My initial concerns about Horizon Hunters Gathering possibly ruining my annual prediction have been quelled. Jason Schreier has reported that the cartoony online co-op live service game has been rebooted. Here's a gift link to his coverage at Bloomberg and here's Jason's own video on the news as well, in case that gift link stops working. The following quotes are from the Bloomberg article:

"Following poor feedback in private testing earlier this year, the plan now is to strip out the live-service component and turn it into more of a traditional cooperative multiplayer game with a story mode and a far smaller scope."

I should have seen the writing on the wall sooner when there was zero Hunters Gathering news around E3 summer game time. I didn't realize it was so dire for the entire Horizon franchise though. Back to Jason:

"But the majority of Guerrilla staff then moved to Horizon Hunters Gathering, a drastic departure from their previous titles both in gameplay and art style. A tiny team has been plotting out the next single-player Horizon game but it remains years away from completion, according to the people familiar with the studio’s plans."

I wanted to write about this news (obviously), but realized I already did last time in Wasting a Generation: Sony's Live Service Graveyard.

On the horizon, these feel like more "slam dunks" solely in regards to release. Fairgame$ is the only one I could see getting a preemptive axe, but I sort of feel like that would have already happened? Hermen Hulst will make any new Horizon game come out. Ghost of Tsushima Legends was a surprise hit and I assume Yōtei will also receive a multiplayer mode.

When you look back over the last five years of the PS5, it's like that meme of Death walking down the hall and behind each door is a live service ambition. In the wake of all this "death," what I think about is the squandered potential. How many single player games are years behind because of this pursuit? How many jobs were created and lost? What does it mean for the upcoming generation? How does the reaction now shift plans made months and years ago?

We will feel the ripple of this live service tangent for years to come.

It's hard to look at the proverbial corpses and the hundreds of millions wasted and think the live service initiative has been anything but a joke. There have been successes though in the tried-and-true games of MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, along with the surprise that is Helldivers 2. Not to mention the money Sony rakes in from transactions for games like Fortnite. Money talks and it has been saying these types of games are what make Sony money.

What has been a joke is Hermen Hulst's time as the Head of PlayStation Studios.

The decision to try and make prolific single-player studios into online multiplayer ones has resulted in titles not shipping, studios being shuttered, and wasted acquisitions. PlayStation Studios is not shipping and it all feels like Hermen's fault.

Perhaps the core first-party output matters less and less. A few months ago I wrote Retreating Behind the Exclusivity Wall and said this:

"This is good news. The bit that Xbox, PlayStation, and 20-year-old Max had wrong was that making everything available everywhere makes your platform less unique and desirable. Having your online multiplayer live service title be cross-platform makes total sense—those titles live and die by their community—but those single player titles are the lifeblood of the console."

But when you look at the data, it looks like not shipping exclusives isn't really hurting the PS5 or Sony's bottom line.

Sony said as much this summer in their Game & Network Services (G&NS) Segment Small Meeting Q&A Summary:

"Even though first-party software is a minority of the overall sales of SIE, it serves as a core reason why people enter the PlayStation experience. Our valuable IP franchises are important in increasing brand loyalty."

"Lifeblood of the console" my beloved first-party exclusives are not.

Here's the real beating heart of the console's existence.

Winning the PS4 generation was fortuitous as it established the PlayStation ecosystem as the place where customers' digital libraries exist. It's where the casual consumer buys and plays EA Sports, Roblox, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto Online—it's where consumers are spending money on FIFA packs and MLB packs and Madden packs and V-Bucks and GTA dollars, etc. etc.

Being the default has won Sony money, position, and time. Seeing the cash flow from these, Sony is right to keep chasing the live service trend. Right now Sony reaps an automatic 30% on all of those microtransactions and digital game purchases. You know they salivate at the possibility of their own creation existing on that menu where all the revenue would land on their plate.

Their goal is to captivate your play time and money for games for a lifetime.

"The PlayStation Console is a Gateway to a Lifetime of Player Engagement and Value."

And Sony will keep moving toward this goal by removing the ability to own games and pursuing an all-digital future.

"At the same time, most of the value of our ecosystem is driven by third-party publishers, who benefit from our large install base, strong community engagement, and monetization tools. This supports a shift toward a true digital platform business."

