#layoffs and a delay?

[spectral-blades]

not like this. please god not like this

[rejectingrepublicans]

🤦‍♀️

[shimp]

Really feeling the same pain as when httyd3 came out right now. They should invent a finale to my favourite things that are good

[bunabi]

I love games, I love putting my degree to proper use, but god I am not going to leave the slightly more stable world of publishing anytime soon

I hope things improve soon

[laurarolla]

The whole situation of turmoil inside Bungie right now does make me wonder if we accidentally got a tiny hint that things weren't going well earlier this month when we didn't hear a peep about the Arknights collaboration that they announced earlier this year. Lot of people were curious why the next Rainbow Six collab was getting announced on the livestream with no word on Destiny 2, but if Bungie is in the midst of some serious internal turmoil, a collaboration with a chinese mobile game might be one of the easiest things to put on the back burner or wordlessly drop entirely.

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

Hitler and the Nazi party took over Germany in 53 days. March 1st marks 41 days of the Trump administration. My hope for March is that the list you’re about to read won’t be the in-real-time evidence of America sliding further into autocracy.

Here we go again…

January 2025

February 2025

March 2025:

Trump has made English the official language of the country [x]

Trump pauses military aid to Ukraine [x]

Trump has imposed new tariffs on China and Canada and they have retaliated [x]

Linda McMahon has been confirmed as Secretary of Education [x]

The Department of Education has set up a witch-hunt for DEI in schools [x]

Trump has delayed his tariffs on the auto industry [x]

Trump suspends tariffs on Mexico [x]

ICE is now targeting migrant families who entered the US with their children [x]

Trump is threatening new tariffs on Canada, including 250% tariffs on dairy products [x]

The Department of Homeland Security is performing polygraph tests on employees [x]

Because of cuts to USAID, Afghan women who fled the Taliban might be forced to return [x]

The Department of Health and Human Services is offering all of their employees a $25,000 buyout [x]

Trump says he will double Canadian tariffs on steel and aluminum [x]

Trump administration has rebranded the CBP One app as the CBP Home app for migrants to self-deport [x]

Trump created a strategic crypto reserve [x]

The Department of Education is cutting nearly half its workforce [x]

The Department of Agriculture has cut $1 billion in funding to bring fresh food to schools [x]

The Trump administration is rolling back dozens of environmental protections and regulations [x]

The Senate passed the spending bill that had been passed by the Housw earlier this month [x]

Trump administration has shut down the media organization Voice of America [x]

The US is bombing Houthi targets in Yemen [x]

The EPA has dismissed a case against a chemical plant in Louisiana [x][x]

Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education [x]

Homeland Security is going after foreign-born academics and scholars [x]

Trump says the Small Business Administration will take over the oversight of federal student loans [x]

Trump administration has deported Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador without due process [x]

NOAA is making cuts to weather data collection due to layoffs [x]

Trump stacks military academy boards with MAGA loyalists, including Michael Flynn and Charlie Kirk [x]

Trump tells the Attorney General to sanction lawyers who file lawsuits against his administration [x][x]

The IRS is going to share tax data with ICE to help them track down undocumented immigrants [x]

Trump signs executive order that requires proof of citizenship to vote [x][x]

Supreme Court upholds regulations on ghost guns [x]

An endangered sea turtle is stranded in Wales because of Trump’s funding freeze [x]

Federal appeals court maintains temporary block on Trump’s use of Alien Enemies Act for deportations [x]

Trump is imposing 25% tariffs on all automobiles brought into the US [x]

HHS has cut 10,000 employees [x]

A Tufts University graduate student from Turkey has been arrested by ICE agents who wore masks as they grabbed her off the street [x]

This happened in February but I didn’t learn about it until just now — Trump created a White House Faith Office [x][x]

Trump signed an executive order to control the Smithsonian [x][x][x]

Ohio has passed a bill coined the Higher Education Destruction Act by opponents. It bans all DEI from Ohio public universities, bans faculty from going on strike, and eliminates services to veterans and people with disabilities [x]

Trump has pardoned Trevor Milton [x]

Trump won’t rule out a third term [x] (that’s not allowed)

Miscellaneous News:

A federal judge has ruled against another one of Trump’s attempted firings. [x]

Federal workers are fighting back against DOGE cuts [x]

Musk had a closed-door meeting with Republican senators to cement DOGE cuts in law [x]

There was a heated exchange in the House over the misgendering of Sarah McBride [x]

House Republicans block a vote to end Trump’s tariffs [x]

A federal judge has ordered that thousands of federal employees be reinstated [x]

Trump says he wants to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies [x]

A judge has blocked Trump’s transgender military ban [x]

Elon Musk is spending millions of dollars on a Wisconsin Supreme Court election [x]

Arlington National Cemetery has taken down information about female veterans and veterans of color from their website [x]

The person in charge of defending DOGE cuts is a social media fashion influencer [x]

A chorus of ladies wrote a song for Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) [x]

