M. Ryder
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wanderways.bsky.social
M. Ryder
@wanderways.bsky.social
910 followers 94 following 2.5K posts
Just the letter. Wizard of the Coast; Product Manager & Content Design on MTG Arena | prev. Narrative on Eternal CCG | They/Them✨🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ ⚠️ Posts are my own (good) opinions & may contain strong language or suggestive content. 🌐 wanderways.me pfp - tsuyoi.art
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We doin’ pinned posts now? Cool.

What’s up, I’m M.

Yes, just the letter.

Gamedev, writer, worldbuilder, queer, trans, hilarious, anxious, tired; not always in that order.

I post abt game design, narrative, Magic: the Gathering, cooking, my cat & any stupid joke that pinballs across my brain.
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Our 249-year-old system -- two-party presidentialism -- has sometimes worked in spite of itself due to favorable conditions, un-codified norms, & a few periodic fixes.

That run is clearly over. I argue below that we need a multiparty democracy with the legislature supreme and a limited executive.
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As someone who doesn't watch sports but does love human suffering, I'm having a great night
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I actually did major in the humanities so that apparently doesn’t help
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Without understanding what a piece of art is trying to achieve, and where it is successful, all negative or critical feedback becomes a matter of opinion.

And too many people assume that their opinion—what they don’t like, essentially—is the same as critique.
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Facial recognition + bad data protection structures + "AI" that regularly gets behavioral prediction very badly wrong + glaring holes in tech regulations & privacy laws + a stunning & nakedly bigoted authoritarian regime= a threat surface, a bottleneck, & an arm of oppressive state control, all in 1
DHS document states ICE will NOT let people decline from being scanned by its new facial recognition app - Mobile Fortify.

It is used to verify one’s identity and immigration status. However, the face photos taken will be stored for 15 years, regardless of your immigration status.
You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.
www.404media.co
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The first rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club on COMPANY equipment including slack discord etc🙈

Ex. At Ubi an EP would spy on PRINTER LOGS! to catch employees printing resumes/cover letters 🖨️😱They r watching u

A union is not an after work club. Everyone who is fighting jobs are stake
I've seen a couple of people say you shouldn't talk to your coworkers about unions on work time or that a union is like fight club and you shouldn't talk about it at all.

While I think people have good intentions with these, I think you ultimately have to take calculated risks. Let me explain. 1/
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I get really frustrated with the way so many people try to gatekeep "game design" behind the activity of "product design", like it only counts if you're making a complete object to offer to people. But "thinking like a game designer" is something most RPG players do in order to even play at all.
a really interesting criticism of the expressionist games manifesto when i posted it was "in order to play like this, everyone at the table would need to be a game designer" which is ...
1. i'm a game designer. ofc that's how i'm gonna play
2. it's v easy to think like a game designer if u want to
(It was extremely fun)

(I did not survive. I got a bad? ending because my vampire host bit me for being too nice.)
Be cautious befriending game designers.

I told some friends I was struggling w/ topics for a Halloween PowerPoint party and they offered to make me one

…the next thing I know @makeadent.bsky.social & @doe-or-die.bsky.social made me a bespoke Twine horror CYOA game that I had to play & narrate live
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look. the process of aging is tough. coming to terms with the impermanence of the body is never easy. but I find it useful to remember that age is just a number. what is coming for you is not so easily calculated
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The music cuts off awkwardly before the end, but this is an incredible NYC Halloween costume compilation.
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Calling on my ancestors for guidance but the only one who answers is a weird eutherian rodent-mammal from the early cretaceous period. "EAT BERRY SLEEP UNDER ROCK" it says. Pretty good advice
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A hill I’ll die on:

“Criticism” has leaned too far into finding/fixing fault without acknowledging/enforcing merit, & this impacts some editing for the worse.

Positive feedback provides confidence & directional guidance towards strengths.

It is CRITICAL (ha!) to a functional critical partnership.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald: In my book I invented Gatsby lifestyle as a cautionary tale

The president: At long last, we have created the Gatsby lifestyle from the classic novel The Great Gatsby
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INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

SECOND INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE OVER ZOOM TO MEET MORE OF THE TEAM

UNFORTUNATELY, YOU HAVE NOT BEEN SUCCESSFUL ON THIS OCCASION, BUT WE HOPE YOU'LL APPLY FOR FUTURE POSITIONS WITH THE VAMPIRE
Oh neat! I’ll take a look. Ty Ty
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i don’t want to know about people disliking my posts that’s not my business
Hell yeah hell yeah 💪

What tracker do you use? I’ve been struggling to find an app I like
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really satisfying to look at a dog and go “dog”. babies tore with that one
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On Saints Row we had a debug npc named Skinballs (lol) that was literally just four spheres wrapped in different shades of skin texture so we could test lighting for different skin tones during development. But teams need to plan for that kind of testing with intentionality, and not enough do.
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The people making these decisions know that they’ll never be held personally accountable. It doesn’t matter to them that it’s blatantly against the law; the law is toothless to control their decisionmaking.
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Ultimately, big studios are just willing to gamble on lawsuits if it means busting a nascent union. Even if it’s obviously illegal, getting justice still means a potentially harrowing, slow, and expensive process.
BREAKING: Yesterday Grand Theft Auto VI maker Rockstar Games fired dozens of people, all of whom were involved in union efforts. A British union calls it "blatant and ruthless" union-busting. Take-Two Interactive says it was due to misconduct.

Here's the scoop: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
‘Grand Theft Auto’ Studio Accused of Union Busting After Firings
Union says 30 and 40 people were terminated. Rockstar Games’ parent company cites ‘gross misconduct’
www.bloomberg.com
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okay, update: i have had this question answered, and I am now looking to speak to game QA testers ON the record about the weirdest, silliest-sounding things they've had to do to make sure games work. the wackier the better. happy to keep folks anon if they prefer. DMs open, email/Signal in bio
would anyone who works in or adjacent to game testing/QA be willing to answer a couple questions for me? off the record, not to be quoted - just need some background info on automations to know whether a scenario someone described in a talk is common or unusual.