a future where all electronic devices integrate with each other seamlessly. Sounds idyllic, right? There are two ways it can happen:
• 1. Engineers finally get their standards-and-protocols act together. 2. A single corporate entity owns and controls all electronic devices.
• (An Apple purchase, if I have to spell it out, is a vote for the monolithic corporation scenario.)
• @KayinNasaki Google's the example that makes me sympathize with Apple users. Back when Google was trustworthy, I was totally an enthusiast.
• This is eye-opening: Apple's Gatekeeper painted as a reserved first step towards a very desirable scenario. http://t.co/x6unrlvj
• Basically, the author and I agree on everything except whether Apple having dictatorial control over everyone's lives would be a good thing.
• I'm wondering, now, how heavily the idealized one-world-government of Star Trek has influenced the politics of Apple users.
• @mrasmus Among the Mac users informed enough to even have an opinion about it? I guarantee most users will never even look at the switch.
• @mrasmus Which is the point: "95% of users" is kind of too big for any dev to ignore. They'll have no choice but to sell through Apple.
• @mrasmus They'll see the scary security warning and hit "cancel," fast as they can. Whether that's "seeing the switch" is arguable, I guess.
• Here's what it would take for me to trust Google again: they need to get more money from me than from people who want to advertise to me.
• I AM ASKING TO GIVE YOU MONEY FOR YOUR SERVICES. Could I just Paypal $50 to larry@google.com or something?
• @Eliot_L "If they won't take your money, you're more valuable to them as the product."

Feb 17

• Remember truth on Wikipedia is ultimately judged by the guy with the most free time to revert edits. http://t.co/nbfMBAd1
• Does free time dedicated to maintaining your pet article correlate with actual knowledge of the subject? Jimmy Wales sure doesn't care.
• RT @shanesemler #DearEsther is a crappy game. Other crappy games: Slaughterhouse 5, Photoshop, my back yard, Venus Verticordia, looking at a sunset, bacon.
• In case you had any doubt that depression is a biological phenomenon: "Blood Tests Can Accurately Diagnose Depression" http://t.co/P5gygmVo
• Pleased as I am with this console gen, no game quite matches the high of arguing on forums about which console launch was more disastrous.
• I guess that's the closest I get to tribalism. I wonder if normal people feel this way about politics.
• RT @stuartjeff Why isn't anyone designing game systems to incentivize experienced players to train/mentor new players? It's all about community.
• @stuartjeff Too few examples. City of Heroes has "sidekicks." A Tale in the Desert actually formally requires you to mentor to advance.
• On the shifting meaning of the term "gamer." http://t.co/QdCAwVWN
• "If we're very fortunate, gamers will disappear altogether." And maybe then we don't need a word for "someone who listens to music," either.
• The rhythm minigame for [spoilers] is now officially fun. Relief! I didn't think it would be this tricky; I'm stealing a mechanic outright.
• This happens every time: a date is intrigued that I make music; I give her a CD; she never mentions music again. http://t.co/m9Nzbqd8
• (I suspect this is analogous to the whole "I wish that seeing you naked was as good as wishing I could see you naked" phenomenon.)
• P.S. I actually like her more if she's up front about not liking my music.
• @jonbeilin @dizzyjosh Challenge accepted.
• Neat gimmick for the latest Humble Bundle: the games don't exist until Monday, and you watch them being developed live. http://t.co/v3aXJs1g

Feb 18

• "Google caught circumventing iPhone security." -- Big surprise: they broke the rules to push Google Plus harder. http://t.co/5XEnNdq0
• "How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did" http://t.co/x8RKRvF7
• "Even if you’re following [privacy] law, you can do things where people get queasy." A spokesperson saying that kind of shit, for instance.
• Boys don't try as hard under female teachers, because they think they'll be graded them more harshly. (They're right.) http://t.co/P4Bma2y0
• @mrasmus All these are from my H1: http://t.co/alNNjiq2 http://t.co/q6CiG0fQ http://t.co/2qoeK9Qo http://t.co/MMyQSKxK http://t.co/murHonq3
• @mrasmus You'll need a windscreen too unless you want whooshing noises whenever you move it around. I just got this: http://t.co/4zVDXXiW
• @mrasmus But you might understandably prefer this to the fro look: http://t.co/I4Qfm76y
• RT @westquote Just received Jamestown fan art drawn by @ArtrsGrebstelis's 7-year-old daughter: http://t.co/eRnkMEPE Impressive!
• Analysis of Apple's intent for Gatekeeper. TL;DR: even if every savvy user disables it, Apple still owns all Mac devs. http://t.co/LlQtS2e8
• @mrasmus I haven't! Apparently they patched that in and I haven't updated the firmware yet.