Back to Hermen though and his role in managing the PlayStation Studios, which includes the live service efforts. In their G&NS presentation in 2024 there was this slide dividing up the studios owned at the time into their respective roles.

But this slide was not entirely truthful. A more accurate slide would have looked like this:¹

Firesprite was working on a Twisted Metal live service game. Bluepoint was making a God of War live service game. Guerrilla was working on Horizon Hunters Gathering. Bend was making a live service game codenamed "Mirror Pond." Naughty Dog was making The Last of Us Online, while a small team was working on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. When we look at this slide today, this is the result of Hermen's management.²

I added teamLFG since their inception happened after this slide, born from a split of Bungie team members. Sony also formed and shut down Dark Outlaw Games during this window of time, presumably another live service effort given the developers' Call of Duty pedigree. Do we need to relive Concord?³

This is a picture of mismanagement that goes all the way to Hermen. He has squandered money, position, and time the company built during the last two generations. I hope those higher up than Hermen have given him a similar window as to Guerrilla to prove his studio management chops. It is time for him to go.

Double Fine has announced a new Kickstarter starting on August 31, 2026.

Amnesia Fortnight 2026 - Indie Reboot: A Double Fine Productions Game Jam, Documentary and Kickstarter Campaign launches on August 31st, and runs through most of September, but you can sign up here now to get notified when it goes live!

We're going to do a Game Jam, live on the internet, in which our backers will get to choose which of our myriad of ideas get made into four new prototypes-- and which of those final four will become a real (small) game. You may even snag some sweet merchables and rarities along the way.

All alongside the process, 2 Player Productions will be filming all the fun to produce one of their award-winning documentary spectaculars.

This is what I was hoping would happen once Double Fine was let go from the Xbox Game Studios apparatus. As a recent convert thanks to PsychOdyssey, consider me very excited to see an Amnesia Fortnight unfold in real time.

GENKI MANTA: Beyond the Pro Controller

"A deeply tunable controller with MantaOS built in, analog Pulse Buttons, adjustable TMR sticks, TriStage Triggers and Maglev Haptics."

That's a whole lot of branding jargon to say this thing has a screen, an OS, and analog buttons, and tons of customization.

A controller sicko like me is very interested, although I don't think my budget is at an early bird price of $189 with a final MSRP of $279. Wooooooof.

The most interesting piece to me are the "analog Pulse buttons."

"Most face buttons create an input only when they reach a fixed electrical contact. Our unique Pulse Buttons track the full travel of all four ABXY/BAYX buttons without one, allowing the input to fire before the button bottoms out. Less finger travel before actuation and reset means less time between your reaction and the game. Even 8,000 Hz polling can report only an input that already exists. Pulse Buttons work on the part before that, while your finger is still moving. The button still bottoms out physically; the input doesn't have to wait for it."

They feel like a callback to the pressure sensitive buttons of the DualShock 2 and the triggers on the GameCube controller. I am curious if these would register as such if you could connect to those consoles...

I did back GENKI's CovertDock 3 and ShadowCast 3 project. The CovertDock is a game changer for letting me have a dock for my Switch 2 inside the house while the main one lives in the studio. If this controller mirrors those products, I think you are in good hands.

Marco Arment has released a new app focused on reminding people like me.

I have ADHD. Probably.

My entire adolescence was defined by forgetting to do my homework, disappointing everyone around me, and being told by every adult that I was lazy, “just” needed to try harder, and wasn’t living up to my potential.

I’ll be working on the resulting shame and anxiety for the rest of my life.

If someone tells me, “Remember to pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow,” I definitely won’t remember.

If someone tells me, “Remember to put the laundry in the dryer in ten minutes,” I probably won’t even remember that.

If you’re thinking, “It’s just ten minutes! Nobody can possibly forget that,” I have made an app that’s probably not for you.

A few years ago, I came to the realization with a counselor that I, too, have ADHD. Probably.¹ That carried a lot with it given that my brother was diagnosed with the same at a much earlier age and I seemed to skirt by the adult detection system because I did my homework.

But I was predominantly homeschooled through elementary and middle school. I did well in the classes I liked and got by in the others. I had other behavioral prevailing issues that let this sort of diagnosis never occur.