The UK, Germany, and Nordic countries have all issued travel warnings about traveling to the US [x]

Columbia University has given in to Trump’s demands in order to restore federal funding [x]

Usha Vance and Mike Waltz, along with other US officials are planning to visit Greenland this week [x]

Trump administration accidentally sent secret war plans to the editor of a magazine [x]

Trump defends Mike Waltz who accidentally added a journalist to text chain about secret war plans [x]

The White House is seeking corporate sponsorships for its annual Easter Egg roll [x]

Florida is trying to loosen their child labor laws [x]

Ohio is trying to pass a bill to completely ban all DEI in public universities [x]

Alabama board defunds local library in first action under new book ban law [x]

Utah has banned fluoride in its drinking water [x] (I hope you like tooth decay)

JD Vance says Greenlanders want to join the US [x]

April 2025

This post is constantly being updated so if this comes across your dash, check OP’s blog to see the most up-to-date version.

Remember that you have a voice. Remember that Donald Trump and his spineless cronies want you to just give up and accept their control. REMEMBER: NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL INFERIOR WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.

[felassan]

Article: 'Laid-Off Dragon Age Testers Will Picket BioWare'

Unionized ex-Keywords devs won the right to protest, against EA's wishes

Excerpt:

"Former quality assurance testers who worked on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf are preparing to picket outside Bioware’s Edmonton offices after being laid off earlier this year. Electronic Arts tried to block the protest but the developers prevailed in a ruling by the Alberta Labour Relations Board in Canada. BioWare laid off 50 employees in August, including some longtime developers whose tenure goes back to the beginning of the Dragon Age series. It also cut its contract with Keywords Studios, which was supplying quality assurance testers on in-development sequel Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. Those same testers had unionized just a year earlier. Last month, they were laid off from Keywords as well, with the outsourcing company blaming it on the loss of the BioWare contract. Now, as first reported by Game Developer, those former Dragon Age testers say they’re planning to picket outside BioWare’s office on November 7 around noon. They are demanding that Keywords reinstate them and continuing bargaining their first contract, calling the layoffs earlier this year a “union busting tactic.” But Keywords doesn’t have any offices in Alberta so they are going to BioWare instead. EA was apparently far from happy about the decision. The publisher tried to force the laid-off developers to take their protest elsewhere, noting that, as fully remote staff, they never technically worked inside BioWare’s Edmonton office. Instead, EA tried to convince the Alberta Labour Relations Board to make them picket outside their homes. The regulators were unmoved, ultimately siding with the workers. “We view this Labor Board ruling as a huge win for not just us, but remote workers everywhere in Canada,” former Keywords tester James Russwurm told Game Developer. “Workers can now go ‘oh, I can picket my employer’s offices downtown even though I didn’t work in the office.’” The ex-testers had been contracted to work at BioWare beginning during the pandemic, first on Mass Effect Legendary Edition and later on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. When BioWare moved to force staff back into the office, the group successfully unionized to try and keep their remote status and improve pay. The Keywords developers were laid off before they could finish bargaining their first contract. EA said at the time that it had previously renewed its contract with Keywords and not doing so in September had nothing to do with the group unionizing. But the publisher has never made clear why it cut staff on a highly anticipated game like Dreadwolf that is still deep in development following several reported internal delays. EA and BioWare did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

[source] [the referenced Game Developer article] [more on the Keywords topic]

[luulapants]

Folks, I honestly do not know how much longer the federal bureaucracy will exist. You need to start preparing for what that will mean.

The cuts they're talking about at my agency will essentially render it non-functional. The probationary firings alone constitute the largest layoff in American history - 200,000 people. If the scale of cuts they're discussing at my agency are applied across the government, we can expect about 2.7 MILLION to lose their jobs, nearly 1% of the US population. That's not even accounting for all of the contractors and downstream organizations that only exist to serve the federal government. The DC economy is about to collapse - the federal government is by far the largest employer there.

We're also looking at the potential delay, suspension, or cancellation of payments to social security, disability, Medicare and Medicaid, federal pensions. Loss of income for about 65 million Americans, ~19% of the population, and the loss of 1.244 TRILLION dollars normally circulated through the economy each year.

They are intentionally creating a Great Depression.

[drakorn]

Rewriting Veilguard Part 1 - The World State

Disclaimer: I don't hate the game, I actually think it's quite great given the development hell Bioware went through in those 10 years. This is more of a hypothetical universe where there was less of that behind the scenes drama. Just a fun writing exercise.

Expanding Veilguard's World State Editor

Like many of us, I was disappointed with the total amount of choices carrying over from past games being only three, one of which dealt with romance, two with decisions made in the Trespasser DLC, and all of them being from Inquisition. This already set the precedent that we shouldn’t really be expecting the game to be as connected to our unique Thedas as we have come to be used to from previous titles—no more uniquely flavoured codex entries, no more small but sweet cameos here and there that make the world itself feel like a larger place that we had helped shape.

