During parental leave, I set myself the goal of rebranding and relaunching my newsletter. Yesterday, I finally did that. Welcome to Every Game a Playground: exploring creation within communities and their favourite games. everygameaplayground.substac…

RIP to a true lord of drip, Nigel Cabourn 💔

The adaptive cover animation system in Crossfire looks genuinely amazing but I’ll always be most impressed when i hear authentic Australian accents in a video game 🇦🇺

SGF Year of the Cube 🧊

Dont really play Magic, but saw some tmnt card boosters at my local department store. Grabbed a couple “collector” packs just bc I love me some turtles, and got rung up for $270 😭 learned a valuable lesson today.

A week ago I left EA after being laid off earlier this year. 10.8 years, 27 games, 1bn UGC views, and a few too many contracts worth more than my annual salary. It’s difficult to untangle the near-one third of my life spent at this place, primarily because of the profound impact that the experiences and people I’ve met have had on my life. I’ve been able to travel the world, live in three different countries, and gain a wealth of friends along the way. Creator marketing wasn’t the field I expected to fall into - hell, it barely existed when I first joined - yet it quickly became a source of pride to have been part of the group that fought to grow the discipline within EA. Especially over the last few years, providing creators with a critical new source of income via our Support a Creator program and helping them take their passion full-time has been some of the most fulfilling work of my career. While the circumstances of me leaving aren’t what I expected, it honestly feels like the right time to move on anyway. I’ve changed a lot since July 2015, and so has this company. For now, I’m just looking forward to spending more time with my son. Thanks to everyone that made the journey so far down the Grand Line as wild as it has been. Time to chill a little before beginning the next chapter of my career. ✌🏼

The deliberate choice to NOT host this on the official @xbox YT account is quite telling of the long-term vision for whatever Project Helix becomes.

My guess is that, while this is a great sentiment win, it’s actually because copilot is just going to become part of the infrastructure behind these products/apps rather than exist as a standalone thing.

I am about to become INSUFFERABLE

klay really saw the yoruichi cosplay and still went “nah…” Generational fumble my guy 🙄

Instead, how about a Helldivers II-style PvE mode feat. ODST squads battling across planets/systems in a tug-of-war against the covenant.

Que cosita 🥲

hold up...

Shocking - NFT grift studio turns out to be a grift.

Modding/RP has kept the GTAV content scene alive and is why it’s still one of the most watched games online 13 years later. It’s integration directly into GTA6 means a whole new community they can sell shark cards to. We’re about to see a new wave of UGC millionaires VERY soon.

ANNOUNCING #ALGS MULTIVIEW! 📺 Watch up to 12 teams at once, with comms 📊 Team & individual stats update in real time 📌 Pin, hide, or add custom POVs 🎬 Clip & chat just like on Twitch 🎁 ...and yes, Twitch Drops work Beta available for everyone starting this weekend!

RT @kaludiasays: if you want to watch a series about a young boy brought to a magic school who has an evil being possessing him and scars o…

Part of the challenge with creating a game like Marathon is that, because it is a ‘challenging’ game to get into, it ultimately is a slower burn in solidifying and growing a community than what most studios/publishers are willing to afford. I see a lot of parallels to Apex’s early days in that, time willing, you will see a new crop of creators emerge and grow alongside the game and become its primary evangelists over time. The difficulty is in believing and nurturing that talent, while staving off the questions about what you’re doing to secure the big names. Game streamability is both under and overvalued as a design talking point. It’s important to understand that, while a game like marathon is less legible to stream viewers initially than an Arc Raiders, it doesn’t mean that it’s poorly designed. It just takes a little more time to adapt, and the reward is a more loyal and engaged audience. And audiences adapt! The problem is that we’re now in an environment where the whiff of audience dissent is enough to dissuade a creator from following their interest and trusting they’re cultivated a community that is there for the person playing the game, not just the game they’re playing. What I love most about Marathon is that it has a distinct personality, which is clearly resonating with a not-insignificant population of gamers. It’s easy to get caught up in the mess of “well, this one creator says the game doesn’t align with their own personal taste,” but there is already a groundswell of passionate advocates pushing for the games success. Focus on elevating these voices and they will do an infinitely better job of gradually pulling in naysayers over time, the same way Tarkov creators eventually turned Extraction Shooters from a hardcore niche into a viable mainstream game mode.