I am still not confirming that you are on to something but you are the first person to ask and we have a discord of like 1000 people

all I can say on the subject is that it's wild that you noticed this and I'm wondering if I should contact someone in your inner circle to check in on you

good episode, I suspect @plante.bsky.social may have seeded it.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

he goes on to say that he feels
"bad and not good and confused and not great"

... and it becomes clear that he was taking the listeners on his journey of discovering what the game actually is, and it turns quite positive (phew)

please send those group chat screenshots to my dms

the obvious answer is a trillion people spending a $ it’s gonna be fine

Personally, I think that Meta are cowards if they don’t ask me to approve “more surprise cameos than the Epstein Files!” as a marketing pullquote.

that’s a great way to put it actually haha

yeah, I think so many patterns exist for legacy or team-size/employee churn reasons, but rejecting them (not even that much) has been really good for me. Always felt it a bit at odds with my brain/work ethic as an indie, and feel validated here.

the reasons not to do this just weren't relevant

reasons not to
- other people might inherit the code (no they won't)
- it generates bugs (yeah ok but not that many we went from concept to release in 11 months)
- spaghetti code (sounds delicious)
- makes programmers sad (that's okay actually)

If this was our 10th systemic game in Unity I'm sure we'd do stuff more properly from the beginning, but it wasn't, so the only material difference between making the system "safer" and "more durable" or "proper" would be increased cost.

whoa thanks! rare to meet a fan ;)
what part is terrifying? the crimes?

would you say its.... overwhelmingly many

we were on besties? what

I really did, and still am even when bug hunting (and secret exploratory dlc dev)

"What's it going to be next time?"
"That's going to be a new fact."

- Q-UP, 2025

Finally, I recommend checking James' blog post stiknork.substack.com/p/qing-up-in... if you haven't already, or listening to the Side Story episode 16 sidestory.show

I'll end it there but would love to talk more about the development process as I begin digesting, if people want to hear. Shoot me any q's here or in DM.