Given The Veilguard’s very troubled production history of multiple delays, staff layoffs, and all-around restarts of the entire project, it is honestly a surprise that we even got three choices, so credit where credit is due. They made with what they had. But what if The Veilguard had this vision from the start? What if there wasn’t any of this meddling? What if Bioware simply had more time and control? What if they could truly let us import the World State this game deserved?

Now, for this hypothetical rewritten playthrough, I’m going off from the fact that the Dragon Age Keep will not be used; I actually found it a neat idea to tick my three choices in the character creator, and it would have probably been better had Inquisition done something similar. Why do I think that? Because it means we are not running into any dangers of servers potentially shutting down, leaving us trapped in the canon we happened to have imported last. Converting the Keep into an offline editor was a good idea, but unfortunately not executed nearly enough as, let’s face it, we all expected. So we’re gonna have some fun for Veilguard.

Disclaimer: I’m going to refer to the game’s title as Veilguard from now on, not “the” Veilguard. I really don’t like the change of having a “the” in a series of otherwise one-word, or one-number, titles.

Of course, we have to be realistic about this. It is virtually impossible to implement every single decision from across all three games, and those that can be implanted can’t alter the main plot too much. Certainly, we like to imagine and picture things, but let’s approach this from an actually doable point of view.

Right, so imagine you just finalised your Rook, and then get a screen titled “Past Adventures”. Not just “The Inquisition”. And it would take up the entire screen instead of being shoved somewhere in the corner of the final CC page, which many people missed. I could have missed it too, had I not known beforehand that it was going to be there!

It would say something akin to “You can customise the protagonists and several events from the games Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. These choices will have both major and minor effects on the plot of Veilguard. If this is your first Dragon Age title, you would be advised to skip this section for now, as you may otherwise risk getting overwhelmed. A default World State has been pre-generated for the game.”

Why did I add this disclaimer? Because it would show us, right from the get-go, that we respect both new and old players. If you’re a new player, feel free to skip this part as it won’t matter to you anyway and, quite frankly, you wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in the character creator doing things you might not even be familiar with. But if you’re a returning player or someone who has read up on recaps and watched countless lore videos, come on right in, we’ve got you covered, don’t worry! We know how much time you spent meticulously crafting your World State for Inquisition, so join us and customise to your heart’s content.

If you choose to not skip ahead (honestly the only time I would click “skip” on that shit is if I was a new player), you will be presented with three tarot cards, one shows the griffon, the Grey Warden symbol, one shows Kirkwall’s heraldry, and one shows the Inquisition’s banner. Here’s your previous three games. And now we get to customise them a little. The little gremlin in me would be quite gleefully rubbing his hands at this prospect.

Past Adventures: The Blight

We open the first slide and are immediately hit with a crimson screen and an ambient reprise of several of Inon Zur’s themes from DAO. I loved this part in the game, when you click to customise your Inquisitor and are immediately hit with “Calling the Inquisition”. Really great stuff for early emotions. Now let’s actually customise things.

The Hero of Ferelden

I do not expect us to actually be able to recreate the Warden in the flesh, but I believe they should be at least brought up in conversation or mentioned in codex entries and letters. Here are the things we get to customise about them specifically:

The Hero: Here, we get to tick the race, gender, class, and background for our Warden. Again, no character creator, just fancy tarot cards. But guess what? That would already be more than enough for what we can do. At least we know the game acknowledges their continued existence.

The Warden’s fate: Did the Hero of Ferelden perform the ultimate sacrifice?

Romance: Who did your Warden romance, if at all?

The Companions

Now that our Warden is set, we jump over to DAO’s companions. Each companion has their own little mini-section. The first few questions will always be “Did you even recruit them? And if so, did they survive? If so, were you on good terms or not?” These questions, depending on the answers, will immediately lock or open the more specific ones. Which are, as follows:

Did the Warden have Morrigan perform the Dark Ritual?

What is Alistair’s ultimate fate?

Was Sten reunited with his sword?

What happened to Loghain?

What happened to Marjorlaine?

The Battle of Ostagar

What happened to the prisoner at Ostagar?

The Arl of Redcliffe

What is Connor’s fate?

Is Isolde alive?

Did you help Bevin and return his sword?

The Urn of Sacred Ashes

What happened to the Urn?

The Nature of the Beast

How was the situation between the Dalish and the werewolves resolved?

A Paragon of Her Kind

What happened to the Anvil of the Void?

Who rules Orzammar?

Did the Warden help Brother Burkel create a Chantry in Orzammar?

Did the Warden prove the Legion of the Dead was connected to a noble house?

Did Orta join the Assembly?

Warden’s Keep

What happened to Sophia and Avernus?

Denerim

Did the Warden complete Slim Couldry’s crime wave?

Who rules Ferelden?

Who killed Urthemiel?

Awakening

What happened to Nathaniel?

What happened to the Architect?

What happened to Vigil’s Keep and Amaranthine?