Ironically, I have never really used reminders well. There are untold proverbial corpses of things I have been asked to do or said I would do in my wake. Just the other day, I told my dad I would come over right after I finished a document, a task that had a sentence or two left. My dad lives next door. He walked out of my office, I finished the note, and then went inside my house to cook dinner. Crap, I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer.

I live by notepads, sticky notes, and attempted systems inside Reminders and Things. This year I have leaned into using Field Notes every day just to write down what I need to do that day and it has been a huge help. Within the last two weeks, I have started carrying the notebook and a pen everywhere I go—if I remember.

Reminders and other apps are too easily dismissed by me. The notification would sit there on the lock screen and eventually I'd get sick of staring at it that I'd dismiss it, delete it, or falsely check it off just to rid myself of the notification. They never seemed to alert me when I could actually take care of the task. I'd never get around to it.

Which brings me to Unforgetful, which Marco describes as "Reminders for ADHD."

• It’s impossible to lose a task. Notifications always repeat, even if you miss or dismiss them, until the task is completed or deleted.
• Designed for procrastination. Snoozing is a core feature, with thoughtful intervals that scale as you snooze a task more.
• Nothing is hidden away. A hidden task is a forgotten task. No folders, no tags, no organization, no different views or modes.
• No judgment or shame. Nothing is overdue. You’re not in trouble. Everything is either due now or in the future. Didn’t get to it today? Maybe tomorrow. Every day is a fresh start.

Marco also thought of the most frustrating part of using third-party reminders apps; that weird dance with Siri about specifying where to put the reminder. Unforgetful just uses your Reminders data. Turn off Reminders notifications and turn on Unforgetful's. I don't have to think of the delicate dance with Siri. I just say "Remind me..." and Unforgetful will.

I signed up for the generous free month trial and have started living with it. I think this is going to help me and my family in ways my systems never have.

In a slightly surprising move to me, KPop Demon Hunters is coming to the Criterion Collection this November. While familiar with the films' insane popularity, my only exposure to it was my buddy's daughter fast forwarding to the end to show me her favorite song one morning over breakfast. I haven't had a Netflix subscription in ages and never figured this one would be on my radar.

Then I read the included bonus features in the Criterion release...

"Two video essays by filmmakers Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting)"

Someone alert Jason Kottke.

Jokes aside, I think this is a good example of how the Criterion Collection (and by extension their wonderful Closet videos) get me to watch films I have never heard of or would consider. It's kind of like my imaginary Blockbuster nowadays. I have found new favorites ever since my wife and I started picking a new Criterion movie every couple of months to add to our collection. Perhaps I am too generous in my reviews, but I'd call this list so far full of bangers.

I highly recommend treating movies like this. Get out of the endless feeds of streaming apps, find a disc, buy it and commit to a night in. It's been one of my new favorite rituals we do as a family. There's intentionality and tactility behind movie nights again.

Anyway, I am adding KPop Demon Hunters to my "to buy" list now.

Tucked away at the bottom of Pokémon FireRed Version and Pokémon LeafGreen Version Link with Pokémon Home This October, The Pokémon Company and Game Freak has announced the end of Pokémon Bank:

Pokémon Bank, a Nintendo 3DS application that lets players deposit or withdraw Pokémon they have befriended in Pokémon titles on that system from online Boxes, will be ending service on Thursday, February 25, 2027, at 7:00 p.m. PST.​

As a result, transferring Pokémon from Pokémon Bank to Pokémon Home will also no longer be possible. If you have Pokémon stored in Pokémon Bank that you wish to carry over, please move them to Pokémon Home prior to Pokémon Bank’s end of service. Please note Pokémon Bank is not currently available for download.

I guess I have a deadline now for all that trading I want to do from Chapter Select Season 6.

For those unfamiliar with Pokémon Bank, it was a service on the 3DS that allowed you to store and move around Pokémon caught on the 3DS. This would be replaced as the pocket monster storing service by Pokémon Home in February 2020. You can take your Pokémon from Bank and send them down the one-way digital highway into Home and all future Nintendo Switch titles.

And that's what makes this end of service bittersweet.

