The Game Mage

Documenting one mage's journey to follow his dream and die trying

2026

TomeSpire 04/28 Sprint Retrospective

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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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TomeSpire 04/19 Sprint Retrospective

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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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So I Founded a Game Studio?

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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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Let’s Try

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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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Blogwagon: Contrariwise’s Rule of Three

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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?