Feb 19

• RT @zarawesome "rule negotiation is a “consistent feature” of computer gaming. Total systemization is a myth; it is impossible." http://t.co/wwit3XuJ
• Tom Bissell blows right past the "are games art" question and addresses a far more intriguing one: is Madden NFL art? http://t.co/EPwuiu0y

Feb 20

• It's amazing how well GIMP rivals vim in ease of falling into mysterious corner states in which nothing works and with no obvious way out.
• Dogs shouldn't move this way, and the f-stop knows it. http://t.co/9RxbE3px
• Dance Central is a lot of fun, but evidently even a daily run doesn't actually prepare you for throwing your arms around like a madman.
• If you want to fight piracy, this is the first problem you need to solve: http://t.co/KifNsoCe
• RT @KommanderKlobb Protip: when tweaking things in a game, don't just tweak a bit. Really push it. Find out what the limits at either end feel like.
• Remember when I gave Uncharted 3 shit for not being as polished as 2? Replaying 2 now, and damn was I ever rose-tinting it. Broken as hell.
• @bfod The "AAA" game is a specific thing -- face-shooting, mostly -- for a specific gamer, and the "gaming press" caters to them explicitly.
• @bfod The major commercial rewards for targeting adults definitely do exist and are mostly spoken for by companies like Zynga and Nintendo.
• "Is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?" Yep. http://t.co/GF7AD3vy
• Idle Thumbs kickstarter. If you know what those words mean, no need for me to say more. http://t.co/zUsJhuZU
• RT @ign_ebooks Naughty Dog does not deny those with a predilection for different tongues and hi-fi sound a roaring good time

Feb 21

• I'm sad I hadn't heard of the Code Hero kickstarter until it only had 60 hours left and $34k to raise. http://t.co/ijABDGsh
• Tim Rogers makes great game ads too: http://t.co/wKZhN33Q
• I'm pretty sure that if pirated movies traditionally included commentary tracks &c., Hollywood would be out of business entirely by now.
• RT @loresjoberg I know sometimes I'm probably not using the right word, but I forge ahead anyway, because I'm an optometrist.
• Remember when Retro City Rampage was a NES game? I wonder if it's still written partially in 2A03 assembly language. http://t.co/R4UywZxW
• Code Hero made it to $100k after all! I'm sure they turned the corner when I mentioned it, rather than when Reddit did.
• Is this the only time /r/gaming has had a non-imgur link on the front page, by the way? In any case, proof that it's possible.

Feb 22

• @ForneusLex Be sure to bring up how hard it is to define "men" and "women." Even looking purely at biology, it gets pretty complicated.
• "How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect" eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02...
• This only works, of course, assuming Google respects its own privacy settings more than it does those of the iPhone and Internet Explorer.
• RT @ScottChernoff I'm giving up for Lent.
• "When a Venture Capitalist tells you what's good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers." http://t.co/rJvOhTB2
• RT @beekeepsta sweeeet. gonna do the soundtrack to a new game, "frog fractions" .. http://t.co/bnumiL9l
• Things I did not expect to improve my life as much as they have: fog-free shower mirror.
• @ForneusLex @mrasmus We played the hell out of, IIRC, Subterranean Animism last time around.
• RT @westquote When I judged in the IGF, I gave ~4-5 pages of feedback notes to every game. Three of them were horrific to play, but I felt it was my duty.
• @westquote I kind of wish I'd submitted Futility Pong that year, to give you a challenge.
• RT @auntiepixelante http://t.co/BC5Fze6p "no one is obligated to play your game," says AN IGF JUDGE WHOSE ROLE IS TO PLAY YOUR FUCKING GAME.
• @westquote It would've been a challenge to write four pages of notes about :)
• @Babylonian @MattThorson @tylerglaiel If the IGF didn't take your money, the "nobody owes you a fair shake" argument would be totally valid.
• It *is* crucial to think about the player experience from the first second of play, and arguably even from them seeing the box shot.
• But sometimes the best player experience is one that isn't obviously great at first, and shutting out that possibility, well, sucks.
• Context: http://t.co/i5zlDE3s (Get up, get down, IGF is a joke in my town.)
• @infinite_ammo So did every other judge in your position, leaving only the judges who didn't care about being diligent.
• Also, IGF entrants are incomplete, and the "perfect intro" usually come late in the process, so expecting them to have it is unfair.
• P.S. if you think it's dumb that the premier indie game award allows incomplete games to be entered, I AGREE. (Dumb and maybe appropriate.)
• "Simplicity tracks truth because compression
• RT @phylhrmnix Flickr: 7 years old, perhaps BILLIONS of photos, and I'm the only person who's tagged a photo with "macsturbation"?
• Working on Frog Fractions with just one beard today. Let's see how this experiment goes.