You see, because of the 3DS connectivity back to the Nintendo DS and the DS's connectivity back to the Game Boy Advance meant you could trade Pokémon from the likes of Pokémon Sapphire Version and Pokémon LeafGreen Version all the way up to the most modern titles. If you engage with some save data shenanigans, you can even trade creatures from the original Game Boy cartridges all the way into Pokémon Home thanks to Bank support being integrated in the Virtual Console releases of those games on 3DS.

By the time Bank's servers shut down, 24 years of support will be coming to an end.

But really, that support is just being modernized. If you read the main announcement from The Pokémon Company, Pokémon Home support is being patched into LeafGreen and FireRed on the Switch. The day before this news, a leak broke that Gen III is making the same digital debut on Switch this fall, no doubt with Home support.

If we just pause for a beat and think about this, it makes perfect sense. They get to sell me old Pokémon titles for the umpteenth time and the ability to bring forward classics in modernized (and digitized). New consumers today aren't going out and buying old Pokémon carts to get these old creatures in modern titles. They'll buy the ports or remakes. Paying $20 for LeafGreen or Sapphire is much more appealing than $112 or $86. Heck, Pokémon Emerald costs $225 today! This is unsustainable for the average or new consumer, difficult to swallow for the collector, and makes The Pokémon Company zero of those dollars.

It also helps The Pokémon Company clamp down on hacked creatures and the cheaters that make them. If everything has to go through digital copies and Home, then I assume fewer illegal 'mons enter the proverbial marketplace.

The real loss in this decision is the games not currently available by any modern means. That's the bulk of the DS and 3DS lineup, which is arguably the best run in the entire game series. I wager the prices on those titles will continue to spike this year on top of the 30th anniversary fervor. I am very glad I snagged Platinum two months ago. Here's a list of that run of games and their current loose prices on Pricecharting for both posterity and a possible future comparison to see how this news impacted the used market.¹

This loss isn't forever though. Eventually, these games and generations will be modernized in one way or another. I suspect plans are in motion for all of these generations down the line.

I have always marveled at Game Freak's continued support and compatibility with older Pokémon and the games they came from. It's a testament to the franchise. This promise of bringing your Pokémon with you has been upheld for decades. It has only been broken when the series went from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance and that was remedied in a way with those 3DS Virtual Console ports.

This conscientiousness of older titles, Pokémon, and the fanbase is why you see younger audiences in Japan playing Pokémon, but not other titanic JRPG franchises. It's why I have three DS carts on my desk staring me down to trade them off their antiquated format into the promise of "the cloud."² The structure reenforces the idea in each game that the trainer goes on a journey with their Pokémon and forges an unbreakable bond. No one else has teams like the ones I built to battle my dear friend. The cross-console trading for evolutions and moves sequestered away in versions. There's the Garchomp I farmed eggs for or the Skarmory I hatched for a specific move. I will forever be indebted to the Excadrill that gave me the tie.

I could always bank on moving my Pokémon forward from these original versions. I've taken a comfort in that generational guarantee. But now, when I go back some day and start a new save (after backing up the original save, of course), I'll know that journey will be locked in the hardware of the past. We are losing something more than just a suite of 3Ds severs and tools for copying bits and bytes across hardware. And by we, I mean me and all the original trainers. the ones that were there at launches, who had PokéWalkers clipped to their hips, whose minds were blown by the marvel of wireless trading and Wi-Fi. I am heartbroken to see the end of a generational run. When faced with introducing my own kid to Pokémon someday, it's probably best to make sure it is the current and accessible versions. I was so excited to hand her a Game Boy Advance and a worm light too...

Game Freak and The Pokémon Company always seemed able to balance modernity with support for their legacy—for your legacy. This is a reminder that it can't all last forever.

It is also a reminder that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company do balance modernity and legacy. The legacy markers have just shifted. I am old now. My ways and methods are old now. New generations need to forge their own Pokémon memories and they'll be doing that on Nintendo Switch consoles for the foreseeable future. I hope they can trade their childhood Pokémon forward in 20 years like I have been so fortunate to be able to do.

After years of saying "I'll watch that some day," I finally committed to watching all 24~ some odd hours of Double Fine's and 2 Player Productions' doco series on the creation of Psychonauts 2.

