Ben Johnson

@gamedesignerben.bsky.social

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Game Designer on [unannounced] at Double Fine. Previously: Psychonauts 2, Dead Space (2008), Babycastles. He/him.

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New ambient pop: City Pop Saw Mill youtu.be/q6IvsfodnyQ?...

City Pop Saw Mill | soma terra, ciat-lonbarde plumbutter, monome norns ooooooyoutu.be Sparkling industrial nostalgia, and the smell of lumber. Images from Franklin Summer, Selected Drawings 1995-2001 by Yoko Ono. The Plumbutter keeps the beat, while a Norns Shield running oooooo plays a couple of loops made using other Terra voices. Then it’s just me once again playing the Terra one-handed because I can’t be bothered to get the tripod from the other room, so I have to hold the camera with my other hand.

A cool thing I remember from covid lockdown was theaters offering pro-shot versions of plays as streams on their website, or on YouTube. That should’ve been normalized.

🤔 There should be a Criterion edition of The Muppet Movie 😮 There should be a Criterion edition of A Muppet Christmas Carol 👹 There should be a Criterion edition of Muppet Treasure Island

Now I am 45 And I’m clever as clever So I think I’ll be 45 Forever and ever

Def Leppard was named after the common experience of seeing a big cat and texting a picture to your friend asking “lepprd or cheeta??”

“The world we are fighting for is already here,” the sense that small communities operate internally in ways that can be models for society and the public, really demands an unflinching look at the families and organizations that the far right and Christian nationalists have made for themselves.

As a game developer, the most realistic thing about The Bear is pouring your entire self into something for months or years, damaging your sanity and relationships, and getting a 7/10-but-they-can’t-wait-to-see-what-you-do-next.

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I went looking for the whole War Room episode this Kevin Roberts/"bloodless" second American Revolution clip was in, and you know for all his "we are winning" pablum, the reason he is thanking a guest host at the top is because War Room's regular host is in jail www.mediamatters.org/project-2025...

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution"www.mediamatters.org

Everybody has that one friend who takes interest in your hobbies, through word and deed causes you to fear for the stability of the democracy you live under, is actually multiple people, and is in fact the majority of your friend group.

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Periodically, I like to reread my favorite Scottish poem: Batman's Aff His Nut by Robert Florence.

I am trying to get better at actually using a looper, instead of just thinking that I should probably learn how to use a looper.

Now do “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I can’t think of a clever caption for this. It just breaks my fucking heart.

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Look, I'm not a highly paid consultant so I could be wrong, but I think that probably I am not the only person who has left the store dozens of times without the product I intended to buy because it was locked up and no one responded when I pressed the button

Walgreens will close a “significant portion” of its 8,600 U.S. locations over the next three years as it struggles to keep up with a rapidly evolving retail pharmacy industry, the company announced Thursday.

Walgreens to shutter many stores as profits tumblewapo.st The retail pharmacy giant expects to close a “significant portion” of its 8,600 U.S. locations over the next three years.

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The Steam Summer Sale is here, and you can save 25% on Goodbye Volcano High and the OST each through July 11th! 🌈 Goodbye Volcano High is an LGBTQ+ cinematic narrative game about love, change, and the end of the world. What will you do at the end of an era? ☄️ store.steampowered.com/app/1310330/...

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📢ATTN FREELANCE WRITERS📢 ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories is currently accepting pitches for a game history long read! Scope is 2.5K-4K piece suitable to ROMchip's Materials section (focus is close reads of game history artifacts). Pay is $1000. More info: donate.romchip.org/new-work.html

New Workdonate.romchip.org ROMchip is an open access publishing venue dedicated to the historical study of games. While we serve most formally as a peer-reviewed journal for game history scholarship written by professional...

AI does not solve a problem by generating temp audio for scratch dialog in videogames. AI would solve a problem if it made it less time-consuming for my coworkers to record hammy line readings of scratch dialog that we all agree is “more real” than the pro versions after launch.

My Julian Assange story is that we got him to walk back support for Gamergate by threatening to cancel his book launch party, and then after the party he walked back his walk back. I have never forgotten the flexibility of his convictions outside the public eye.

Slowly mapping out the spectrum of schadenfreude based on which posts about bad things happening to terrible people receive the “Tiny Violin” slackmoji, and which receive the “Good” slackmoji.

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MIYAZAKI: i so gave it a lot of thought and i decided to put another poison swamp in elden ring,

Why don’t they just ask the AI how to reduce their power consumption?

Here’s a miracle solution: stop fuckin doing it

If you think “Metroidvania” sounds silly or off-putting, “Exploration Platformer” is right there for you.

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Really hoping the umpire is named Shrimp

A great night out in San Francisco at the last stop on Melt-Banana’s U.S. tour last night.

Day lily day!

The mission statement from M.I.A.’s designer tin foil hat company. “Future backwards is R U TUF” and, no, but you were so close! Points for ending with “I could be a cheat” I guess.

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Reply to

metal dot txt

This has *got* to be satire, no? There's no way this can be serious.... right?

When I was on the rowing machine at the gym, a woman complemented my form, and I was so caught off guard at being complemented by a stranger that it took me several seconds to completely process what was happening.

My gym sent an email announcing that they’re closing at 1pm to honor Juneteenth at 5:30pm on Juneteenth

Khaki! At The Goth Club

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