As you can see, I have not included all the choices, just the ones I think can be carried over in both realistic and interesting manners. Not all of them will heavily feature in the game; in fact, many of them are for flavour and codex entries only, but there is still merit in those. We know there is a whole lot of stuff happening in the South thanks to the letters the Inquisitor regales us with. So let’s put some world-state uniqueness to those letters. But in this rewrite, some of these choices will, in fact, feature in a more substantial manner.

And that’s Dragon Age: Origins done! Moving on to the next one!

Past Adventures: The Tale of the Champion

When we enter this screen, the CC assumes Kirkwall’s orangey-yellow tone and we get a reprisal of the key DA2 themes by Inon Zur, the most prominent one being, of course, Hawke’s family theme. This one is not going to be as big as DAO, but there are a few important factors nevertheless, especially concerning possible deaths and survivals.

The Champion of Kirkwall

Unlike the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke will actually be customisable in this one. Because no matter whether or not they were sent to the Fade or Weisshaupt, there is always the potential for them to still be alive. So, here are the choices regarding Hawke:

The Champion: Here you can customise Hawke’s gender, class, and personality.

Who did Hawke romance, if at all?

The Party

Pretty much every companion’s card, aside from a few, will have the questions “Did you recruit them?”, “Are they still alive?”, and “Were they friend or rival to Hawke?” at the forefront. Most of it is gonna be flavour, but it’s still my flavour, dammit!

What happened to Bethany or Carver?

What happened to Isabela and the Tome of Koslun?

What happened to Fenris and Danarius?

What happened to Merrill, her eluvian, and Clan Sabrae?

What happened to Bartrand?

What happened to Anders when the Chantry exploded?

Did Hawke approve of Anders' actions?

Did Aveline marry Donnic?

The Tale of the Champion

Did Hawke protect the Bone Pit from all its dangers?

What happened to Feynriel?

Did Hawke let Zevran go?

Did Nathaniel survive?

Did Hawke side with the mages or the templars?

Fewer choices are carrying over here compared to DAO, but many of the events that occurred in DA2 are only relevant to Kirkwall’s immediate fate, which is already resolved by the time of DAI. Many of these will be flavour again, but some of them, I’m not going to say which, will definitely have a bigger impact.

Right, we’re done with DA2, let’s move on to the last one!

Past Adventures: The Inquisition

And here we get to the big one, the game that most directly impacts much of DAV’s story. We click on the last page and get the green shades and DAI’s ambience themes, a beautiful reprisal of Trevor Morris’ great hits. I would like to once again reiterate how emotional the CC music made me feel here when I was playing the game. Let us now customise our choices.

The Inquisitor

While the Hero of Ferelden will be a background figure in letters and codex entries, and Hawke more of a minor character with a significant role, the Inquisitor will have a much larger presence. Just how large, you’ll find out soon. But for now, let’s customise them:

The Inquisitor: Here you can customise your Inquisitor’s race, gender, class, and specialisation. Their personality as well, for while it wasn’t as apparent as with Hawke, the Inquisitor does still have a distinct range of dialogue choices. You can still be diplomatic, lighthearted, or even rough.

Who did the Inquisitor romance, if at all?

The Inner Circle

As with the other companion sections, pretty much all slides here will feature the “Did you actually recruit them?”, “Are they still around?”, and “Are you friends or not?” questions. Alongside a few specific ones that will definitely have more of an impact here.

Did Dorian resolve the issue with his father?

What happened to Blackwall?

Did the Iron Bull remain loyal to the Qun?

Did Cassandra rebuild the Seekers of Truth?

Did Cassandra discover the book of secrets and what did she do with it?

What happened to Harmond?

Which path did Cole choose?

What happened to Solas’ friend?

Did Varric track down the red lyrium source?

Did the Inquisitor give Vivienne the heart of a snow wyvern?

How was Cullen’s lyrium dilemma resolved?

How did the Inquisitor help Josephine resolve her family’s fortunes?

Was Leliana hardened or softened?

The Path of the Inquisitor

Did the Inquisitor embrace or denounce their title of Herald of Andraste?

Did the Inquisition side with the mages or the templars?

What was the general principle upon which the Inquisition was founded?

Who rules Orlais?

Who stayed behind in the Fade?

What happened to the Grey Wardens after Adamant Fortress?

What happened to Samson or Calpernia?

Who drank from the Well of Sorrows?

Did the Inquisitor respect the rituals at the Temple of Mythal?

Who became Divine Victoria?

The Inquisition’s Influence

Did the Inquisitor ally with the Hinterland cultists?

Was the rift in Crestwood closed?

Was Caer Bronach captured?

Did the Inquisitor make a deal with Imshael?

Was Suledin Keep captured?

Was Griffon Wing Keep captured?

Was Sutherland’s company formed?

What tone did the Inquisitor’s judgments take?

Jaws of Hakkon

Did the Inquisitor learn Ameridan’s fate?

