THOUGHT_GALLERY »
>> Welcome to a disarray of my thoughts, ideas, tutorials, and a plethora of different things I made or was inspired by.
New job, new opportunities
Today I started my new position as a Senior Community Manager at Rennsport, developed by Competition Company.
Rennsport is a high-fidelity sim racing platform built on Unreal Engine 5 that prioritises ultra-realistic physics and professional-grade competition. It focuses heavily on the digital ownership of assets and the integration of large-scale esports ecosystems to bridge the gap between virtual and real-world racing.
The high-fidelity crap
When every choice is dictated by a spreadsheet, the soul of the medium begins to evaporate.
AAA gaming is currently trapped in a war of attrition where efficiency is often the enemy of atmosphere. This article explores the delicate balance between the industrial coldness of automation and the human heartbeat that defines a masterpiece.
The junior gap in community management.
Many studios are adopting a dangerous mantra: efficiency over apprenticeship. As generative AI matures, the entry-level roles in Community Management are being offloaded to automated systems.
This shift isn't just a change in tools; but a severance of the human lineage. By replacing juniors with AI for operational tasks, we are dismantling the foundation of the industry’s future leadership and creating a long-term knowledge drought.
The "Community First" mirage: From marketing jargon to meaningful action
True "Community First" development is the art of bridging the gap between cold telemetry and human passion, moving beyond marketing jargon to build a culture of trust where active listening informs the "why" behind the data.
Many studios today adopt some version of the phrase "Community First." It’s a beautiful intent: the idea that a studio will walk hand-in-hand with its players, listening and evolving the game based on their voices. Having worked with gaming communities since the ARMA 2 days, and communities in general since the 90s. I’ve seen this ideal succeed brilliantly and fail spectacularly.
Why the war over NVIDIA’s "AI Slop" really is about control
This article explores the polarizing debate over AI-driven visual manipulation, arguing that "authenticity" is often a subjective preference for the familiar, and that the ultimate solution to the clash between artistic vision and algorithmic enhancement is individual user agency.
Authenticity in imagery is a hot topic right now. To be fair, it was a hot topic yesterday, and it will be a hot topic tomorrow, too. Seldom are emotions stirred up so quickly as when someone does something "people" do not like with visual media.
How to convince your players that you're worth their time
Players don't just buy games; they allocate their scarcest resource: time; to ecosystems that offer a return on that investment through transparency, trust, and long-term respect.
If there's one thing I wish more people involved in making the big decisions in the game development industry understood, it's this: Players don't just buy games; they allocate their scarcest resource: time; to ecosystems that offer a return on that investment through transparency, trust, and long-term respect.
Welcome to my ARG
Before the Internet, I used to run and join Bulletin Board Systems. I've created an ARG based on the appearance of one of those. Why not try it out?
My latest personal project is something I love to tinker with both professionally and for fun: an ARG. It becomes even more exciting for me when it's also using old-school aesthetics. Need a brain-teaser? Want to solve puzzles together with others? Check it out!
Neutralising toxicity in modern gaming communities
Finding the proper solution to toxicity requires understanding where the toxicity is coming from. In this article I navigate the complexities of managing the toxic parts of a gaming community.
In the contemporary landscape of interactive entertainment, a studio’s greatest asset—and its most volatile liability—is its community. We often throw around the term "toxic" as a catch-all descriptor for any friction within a digital space, but to manage a community effectively, one must move beyond generalisations. True community stewardship requires the surgical precision to distinguish between a "disappointed idealist" and a genuine bad actor.
The Great Narrative Myth in Game Dev
"Players don't care about story. They just want the gameplay."
It’s a phrase thrown around constantly in development cycles and boardroom meetings to justify cutting corners. But let's be completely honest for a second: the people who say nobody cares about narrative, stories, and character backgrounds in games... usually just can't write great narrative, stories, or character backgrounds.