Ex-WoW (Vanilla/TBC/WotLK) & 38 Studios dev, now leading @UnleashedGames. Making Haven: WoW meets Valheim, AAA team, $0 budget. Mom of 3. Kyiv/LA to RI.
Rhode Island, USA
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Finally, a real game you can play with your kids.
I spent years helping build World of Warcraft. Then I watched MMOs automate the people out.
So we're building Haven: a beautiful WoW meets Valheim, made for families, where cooperation is the win condition. 🧵
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Hot take: we made MMOs soloable, automated away every reason to talk to each other, and then acted surprised when people stopped making friends and stopped playing. My EverQuest group taught me more about people than any quest did.
Why Play MMOs Solo? Emilien takes a look at the players who choose to stay solo despite countless players all around them. mmorpg.com/editorials/why-pl…
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Every time a studio loses the people who built it, everyone asks what happens to the IP. I always want to know what happens to the people.
All three of BioWare's founders have left the video game industry to pursue new careers in medicine, social impact investing, and beer brewing.
Full story: 80.lv/articles/bioware-found…
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Definitely WoW (how is it not even mentioned here?!) and I'm biased because I worked on it from patch 1.0 to Wrath. It didn't just change how people played. It changed how a whole generation made friends. Half my DMs are still people who met their spouse in a guild.
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This would have been really cool to see. Doing this feels impossible considering the technology neccesary to make it work, but now we just won't know. Mass Effect was one of my favorite series... the heartbreak is real.
A former BioWare technical director has revealed that the cancelled Mass Effect game's story would have accounted for player decisions made in the original Commander Shepard trilogy.
For more info: bit.ly/3WswngD
ALT Canceled Mass Effect's Story Would Have Accounted For "All" Choices From Previous Games Via: Kotaku
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Patch notes: trees no longer eat players.
The forest will now find other ways to kill you, like we intended.
#indiegame #gamedev
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Y’all, we’ve reached the Amazon Drop Ship era of game dev.
#achievementunlocked
Someone with zero coding background shipped a game in 6 weeks with Claude Opus 5.5 and Godot, and the setup is worth copying line by line.
The rule underneath all of it: one feature at a time, tested in the game, before the next one exists.
Step 1 -> Opus 5.5 in Claude Code, opened inside the Godot project itself.
Step 2 -> Build one feature, play it, adjust until it feels right, only then start the next.
Step 3 -> Reference images in the game's style from Codex/Astra.
Step 4 -> Every image prompt that works gets saved as JSON and fed into the next generation, so the style never drifts.
Step 5 -> Big 3D assets in Tripo P2, built from those references.
Step 6 -> Small props modeled in Blender, textured in Tripo with the same refs, which is the cheap route.
Step 7 -> Animation in Cascadeur.
Step 8 -> Every VFX and shader documented in Obsidian so the look holds across six weeks.
Who does what:
> Opus 5.5: most of the code.
> Codex/Astra: references and assets.
> Tripo P2: the big 3D models.
> Godot: custom tools, headless scripts, the game itself.
One JSON file of good prompts is the reason every character, monster and prop looks like it belongs in the same world.
(Built by afterthewinddev, all credit there.)
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Making multiplayer games soloable killed the MMO.
We automated out every reason to talk to another human, then acted shocked when players stopped making friends. And then they stopped playing.
#SpicySundayTakes
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Can I say how terrifying it is to put your heart and soul into a game for many years and then to see someone crow about “recreating” it in 4 days with AI?
Just being real.
I built an MMO in @spawn in 4 days. Implemented almost every core system from Classic WoW. Quests, spells, combat, duels, parties, loot rolls, inventory, armor texture mapping, equipment fitting, weapon animations. And a killer story to boot. Just 50 more zones left lol.
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Haven goals: maybe if you grow your village big enough, you'll see your first sunrise.
#ScreenshotSaturday #indiegame #gamedev
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Haven's cozy core: a house, a chicken, 12 potatoes, and a very good dog.
Everything outside the fence is trying to eat you.
#indiegame #gamedev
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And we'll never see this game. It's a goddamned tragedy.
A former BioWare employee uploaded this Mass Effect Universe (Mass Effect 5) trailer on Reddit! According to another employee, this trailer was ready a few months ago. #MassEffect
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Meet a local from the Sunken Shallows.
He's very friendly. Not to you, specifically, but he's friendly.
#indiegame #gamedev
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In Haven you don't build your units. You recruit other players.
You do still build the forge, though. Someone has to, and the other players are busy.
#indiegame #gamedev
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In Haven, social connection runs through everything. Chat, classes, gameplay.
Here's my friends list.
0 friends online.
We're working on it.
#indiegame #gamedev
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Maybe if we had a few more wishlists, I could make more friends.
store.steampowered.com/app/3…
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