Was Hakkon slain?

Did the Inquisitor share the truth about Ameridan?

The Descent

Did the Inquisitor stop the earthquakes from destroying the Deep Roads?

Trespasser

What is the ultimate fate of the Inquisition?

What is the Inquisitor’s final goal regarding Solas?

Again, this looks like a lot, and it is, but bear in mind that a lot of these will only have minor impacts on the story in the form of cameos and codex entries. However, there are several major DAI choices that will have significant impact.

For our hypothetical rewrite, I shall not list every single choice I made for my imaginary playthrough. Instead, I shall reveal them as we go along so as not to clutter the space too much. And it’s a bit more fun this way.

And that’s the World State editor finally done! I believe all of these choices are able to feature in some capacity, be it big or small. But no matter if it’s a big world-changing consequence or simple flavour texts and cameos, it will still be our Thedas, our own unique version of it that we helped shape.

Now that the past is dealt with, let’s look at the present. Next time we’ll talk about Rook, the six factions, and why a DAO-style origin story selection would have not only been beneficial but very doable.

Rewriting Veilguard Part 2 - The Shadow Dragons

[rainbowsky]

Backing up your blog - advice

As most people on Tumblr are aware, there are a lot of people scrambling to back up their blogs after the recent round of massive layoffs of almost all of the Tumblr team. A lot of people are having problems with this process. Here's what I recommend.

First of all, just so everyone knows - the official Tumblr export only works on desktop. There's currently no option for mobile export of your blog. Given the file sizes potentially at play, that's probably for the best. If you usually use mobile you will need to login to Tumblr on a desktop computer to request your blog export, and to download the file when it's ready. Here's my advice:

Request an export of your blog(s) ASAP. There are huge delays right now in processing these requests. It took over a week for my blog export to be ready for download, by which time I assumed it wasn't functioning and wasn't going to complete (in the past this request has been very quick to process). I can confirm that Tumblr blog export is working, it's just taking AGES to process. Instructions on how to request an export - and info on what that export will and won't contain - can be found here.

There are other methods of varying complexity available for those who want to make absolute sure they're able to back up their blog while they wait for their export to process.

When downloading your export, be aware that the file size could potentially be extremely large depending on how many photos, gifs and videos you post. I have been cutting back a lot on posting huge media files, reblogging gifs, etc. to try to keep this file size down, and still my blog export was 80GB (for context, my export from around the same time last year was 67GB).

It's best not to rely on your web browser to download this huge file. I recommend using a download manager. The download speeds will be much, much faster (hours as opposed to days to download the file), and it's a lot less likely to fail. Even if the download fails, a download manager can usually pick up where it left off and restore the process, while if it fails in your browser there's no way to recover. There are a lot of reliable download managers out there. I used JDownloader, which is free and open source.

I recommend starting the download and then just walking away and doing something else for a while. Don't forget to disable power saving settings for the interim. You don't want your computer falling asleep halfway through the download and potentially having to start all over again.

I usually back up my blog at least once a year, but I'll likely start doing it with more frequency moving forward. It's just a good practice to keep your information backed up. You never know what could happen. Better safe than sorry.

[askagamedev]

What are some signs that a layoff is coming? I recently joined and the game that I'm working on is being developed for years and has been delayed several times. We have a important release date coming up and on our recently tests we found a lot of bugs and some things just break the game, making it unplayable. People around here are already talking about delaying it again, but then we would miss the date which IMO would be the death of the game. Should I be already looking for a new job?

This is a very good question. Unfortunately, there isn't really a good answer for this because those of us on the ground aren't privy to the meetings or decision-making process where such things are decided. I have no super accurate formula for you, because we're almost always operating on incomplete data. The best I can offer is a general approach that I've internalized over time that has served me well.

First and foremost, it costs you very little to update your resume if you're feeling a little nervous. You don't have to go so far as to apply to new jobs, but having an updated resume while you're still fresh on what you've been doing is a good thing - especially when you don't have any additional or external pressure on you. It only takes a little time and it's a healthy reassurance that you're ready to start looking if the need arises.

Now... the main reason layoffs come generally depends on one major factor - whether you're at a company that's privately or publicly owned. Privately-owned companies operate at the whim of their controlling stakeholder - e.g. Tim Sweeney has a controlling stake of Epic Games, Mark Zuckerberg controls 60% of the voting shares at Meta, etc. The owners are the ones who decide whether to cut staff. In these situations, as long as the overall company is still doing well enough financially, a favored project that stumbles (again) still gets a lot more leeway - they'll often let it slide even if there are setbacks. Even project cancellations may not result in layoffs so much as workers getting moved around to other projects instead. The key is the "doing well enough financially" part - if the company financials become unhealthy, the knives come out. At such employers, watch out for funding deals with other companies or investors falling through - that's a really bad sign and you should consider updating your resume and starting a job search if you see or hear about that happening.