Yes. It is essential viewing if you care at all about how games are made and the people behind the bits and bytes. Before I share my tiny list of tidbits, my biggest takeaway is this:

Xbox saved Double Fine.

They didn't know that was the case at the time in 2019, but COVID-19 may have very well shut down the studio. Perhaps they could have been acquired during the pandemic when rates were non-existent, but with Activision/Blizzard/King assuredly looming in the background of Microsoft, I am not sure they would have bought Double Fine during 2020-2021.

And now, just seven years later with Microsoft releasing Double Fine back into the indie wilds, I find myself wondering if their savior has done it again or has become their executioner.

I know this whole series makes me want to play Psychonauts though. And now for some minor tidbits and observations...

• Greg Rice using an NES as a monitor stand/lift is unhinged.
• More games need years long documentary projects. I love you Grounded and Raising Kratos, but PsychOdyssey is now the bar.
• There is more development time than I ever imagined to just proving the game is fun. And it doesn't seem to matter all the prep and planning they put into it up front.
• The Starbreeze arc is just insane.
• There is immense power and influence in a decision maker. Tim has an undeniable hold over the team and studio. "...hope Tim steps in and saves the day" was a line in Episode 20 "Brainstormed Out."
• Asif's entire arc is sublime.
• Deadlines are powerful tools, except when you keep pushing them.
• There is undeniable and collaborative power with in-person development.
• I like Zak McClendon and I feel bad for him.

I have beef with God of War: Ragnarök. I've been a fan of God of War for over 15 years, from way back when I sat in one of those curved GAMER chairs in a Best Buy and ripped Helios' head off in a demo for God of War III. I christened my seventeenth birthday by marching into a GameStop and purchasing three God of War games (and Animal Crossing: City Folk). I have an entire season of Chapter Select dedicated to the series.

So when I earned the Platinum trophy and wrapped up Ragnarök in December of '22, I was bummed to realize I had a major issue with the Norse "conclusion." Sure, the combat is crispy, crunchy; the acting is superb across the board—I'm a big fan of Toby's new role in this Norse administration—and I loved any part where I wasn't playing as Atreus. It was an absolute travesty of the mythical power fantasy to not let us wield Mjölnir, but that transgression is not the crux of my problem with Sony Santa Monica's PS5 debut.

My issue is that Kratos kept saying one thing, but doing another.

The whoooooooole game, Kratos is saying he doesn't want to kill the gods, that he doesn't want to lead. Kratos just wants to hide out and keep Atreus safe (frankly just like God of War in 2018). What Kratos does though is, well...wipe out most of the Norse pantheon and its creatures, and trigger the apocalyptic event known as Ragnarök.

Kratos is a hypocrite.

And that irked me.

The only time Kratos' words and actions line up with my desires as the player is at the end of the game when he realizes he can be a good god and serve the realms. He sets out with Freya and Mimir to bring peace to all nine of 'em. Except, when that alignment occurs, I had already completed most of the side quests that the realms had to offer. There was nothing left for Kratos to really do.

I replayed Ragnarök in early 2025 and decided to conduct a little experiment—I was going to skip all* the side quests and save them for the endgame.

Read more →

John Gruber linked to a Q&A with Simon Willison about writing a blog from Cynthia Dunlop's "Write That Blog." How's all that for a little blog linking soup?

Links aside, I found the article and Gruber's commentary encouraging and timely. From Willison:

"My number one tip for blogging is to lower your standards! Aim to hit publish while you are still actively unhappy with what you have written, because the only alternative is a huge folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.

Nobody will ever know how perfect the thing you intended to write would have been. The flaws you see in your writing are invisible to everyone else."

You have to ship. If you don't put it out in the world, then you won't get better at your craft. You won't learn. You won't get "Fireballed".

When I don't publish for a while I feel a pull build. I get antsy. Sometimes I have a big piece, I just keep polishing without publishing and that starts to aggravate me. "Get something out there!" my brain yells at me.

On a recent train ride, I decided to look at every draft in my essays folder. I wanted to remember why the idea was there in the first place: to re-familiarize myself with past Max's interests and infatuations. I also pruned ideas I didn't think had juice worth squeezing out anymore.