Feb 23

• Gameplay should be skippable. If you disagree, you are not just wrong, you're an asshole. I stand by this. http://t.co/rQPfNlrE
• Maybe it's too much work to realistically make it skippable! Lord knows it's too hard for some devs to add a "skip cutscene" button.
• But you don't sit there and say "I really enjoy activity X, and therefore everyone else should have to suffer through it too." Fuck you.
• RT @jasonkill It would be awesome if the drug store was like the App Store and every product was touted as being the most addictive thing ever.
• @halsted Multiplayer is a different story. I also don't think you should be able to just make up scores to go on leaderboards. (But, yes.)
• @halsted As an end-user, I'm *constantly* wishing I could skip uninteresting action sequences in narrative-driven games.
• Lars Doucet expands on the idea that convenience drives piracy, breaking down all the pertinent factors: http://t.co/PjTJaTfw
• I always considered the "sound test" to be a neat bonus for the player. But I just built one for Frog Fractions in order to, um, test sound.
• @Satchamobob If we cannot take joy in things that are merely real, our lives will always be empty.
• @Satchamobob You'll always be disappointed by a mystery. Either it will turn out not to exist, or even worse, it will turn out to be real.

Feb 24

• Oh no, it's #PirateKart weekend but I'm already busy almost all weekend. I need more notice about this stuff!
• @RyanHugh I wonder how many Capcom testers would say the same thing!
• The Lorax loves SUVs. http://t.co/6hMDTjH9
• Orthography sanity check: how do you hyphenate "MILF-in-law"?

Feb 25

• Introduced a mysterous bug into Frog Fractions causing entity positions to lock to NaN,NaN. Is it the monobeard? Back to two ASAP.
• @Triplefox As true today as the day it was written.

Feb 26

• "How Bots Seized Control of My Pricing Strategy" http://t.co/ihYddzS2
• I just realized, The Asshole Game is also a satire of bad morality systems in RPGs. Why didn't I think of this before? http://t.co/AO98bhIB
• 1. Find copyright-burdened sound you wish to use. 2. Upload to http://t.co/PYRxCn9F anonymously. 3. Download your newly CC-licensed sound!

Feb 27

• Mårten Brüggemann's talk about Greg Janson, one of the unsung heroes of early-90s indie game development. http://t.co/rl1yuZhf
• Spent 45 minutes clearing up the most egregious playability issues in The Kid and The Kid for the 2012 GDC Pirate Kart. http://t.co/vAg2kRlL
• Can't-fail startup idea of the day: flipping off babies dot tumblr dot com.
• Can't-fail startup idea of the day: baker's chocolate coins.
• RT @virtjk Final FX4 NSFs exported. Mixing and mastering in progress. All hands to battlestations. (sirens going off across ship)
• Sad story: while the Mario Galaxies are better crafted, I'd still prefer to re-play Mario Sunshine, because it has an actual sense of place.

Feb 28

• To everyone looking forward to Diablo 3: the first step is accepting that there is a distinction between "addiction" and "actual fun."
• RT @infinite_ammo Wrote this line of code today: if (fat.state == Fat.State.Fat) #AloneInDreams #ProGrammer
• So I guess this is what LucasArts has been doing instead of making adventure games? I hope it's working out for them. http://t.co/oJi13qfk
• @zarawesome Unfortunately, being an asshole is an effective part of competitive play. An angry or embarrassed opponent is at a disadvantage.
• @zarawesome (Or a laughing opponent, that works too.)
• Capcom issued a faux apology distancing itself from remarks that sexual harassment is an integral part of the fighting game community.
• But yes, Capcom, it *is* your fault. Looking at the Street Fighter art style, what other kind of community could've grown around that game?
• Statistically speaking, the richer you are, the less ethical you are. http://t.co/5DxwU2EX
• I love that "more likely to take candy from babies" was an actual experimental result. Good thinking ahead about the press release, there.
• Add sleeping to the list of things you're doing completely wrong. http://t.co/7AFDoSar
• Poster-form representations of Atari 2600 game disassemblies. http://t.co/a09Xi6Ff

Feb 29

• Homeless mom sentenced to 5 years because she didn't "reside" in the school district she sent her kid to. http://t.co/KMXdC5SV
• "Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web" http://t.co/zVHHwkax
• Seven years ago, I stayed in a hotel that had a complimentary waffle maker in the lobby. It was my favorite feature of any hotel ever.
• Since then, I guess I've been in about five hotels, none of which had a waffle maker in the lobby. Can I report them to the BBB?
• "TSA is one of the worst-run, ineffective and most unnecessarily intrusive agencies in the United States government." http://t.co/w0WOFsoi
• Conway's Life simulated using Conway's Life: http://t.co/3oksjoBe
• My new favorite congressman: http://t.co/WPjqeFvF
• My flatmate John just made a batch of this. Makes me almost wish I didn't already have the Twinbeard branding. http://t.co/lBBbFBYz

On Twitter: @mogwai_poet