If you're at a publicly traded company, you're really at the whim of the quarterly investor report. Investors buy into a given company in order to get a return on investment, so they need to see why they shouldn't take their money and invest it elsewhere, especially if those other places can offer a better return. The general case for a better financial future is the company "cutting costs", which is to say our jobs. In this situation, the cuts typically come from cancelling underperforming or troubled projects, cutting the lower performing products, and cancelling longer-term projects. The safest projects to be on at these companies are the workhorses - the long term sustaining franchises that pay the bills. The most dangerous projects at these companies are the experimental/new things - the untested cool new ideas. At such an employer, I would pay close attention to the quarterly investor reports at your company and see whether the company is hitting its targets, especially if I am on a project that is new and/or struggling. Whenever I see one bad quarterly report, I update my resume. If I see two bad quarterly reports in a row, I start checking my recruiter emails.

This isn't to say that this is all there is - there's a lot we aren't privy to. But these general rules have served me well over the years. Having gone through as many layoffs as I have, I developed a more subconscious sense of these things - bad team morale is often also a major indicator of layoffs in the near future. It's hard to explain, sometimes things just don't feel right. Pay attention to what the leadership says during the all hands meetings and try to read between the lines. The words they share will always be portrayed positively, but the proof is almost always in the pudding - the financials are what matter.

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[jerrymessing]

I often find myself wondering how one finds their voice about how hard a time they are having when times are so tumultuous for so many and in far worse ways. I have to make myself remember, it's not about having it worse or better... our respective perceptions in how we experience our circumstances are all unique, even if the situation itself is not. In sharing these experiences, we can hope to find people who can sympathize (if not empathize) with us and hopefully lessen our collective emotional burdens. While having strong emotional support is integral to every person's well-being, it does not change the truth that at some age as adults, we must become our own foundations. A rising tide lifts all ships, as is often said, but I feel it can be expound upon further. I feel the rising tide is collective perception and awareness, for we are our individual vessels. This is a long way to say I'm going to take my own advice and share what I have been experiencing...

My father and I have been getting through each month as benefactors of a tremendous amount of goodwill from others. The most tangible form of this has been from our new neighbor. The three of us have all been having our own respective times of things, but it hasn't stopped us from helping each other when we are able. However, now, an uncertainty has cropped up. Whether it will come to pass or not, I would be unable to say definitively. This uncertainty is in my father's social security and my federal disability. For those not in the US reading this, the short is; with the amount of government layoffs that have been happening, as soon as next month, SSA checks may be delayed, or possibly be unable to be sent altogether. The uncertainty of this is eating away at me severely, and I find myself paralyzed from fear. Questioning many things about my own mental, physical, spritual, and physiological fortitude for the upcoming month(s) until the issue is finally put to rest in one way or another. I find myself unable to even make a plan in this current situation, and that scares me. Because even if my plans may ultimately fail, I am still able to make them. Instead, I find myself in a type of psychologic doldrum, waiting for any sort of current or wind to take me anywhere else... anywhere else. At this point, I'm certain a number of people have taken note that over all the posts I have made over social media, I've never really mentioned politics, and that won't be changing. My media are a means to socialize with friends, family, and fans. They are not a platform for pushing ideologies on world shaping matters. While I don't shy away from these topics, I know there is a time and place for them, and I don't want these to be them. This is the closest I've ever come to broaching this subject, and I only do so now because I'd not be able to convey my current distress without doing so. I certainly hope I'll not have to walk such a fine line in a post again. Nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to read my brain salad, and one more thing...

I hope those who read this will feel inspired to share as well, no matter if it's positive or negative. Remember, you may be your own vessel. But the tears of joy and sorrow, laughter and grief, celebration and mourning... these are what raise the tide to lift us all! Be kind to yourself, be respectful of others, and be firm in your boundaries. Things may not always go as we hope and rarely as we expect; but at the end of the day, through a vast universe of seemingly endless possibility and happen-chance, we are still here.

[adventure-time-news]

It's Negotiation Week for The Animation Guild

For those of you who don't know, The Animation Guild (TAG) is a union representing people who work in the United States animation industry, including animation writers and artists. Unions protect workers' rights by threatening to strike if their members are being underpaid, overworked, or otherwise mistreated by their employers.

This week, negotiations will kick off with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), who represent the big corporations like Disney and Warner, to determine a new master contract. This is a list of demands put forward by the union that the corporations must negotiate on if they want to avoid a strike. Last year's SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes happened because the big corporations refused to negotiate a satisfactory contract.

During that strike, animation was one of the few branches of the American entertainment industry that continued working, since animation writers are usually members of TAG rather than the WGA. But the corporations haven't shown much gratitude towards animation workers for coming to the rescue. Instead, there have been mass layoffs, the cancellation of shows and movies for tax breaks, and many attempts to replace animation workers with AI. This lack of job security means that many are struggling to pay bills while they look for work. So job security will be the main focus of this week's negotations.

Action begins today, 10th August, with a TAG rally being held in Burbank, California. The rally is open to the public, not just to TAG members, so feel free to go along if you're nearby and want to show your support.

The negotiations themselves will get underway on Monday, 12th August. The current master contract expires this Friday, 16th August. So by the end of this week we should know whether the AMPTP is willing to come to a compromise on the union's demands, or whether TAG will be forced to go on strike.

As for how this all relates to Adventure Time, a strike would probably mean a delay to the production of Fionna and Cake season two and the other Adventure Time projects currently in the works. Hopefully it won't come to that, but if it does, don't forget to give animation workers your full support as they fight for fair pay and job security.

[project-sekai-facts]

hello! i’m planning to make a video essay on the problems with ENsekai. i obviously have some bigger ones already, (typos, translations, etc) but i was wondering if you or anyone else in the community had some ideas of smaller bugs/problems within the game that i could touch on!

hi, sorry this response is a bit late, hope it's still okay

Here's some stuff I can think of:

There's been multiple instances of area conversations being fucked up, either them implementing straight up untranslated content which happened quite recently with a niigo Len area conversation, or just leaving it blank altogether which happened with a conversation unlocked from the current event. usually this happens with niigo for some reason.

the ads straight up don't work on some devices. i had to get a new phone recently and they work fine on it now but my old one literally couldn't handle them. it broke the UI entirely and force crashed if i tried to watch two in a row.

For some reason they sometimes do the reruns late or early. It's not really much of an issue (aside from when they reran Evillious like 3 months early), it's just a weird oddity. Like the spojoy rerun should've started a week ago and it still isn't here

The May mystery song. Got pushed back to June, pretty sure they put a tweet out about the delay but it's gone now if it did exist. Didn't release in June either with no word on it. July stream didn't even happen so god knows what's going on with it now

They keep having bugs that aren't present on JP. Falsely banning players, that thing the other day where it locked challenge lives. There's a lot more if you go through the backlog of issues.

Also they had to delay Awake Now due to "technical difficulties" when BFBY ran on EN. Not sure what those issues were.

Inconsistent song names

Using the wiki as a reference/for placeholder translations. I think they might've stopped it as of this event? But still it went on for 4 months lmao.

Okay the next ones aren't really to do with the game, moreso, the management

They were ridiculously behind on 4komas until like. Yesterday. This might be linked to staff layoffs, I know some of their social team got cut. Also just after that happened they opened applications for discord mod volunteers. Lol.

The absolutely disastrous contests. Mainly the halloween one.

For starters the halloween fanart contest was only open to players in america, canada and britain, despite being for the "global server', but also: they gave third place and promoted the account of someone who creates nsfw of the IP. Funnily enough, this was not against the rules. But, it's still a questionable decision, like this person was openly an nsfw account, and they're giving them promotion on the official twitter for an all ages game. Oh well, what can you do, they were fully within their rights on both sides.

Also p sure the cosplay contest is the only one to date that's actually been open for worldwide entries. South America keeps getting excluded.

Remember when the twitter mod made fun of the game's translations? Actually embarrassing tbh.

[o-wild-west-wind]

So...what's going on with the NIH?

A (very reductive) breakdown

With the current “flood the zone” agenda overwhelming our feeds, I’m sure that all this news about the NIH feels like just another drop in the bucket. I figured I'd try to write out what's going on and why it matters, since this is all HUGELY impactful, despite getting pretty buried in the news cycles (my explanation is under the cut—the article above is a helpful reference).

TL;DR: The NIH funds most medical research in the US; this medical research funding is being slowed and cut effective immediately; and we need to contact our representatives about this ASAP.

You can say that you "urge them to oppose all funding cuts and DEI-related restrictions in the NIH." Stick this onto your other phone/email/letter scripts, and feel free to add more specifics and personalization!

What happened, and why does it matter:

As of 2/8/25, the Trump administration has:

Indefinitely halted NIH study sections, which are how research gets reviewed and approved, as well as travel and communications (some of all this is just now restarting, but this has been selective/on a delay)

Planned to flag and possibly reject grant renewals and any new proposals with "DEI" and "DEI-related" terms, ranging from obvious keywords like "LGBT" and "transgender" to standard technical terms like "race, "gender," "health disparities," and "bias" (source on terms is re: the NSF, but I can confirm as an NIH funded researcher that we have similar directives)

Ended "DEI" programs in the NIH and removed multiple webpages on diversity-related grants and funding

Frozen hiring and rescinded job offers starting on 2/8/25

Capped the indirect cost funds of grants at 15%, effective immediately (from an average of 30%)

(NOTE: This is a non-comprehensive list—and while I'm an NIH-funded researcher, I'm not high up enough on the food chain to be a total authority on this. Please feel free to add more details if you know them.)

What does this all mean?

The NIH is the largest funder of health/medical research in the United States, which is usually conducted at universities and hospitals (public AND private). This includes research on everything from cancer, heart disease, dementia, addiction, depression, HIV, and the flu to—in my specific case—co-occurring conditions of autism (so basically, anything at all health related? That's probably being studied via NIH funds).

Funding includes things like:

Direct costs of supplies, tools, machinery, etc.

Research team salaries, from lead scientists to administrative staff

Fellowships (i.e. how PhD students typically get paid)

Indirect costs (utilities of lab operation, etc.)

Basically, what all these directives do is slow and/or cut health research funding. What this means is slowing "non-DEI" research funding and entirely cutting "DEI" research funding (which we don't have solid definitions for yet!).

What does this all look like?

At this rate, and if unchanged, this could likely result in:

Months-long (or longer) delays on "non-DEI" medical research (i.e. for the average population)

Unknown cuts to health disparities research (i.e. research on health differences between specific demographics of people)

A near-complete loss of "DEI" research in most US institutions (e.g. BIPOC health, LGBTQ+ health, disability health)

Fewer proposals of new/novel research ideas

Fewer PhD acceptances and hiring opportunities for new researchers (possibly shrinking an entire generation of scientists)

Mass layoffs of research staff

Breakdown of international research collaborations

Huge tuition increases for college students (including undergrads)

Closures of research institutions/universities

Privatization of research funding (possibly creating a bias towards "profitable" research interests/health conditions more common to wealthy populations)

Potential brain drain of American scientists to other countries

USA's loss of status as a scientific leader and powerhouse

For the average American, this all translates to things like:

Fewer medical breakthroughs and "weaker" medical research

Fewer medical/health experts

Increased drug/treatment costs

Lower quality of life

Stagnant (or lower) average life expectancy

(Plus economic repercussions I don't have the expertise to predict).

So what do we do about this???

I hate to sound like a broken record, but...CONTACT YOUR REPS! Call daily if possible, but send emails/letters at the very least! Use the language in the TL;DR at the top of this post if that gives you a framework.

If you want, include personal reasons as to why this will impact you, or just mention that it will slow life-saving medical research (bonus points if you tell them to block all cabinet picks until Elon is no longer interfering in the government)!

This is dire and immediate, but it isn't all doom and gloom. With enough pressure, we can (and have!) gotten things reversed.

Take care of each other, stay alive, and keep fighting back 💛

[ayeforscotland]

I'm not a super dedicated gamer these days, but I loved Kerbal Space Program (a game that was more a labour of love than a commercial project) and was super hyped for the much delayed KSP2. When I saw it was releasing as early access (years late) I worried for its hopes of ever seeing completion and held off buying, now after all the other shananigans the entire team have been let go in yet another mass lay-off in the gaming industry. I feel like, a few notable exceptions aside, the big-budget gaming sector has been failing to deliver real quality games for a long time now, with lower-budget indie games more often coming up with gold from much simpler foundations. It seems almost as though developers are being pushed to shoot for unachievably epic games and releasing buggy messes, or vast but hollow worlds when the publishers get impatient or the money runs out. Is there any grain of truth in my feeling that bankrollers' expectations for games is leading to more games failing to live up to the hype as projects spiral out of control and over budget? Would big studios benefit from learning from indie devs and aiming to really nail down a simpler scope but on a scale beyond what the indies can achieve?

Industry-wise there’s a couple of things at play. And apologies for the length of this.

During the pandemic, there was a shitload of investment into the gaming industry as everyone was at home and many started playing games for the first time, so venture capital firms piled money in.

They were looking for a return on their investment, not really aiming to cultivate long-term studio success.

This puts pressure on the studio to get the game out the door quickly. That month or two of QA before launch just becomes overhead while you have a product that could be selling right now.

Chance to earn even more money for shareholders and execs? Welcome to microtransaction hell.

So that’s one side of it, investors/shareholders/execs forcing decisions that make games worse.

Next bit is partly influenced by the shareholder side of things but also a huge cultural side too. Lots of studios complete a project and then layoff staff because the next game isn’t ready to start being developed yet OR layoff staff because they don’t want to pay them OR staff leave to go and do something else (often due to lack of pay, lack of promotion etc)

And what this leads to is a *massive* corporate knowledge gap. People take their skills and knowledge and create voids. Voids that need to be filled by senior staff, which is why big AAA studios are always hiring seniors, and rarely hiring juniors. So all the seniors job-hop from studio to studio and there’s no new skill set being cultivated by new industry talent.

In my experience, these huge studios are also incredibly siloed. It’s something that impacts most industries, siloed teams lead to sluggish development and decision-making.

I think the games industry walks an incredibly fine line between being a creative endeavour and being a tech business. Process management methodologies honestly seem quite alien to the games industry, most of the time to its detriment.

It honestly wouldn’t be that hard to implement but Production as a discipline within games seems to be relegated to ‘staring at JIRA’ particularly in larger studios.

Could write forever about this to be honest.

Worth saying that indie studios also have their own issues. Almost everything is a scramble, and the search for publisher funding is a nightmare.