This experience was invigorating. I dug up two old, near-finished essays and have spruced them up. They'll be out very soon. But first, I wanted to clear the linked deck and this was a part of that. Here's Willison on starting a blog with Gruber's commentary:

Don’t worry if nobody reads it. People are unlikely to stumble on your blog organically, but what matters is not the quantity but the quality of your readers. If the only person who reads your blog is a hiring manager that you send a link to, and that gets you an interview, your blog has already paid itself off many times over.

That’s the hard part about getting started, or at least it was for me. When you already have an audience it’s easier to take it seriously, to concentrate, to focus, to strive for perfection even though you will fall short. If you’re playing music in an empty room it’s harder to do that, to play the same way you would with an audience of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people in front of you.

But just imagine they’re there. They will be if you keep it up. That’s one of my bits of advice to new bloggers: I firmly believe all blogs eventually get the audience they deserve, if they keep going. Write for the audience you want, not the audience you have.

This has been on my mind quite a bit lately and a topic of conversation amongst my family and friends about my writing. The timing of this could not be more spot on and is the impetus behind this very article.

I have been writing online since 2013.¹ It all started from a piece of advice from Greg Miller to get out there and do The Thing™ to help get a job in the video game industry. That was seeded in the home goods stock room at Kmart while I listened on my iPod. It shaped my college degree and many early career ambitions.

The biggest problem I have had in all my years of creating online—whether that be writing, podcasting, or videos—is understanding my audience and a perceivable lack of feedback.

The silence is deafening.

That's a hard reality to surmount for me. I mean, my number one love language is "Words of Affirmation," for Pete's sake. I enjoy the conversation, the critique, the pat on the back, and more. It's probably why I was hooked on the likes of Twitter. It was a direct line to heroes and friends alike. I try not to think of all the blog posts I could have written if I wasn't tweeting so much in my teens and 20s.

But I write and publish anyway. Not in spite—that'd be a rotten foundation to build anything worthwhile atop. I write because if I don't that aforementioned antsy feeling would cause me to crack. If I didn't write, I'd probably podcast more or make more videos or talk my four-year-old daughter's ear off about the loss of physical video games.

When I stop and think about the feedback and audience though, when I quiet the dissenting voice in my head, I realize and know it's not actual silence out there. The signal back may not be frequent, but it is strong. You get the email from a reader. I have opportunities to speak to folks I admire on the show. I get the occasional review code. I get "Fireballed" again.²

Friends and family ask me and offer ideas of how to get my work in front of more people because they think it is good and worth exposure. I promise it's not because they are my pals and kin. And that's the kind of feedback I should be tuned into.

"...what matters is not the quantity but the quality of your readers."

But just imagine they’re there. They will be if you keep it up. That’s one of my bits of advice to new bloggers: I firmly believe all blogs eventually get the audience they deserve, if they keep going. Write for the audience you want, not the audience you have.

If I had any advice for new bloggers (or creatives in general), I'd echo Willison and Gruber's first, but if you'd like third piece, I'd say don't let gear or knowhow be the deterrent. You can write on a phone. You can record with that same phone. It is easier than ever to get started. The most important step is starting. The second is to keep going.

Let's keep going.

There was one other bit Willison said that I found personally timely. I have been struggling back and forth with it for the past month or so.

"Set up an email list as soon as you realize that your blog is going to be an ongoing thing. Way more people want to subscribe via email than via RSS readers. I didn’t realize this until 20 years into my blogging journey and I’ve been kicking myself for not getting email subscribers sooner than that! I use Substack and literally copy and paste my blog into it, which keeps my cost of sending email at zero."

A friend out of the blue asked me if I had considered Substack after I published my essay Moments. Then another friend brought up doing a Kickstarter. And then I heard a discussion about it on a podcast. And now this.

I am not a fan of Substack. But maybe the selfish artist in me is railing against business sense when I'm not really in a position to. When you don't have an audience of scale, how do you get in front of one? Platforms and algorithms that put your work in front of others might be the way to do it.

