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Reposted by John Rudolph Drexler

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 1d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 15h

Games are complex. But there are good ways to communicate that complexity to players without overwhelming them. Shout out to one of my fav games 7 Wonders 🫶 notesonplay.transistor.fm/episodes/9-m...

Notes on Play | 9: Managing the player's cognitive load

How do you communicate complex rules to players? It's worth thinking about what kind of complexity you're communicating, how you communicate it, and when you communicate it. This episode has a coup...

notesonplay.transistor.fm

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 1d

getting ads for both, and it's getting real confusing

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 7d

if the LLMs get good enough, we won't have to design our games anymore -- or even play them!

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 7d

AI is a miracle for programming. But it's horrible at creative work. notesonplay.transistor.fm/episodes/8-a...

Notes on Play | 8: AI is horrible at game design

LLMs excel at churning out sugar free vanilla paste. That's great when you're writing code. And it's awful when you're doing creative work.

notesonplay.transistor.fm

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 9d

I've been using Forge daily for years, so it means the world to me that I got to play a role in building this new generation. So proud of this team. Can't wait to see what people do with all these new tools.

Also this video is sick.

Laravel @laravel.com · 9d

This is the biggest update to server management since 2014.

◆ Instant Laravel VPS servers
◆ Zero downtime deployments
◆ Team terminal sessions
◆ Free on-forge domains
◆ Health checks, Heartbeats, & real-time metrics

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 10d

This is a fun one. Brainstorming the conference talks we want to give podcast.thunk.dev/episodes/76-...

Talking Businessly | 76: Pitching our next conference talks

We are busy as heck, with more work coming in. Forge launches this week. Wire:live is filling up fast. Listen to John's new game podcast. We brainstorm the next conference talks we want to give.

podcast.thunk.dev

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 21d

This is the single most useful piece of game design advice I wish I had gotten 10 years ago. notesonplay.transistor.fm/episodes/7-e...

Notes on Play | 7: Escape the mind palace

A game is only a game if it is playable. It is so hard for me to resist the temptation to retreat to the

notesonplay.transistor.fm

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 24d

oops, we talked about politics! podcast.thunk.dev/episodes/75-...

Talking Businessly | 75: The good kind of scary

We're at an exciting but scary inflection point as a company. Wire:live is filling up fast! John is sad about the internet, but excited about real life. Daniel likes Billy Joel.

podcast.thunk.dev

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · 28d

My white whale: a game that can be played cooperatively or competitively, and players get to choose how they play. I haven’t cracked it. But this week I got a lot closer. notesonplay.transistor.fm/episodes/6-l...

Notes on Play | 6: Letting players decide the victory condition

My white whale (one of them, at least) is to let players decide how they want to win, and even decide whether it's a cooperative or competitive game. I haven't cracked it yet. But I got a lot close...

notesonplay.transistor.fm

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 10

I meant to alert you to this development

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 10

Every time we've gotten into a hard situation, the solution was to just plainly speak the truth. I love this episode. podcast.thunk.dev/episodes/74-...

Talking Businessly | 74: Radical truth telling

We landed a big client, and things are heating up. We learned once again that telling the truth and being candid is the best path.

podcast.thunk.dev

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 9

I've had way more success carefully writing my application code, then telling Claude, "This already works. Don't touch it. But write tests for it."

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 5

So psyched for this event. Livewire, bowling, hangouts, hacking, great people. Tickets available here: t.co/pc8jMLrdI1

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 5

Podcast link: notesonplay.transistor.fm/episodes/5-s...

Notes on Play | 5: Suspension of disbelief is a skill

There are two voices in your head. You don't know which is correct, but you do know that one is more useful.

notesonplay.transistor.fm

John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 5

Every time I start making a game, there are two voices in my head. One says, "This is the best idea of all time." The other says, "It ain't gonna work." I don't know which is true. But I do know which is more USEFUL.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOOZ...

5: Suspension of disbelief is a skill

YouTube video by Catacombian Games

www.youtube.com

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Sep 4

walk, don't run to "Nate Bargatze – Live in St. Louis"

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Reposted by John Rudolph Drexler

Daniel Coulbourne @coulb.com · Sep 4

Doing a little streaming on Kapow with @johnrudolphdrexler.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpJ2...

Working on Kapow with Thunk!

YouTube video by Thunk

www.youtube.com

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John Rudolph Drexler @johnrudolphdrexler.com · Aug 29

My short form game design podcast is now on YouTube so you can judge my collection while I yap.

This week: everything I learned from having a booth at my first games conference.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObEL...