Austin Kelmore

Austin Kelmore

@austinkelmore.bsky.social

1243

Posts

Unionizing the games industry one person at a time. Cofounder of the IWGB Game Workers and Game Worker Solidarity. DMs open.

Game worker, rock climber, cat hugger. Bi, He/Him.

Based in Glasgow, Scotland.

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When I worked at PopCap, we had dataminers that were able to unpack our custom data formats as soon as we put them up for the game to download and often found stuff that wasn't in the game quite yet. Was both cool and weird, mostly cool.

I interviewed developers working on massive MMOs and small indie games bursting with secrets about how they hide their biggest twists from dataminers...or even encourage datamining as a part of massive community treasure hunts: www.ign.com/articles/how...

How Datamining Has Changed the Landscape of Video Game Puzzle and Secret Design - IGNwww.ign.com Working against dataminers to hide secrets in video games is a losing battle, which is why some developers are taking a different approach. Increasingly, creators we spoke to are designing their games...

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I interviewed developers working on massive MMOs and small indie games bursting with secrets about how they hide their biggest twists from dataminers...or even encourage datamining as a part of massive community treasure hunts: www.ign.com/articles/how...

How Datamining Has Changed the Landscape of Video Game Puzzle and Secret Design - IGNwww.ign.com Working against dataminers to hide secrets in video games is a losing battle, which is why some developers are taking a different approach. Increasingly, creators we spoke to are designing their games...

This past weekend we went to Edinburgh and went to something like six bookshops and apparently wanted ALL of the books. Pretty excited about some of these.

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Something wicked this way comes... The summoning has succeeded; Very Evil Demons have arrived on the material plane! We're a brand new worker-owned game studio based in Dundee. We're open for business, and we have our own devilish projects brewing - stay tuned for more 🔮

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we made a worker co-op! and the worker co-op makes games!! check out veryevildemons.com if yr on the search for co-dev/porting/prototyping! or just want to find out about some evil ol' games 🤠

Something wicked this way comes... The summoning has succeeded; Very Evil Demons have arrived on the material plane! We're a brand new worker-owned game studio based in Dundee. We're open for business, and we have our own devilish projects brewing - stay tuned for more 🔮

Very Evil Demonsveryevildemons.com Independent worker-owned game studio based in Dundee, Scotland specialising in development, prototyping, porting, and consultancy.

Make a band milder: Eight inch nails

Make a band milder They're Probably Average-Size

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The best advice I ever got was from a Google employee who heard about my former working conditions and my reluctance to rock the boat because it would inconvenience or upset others. He asked me, "Why should you have to sacrifice your rights for someone else's comfort?"

Social discomfort is a strategy, and much of the so-called “culture wars” are over who gets to feel or not feel discomfort, and what that says about us.

It's so easy to do, so it's clear that the UK law is meant to intentionally harm workers in unions.

As part of their neutrality agreement, Microsoft has been doing them via an online portal. The technology is there!

One of the things I hope the Labour government changes is the requirement that union elections be done via postal ballot instead of online. It's a huge cost for workers in unions and completely unnecessary.

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Alex Speidel @ PaizoCon Europe

I think of it as people wanting to work with people who row vaguely in the same direction versus people who want to sink the boat. One of them will produce useful outcomes, one will not.

I would love to take a holiday where I just read and write and explore for two weeks. Thinking of going back to the Isle of Lewis.

I am both happy that the Democrats seem to be doing better in the past couple of weeks and also very frustrated that they're so far, far away from what I think they should actually be doing, especially in regards to participating in a genocide in Palestine. Holding both truths is hard sometimes.

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Anyone know of any QA Lead jobs in the UK? Asking for a friend who is very good and experienced and looking for something.

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A large part of why I started learning about unions was because of how I was treated while participating in DEI efforts at work. I tried for YEARS to change things internally the "right" way and got nowhere. They may not have wanted unions, but their actions made workers more likely to form them.

”Some donors who cut funding after Trump’s 2016 election privately expressed concern about unionization and worker organizing, said @karlaliliana.bsky.social. ‘Folks just did not want a radicalized activist workforce, so they were pulling money left and right,’ she said.”

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Whenever you're accused of having "unrealistic demands," tell people to go read some history.

A large part of why I started learning about unions was because of how I was treated while participating in DEI efforts at work. I tried for YEARS to change things internally the "right" way and got nowhere. They may not have wanted unions, but their actions made workers more likely to form them.

”Some donors who cut funding after Trump’s 2016 election privately expressed concern about unionization and worker organizing, said @karlaliliana.bsky.social. ‘Folks just did not want a radicalized activist workforce, so they were pulling money left and right,’ she said.”

Anyone know of any QA Lead jobs in the UK? Asking for a friend who is very good and experienced and looking for something.

This weekend I ran a Personal Best 10k! I've been training for the past 8 months and it's made quite a difference.

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Howard Zinn: "The reward for participating in a movement for social justice is not the prospect of future victory. It is the exhilaration of standing together with other people, taking risks together, enjoying small triumphs and enduring disheartening setbacks — together."

Some loud music started blasting in our flat randomly and @askwrites.bsky.social and I are asking each other where the hell that's coming from. I go into the tv room and see both of the cats looking at me with guilty faces. They'd walked on our Sonos system and turned on jazz music full blast.

Does anyone know of books that talk about how to help run a union? Not just how to organize workers, but how to coordinate thousands of people in a democratic and engaged way across workplaces, regions, and industries?

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My biggest change in the last five years has been to focus less on the games and focus more on the people making the games. I can't fix individual projects, but I can help build a union movement that will build power for the workers who can push back against project bullshit.

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I can relate to this article on several levels. I've been let go after a game released, I've experienced the heart break of investing energy into a game only to have it canceled, and I've felt myself get more and more distant from work because I expect someone to do something horrible to it.

The bittersweet feeling of seeing your game revealed after getting laid off aftermath.site/summer-game-...

Inside me are two wolves, one which likes small projects where I have full control and one which likes to change the world working in mass movements with other a ton of people. The two wolves are constantly at war with each other for my time.

I can relate to this article on several levels. I've been let go after a game released, I've experienced the heart break of investing energy into a game only to have it canceled, and I've felt myself get more and more distant from work because I expect someone to do something horrible to it.

The bittersweet feeling of seeing your game revealed after getting laid off aftermath.site/summer-game-...

I watched a movie yesterday about a disaster and they had the trope of everyone fighting each other and pontificating that it's human nature. But in real life it has been shown over and over that people actually help each other instead of fight each other. It's time to stop using this trope.

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Uhh… Intranasal COVID vaccine. 100% effective at stopping transmission, in animal models. Results validated in two papers in Nature. Hoping to start human trials within the year. Holy shit.

Houston researchers make nasal vaccine that prevents COVID from spreadingwww.houstonchronicle.com A team of researchers from the University of Houston have developed a new vaccine to treat and prevent the spread of flu and multiple coronavirus strains.

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My mission when I taught political philosophy was to drill this fact into students’ heads. There is NO system that cannot be exploited by a bad actor. None at all.

Controversial opinion but every system can be exploited by a sufficiently motivated bad actor

How has no one told me this clock is in Glasgow? I need to go visit it.

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I feel like this needs to be stated more than it ever should: If you are antagonistic to people who don't know you, either you are not in community with them or you are not healthy within the community you think you share. Trying to then appeal to shared community is an abuse of perceived allyship.