If I were to go the "replicate the blog in a newsletter" route, I'd prefer to use Buttondown. But that kind of work would require paying for a tier beyond 100 subscribers and probably wiping Memory Card from their servers. I'm not in a position to really pay that kind of money without a form of permission from a paying slice of the audience. There's this fine line between permission and validation I've been wrestling with the last few months. If I had 10 people paying me $10 a year, I'd use Buttondown. I don't know if financially I can make the move without the cash first, just given the current season.

So there's a little mental inside baseball. I'll flag Willison's comment as another blip on the mental radar. Takes me a long time to chew through this stuff.

Retraction: The App Store Rejection of the Week That Was, in Fact, a Correct Rejection by John Gruber

To the best of my recollection, this is the first post I’ve retracted in the 24 years I’ve been writing Daring Fireball. I hope it’s the last. I was misled, both overtly and through omissions, in several ways, but what I publish is my responsibility, and I apologize for the error.

This is how you do a retraction—explanation, preservation, ownership, and an apology.

I've written about Terry Godier before and his RSS app Current, same as Gruber. This whole situation has convicted me to move back to NetNewsWire and put a notice at the top of that article.

My disdain for astrology is so utter, and my esteem for Godier’s previous work so high, that it simply never occurred to me that he might have actually made and submitted to the App Store an astrology app, let alone that he’d then feign surprise and frustration that an astrology app was rejected for being an astrology app. I showed him a draft of my post before publication, to make sure I had the story straight, and he offered not a word of caution, only gratitude for my drawing attention to the matter.

It gets messier...

Terry's character on display is not the kind I want to support.

John's character, on the other hand, is the right kind of character.

To tie it to video games (because of course I can), it reminds me a lot of when Filip Miucin was caught plagiarizing at IGN. It doesn't mean everything Filip did was stolen, but the character of the man was revealed, and you can't put that genie back in the bottle.

Casimir Liberski has produced two of the finest The Legend of Zelda inspired jazz albums I have ever heard—and I listen to a lot of Zelda jazz and lo-fi.

The Z Suites and Zelda Suites (The Live Album) are instant additions to the daily music and writing rotation. Thanks Kottke for the notice.

Tangentially related: It's been a very good season for new music for me and my listening habits. We got Nintenhogs DS (Official Soundtrack) - Louie Zong and the score for the final season of The Bear, whose perfection I cannot overstate. 8-Bit Music Theory's new album, Get Good, came out at the start of the year. It's a very good year for Max's ears and I am quite eager to see how all my scrobbling turns out by year's end.

Louie Zong with this sublime concept album. Not a surprise either since Louie made another favorite concept album of mine—It's Black Friday, Charlie Brown. Louie clearly understands the feel and sound of his banger ideas. You can download them on Bandcamp, but I definitely recommend checking out the video for Nintenhogs.

Tomas Franzese returns to the show to chat about his newsletter Remastered, being the weekend editor at Polygon, and help determine if Xbox or PlayStation is going to win the battle for "Which Company Can Be the Worst?" throughout 2026.

• Download (58MB) — Episode Transcript

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Not even a week and we got them there updates and lessons.

Biggest lesson that I am sure all programmers learn in programmer school—Test your app on multiple machines.

Aka my 1.0.1 didn't even run on other Mac computers. Doh.

That was hastily fixed this morning with 1.02. And then the idea brain got thrumming again and I added a built-in way to check for updates and a proper and customizable title bar. I think this instantly makes DDDS look better.

Make sure you test at least one other machine kids.

You can download 1.0.3 and then you should be able to update within the app itself.

More importantly, this whole project got me thinking about my hyperfocus and patience with projects. Surely, if I took this slower, I would have not shipped a dead 1.0. If I took it slower, I would have had the title bar from the get-go, right?

At some point you have to ship though. I could tell how quickly and fully this app took over my creative time that I needed to ship soon to relieve myself of the obsession. It was almost if my brain was going to pop if I didn't get it out there. so I did. And that led to an app not working for anyone that may have downloaded it.

Thankfully, I don't think anyone did besides me, based off what metrics I can observe. It's better now. And I learned valuable lessons.

I think a big factor is my ADHD and this locked perspective I can develop when something captures my attention. It happens with any creative project and I think going fast and breaking things can be a powerful tool—for both teaching and creating.

