The Game Mage

We’re back! Did you miss us? Did you miss the soup? I understand some people look outside (if they’re in the Northern Hemisphere), see that the deadly space laser is ablating all exposed surfaces and think to themselves that it is not soup season.

Dear reader. It is always soup season in our heart and soul. If you believe in the power of the broth, forever and ever, ramen.

It’s been a month since our last update! You might ask yourself (is this my beautiful house?) whether we’ve gotten a lot done. No! That’s not how a vacation works! We spent the majority of it on a boat, enjoying beautiful places with beautiful friends and significantly less soup than I would have liked.

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They say there’s no rest for the wicked, which seems cruel. Being wicked is a lot of work, and everyone deserves a weekend.

Did you know there’s such a thing as Wicked Thai Chicken Soup? I don’t know what’s meant to be wicked about it. But if it’s an evil soup, I’m down. All my homies love evil, and all my homies love soup.

Okay So What Did We Actually Get Done?

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As the temperature warms up outside many would say soup season has ended. Pifflesquish and hobblesquawk says I. Soup season is the eternal state of mind which surrounds the bowl. And the bowl is life. Think on that. Think on that real hard.

Hey, remember how two sprints ago I was like, “tome menu?” and you were probably like, “what?” and then last sprint I was like “tome menu?” and you were all like, “huh?”

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This is the part of the post where I extol you, EXTOL YOU, to have some soup. Do you? Do you have some soup? Or do you hurt me with your cold, soupless eyes. Do you rebuke the calming warmth of the avgolemono? How could you? Monster.

Hey. Guess what. We’re a company now! Like. For realsie reals. I mean, technically we were already a company. You can be a company too, today, if you decide real hard and operate as “Yourself, Inc.” You can just do things.

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Famished! You look positively famished! Sit down right now, it’s soup time. Cream of Bisque. No that’s not just a fancy name for “I put all my leftover soups in the same bowl,” why do you ask?

There’s two big threads to pull, which makes sense, when your company is exactly two people wide. As much as I love juggling plates (fun fact, I never did learn how to juggle), there’s only so many I can keep spinning in the air.

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Good morning. You look hungry. Can I interest you in a bowl of breakfast soup? Cream of Apple. No it’s quite different from apple sauce, why do you ask?

Remember how last post I was talking about getting an address for TomeSpire that wasn’t my own? Because CAN-SPAM? No?

Okay so here’s the short version: if you want to send a newsletter to people the CAN-SPAM act requires you to put a physical address somewhere in the email. Presumably so that when people get annoyed at my moth jokes they can mail me subpar canned soup in protest.

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Hi. Welcome. Hungry? You look hungry. Have some soup. This might be a long one.

You know how sometimes people be like, “I wish I could do a thing,” and then they spend their whole life doing anything but that?

I regret to inform you that’s extremely not my vibe. I do the whole thing. With my entire chest. All the time.

So I founded a game studio. Did you know you can just do things? You can totally just do things. But what does “found a studio” even mean? Technically I could file a couple bucks worth of paperwork and “found” just about anything. Ask the guy who “ran” a “restaurant” out of his back yard that sold frozen pizzas.

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On July 2nd at 10:33 Bruce Straley, director of Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us, received an email.

Subject: RE: Notice of Termination

Chapter 1

I went to GDC 2026 last week. This is notable for many reasons, not least of which: I am not currently a game developer. And in fact have not been for roughly 20 years.

Oh, sure. I’ve got a pile of hobby games deep enough that the cats sometimes get lost in it. I’ve written a MUD in just about every language it’s possible to do that in. And also some where it isn’t.

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I don’t know that it got as much traction as it probably deserved, but Sam Seer asked us to talk about three games that were important to us, and I thought. Yes. Yes I think I will.

A Tale in the Desert

I am not physically capable of being reasonable about A Tale in the Desert. This is my ur-game. This is the game that I literally cannot be allowed to play, because it would consume me whole.

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Half-tempted to write a massively distributed roll-and-write wargame to be played by All of PAX.

Insane? Yes, absolutely.

When has that stopped me before?