I look forward to fleshing out DDDS even more in the coming however long. I should really use it in a production flow to really understand it and make it even better. Right now though, I am confident it is the best Mac app for leveraging the power of modded 3DS consoles. If you use it, I'd love to know what you think. .

Lost in Cult is publishing a 400+ page book diving deep into video game UI by Edd Coates, the brain behind the excellent Game UI Database.

It looks pretty darn slick and like the perfect compliment to Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type by Toshi Omigari.

In the first half of The Game UI Bible, Coates discusses the foundations of UI and UX design. This section begins in the earliest days of PC, console, and arcade gaming and travels through to the modern day to track continuity and change in the fields’ key tenets as luminary designers elaborated on – and sometimes challenged – them.

In The Game UI Bible’s second half, Coates speaks directly to those luminaries. Across a series of case studies, Coates is in conversation with the key UI and UX designers who brought benchmark games to life, from God of War and Half-Life: Alyx to Inscryption and Monument Valley. These interviews are surrounded by essays on topics ranging from Nintendo’s Switch branding to the relationship between game UI and meme culture, all of which illustrate just how significant and far-reaching these fields are.

The Video Game History Foundation has released a massive collection of E3 materials. It's remarkable and just the thing folks like me growing up longed to one day see in person. Now with E3 defunct, this is the closest we will ever get to that show floor magic.

Donated by founding IDSA member Carolyn Rauch, this collection includes over 1000 pages of ephemera from the history of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E for All, and the Game Marketing Summit.

As senior vice president of the IDSA, Rauch oversaw E3 for almost the entire run of the event. She kept a significant collection of promo material for the event itself, including flyers, brochures, press kits, guest passes, event photographs, panel transcripts, industry reports, and much more.

This collection—maybe one of the single largest collections of E3 ephemera—is an exhaustive snapshot of the public face of the event from 1996–2011. Reading through these materials, you can see the organizers trying to balance the intense public interest in video games with the professional demands of the event.

There's also 12 hours of footage preserved from the first four E3 events, including the legendary $299 price point for the original PlayStation. Can you imagine?

Anthony Parisi attended the first four E3 events, and each year, he brought his camcorder to film press conferences and game footage. If you’ve looked for videos of E3 before, you might have seen some of Parisi’s footage on YouTube.

We’re excited to share that Anthony Parisi has donated the copyrights for these videos to the Video Game History Foundation! We’ve redigitized nearly 12 hours of video from Parisi, documenting the foundational years of the event.

Last July I was rewatching old Nintendo E3 press conferences and I can't wait to dig into these. We have lost something with these pre-recorded, perfectly executed "directs" and "showcases." Having those first years preserved in some manner is remarkable.

I am proud to announce DDDS, capture software for modded 3DS consoles made exclusively for macOS. Give it a download and try it out.

Features

Here are some high level features for the app. You can scroll to the bottom of the page for screenshots and videos.

• Built exclusively for macOS.
• Scale footage on both screens, up to 4K resolution.
• Proper scaling for 3DS, DS, and GBA titles.
• Record screens together or independently, up to 4K in HEVC or Apple ProRes 4444.
• Customizable recording and screenshot settings.
• WYSIWYG layout designer to make your ideal recording or streaming layout.
• Integrated hardware overlays for authentic feel and presentation.
• Big Screen mode for playing on a connect television or monitor while keeping your Mac available for use.

Read more →

We are back in Greece, but it’s not what you think! A surprise 2D adventure takes Max Roberts and Logan Moore back to Kratos’ youth to explore, battle, and learn about an untold story. Does Kratos and Deimos' origin bring glory to Sparta or is it unworthy of the God of War?

• Download (55MB) — Episode Transcript

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Happy six year anniversary to the reveal of PS5 boxes!

Who would have suspected that was going to be the last time?

"Paper Plates is an unofficial, fan-made hardcover cookbook inspired by the fantastical world of Paper Mario, featuring 35 delicious, charming recipes and full-color art by Matthew Taranto, creator of Brawl in the Family."

This a seriously Max-coded product. I have vivid memories of printing off a 100% recipe guide for Zess T.'s cookbook in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door as a kid. It's one of my first 100% obsessions in games.

You should give this project a look. Even though the Kickstarter itself is over, you can still pre-order the book.