Game Guides

I have one of those Inside Out core memories. I was probably thirteen or so and I’m sitting next to a friend watching him play the newly released Final Fantasy 10. He’d come to stay at my house and brought his PlayStation with him just to keep playing.

Compressed Complexity

There is a lot of advice out there stating that every product should be as simple as possible. Less clicks, less decisions. There’s even a prominent story about having too many jams to choose from and the overwhelming sadness that can cause. Like most high level advice, this idea

Monster Hunter Wilds Review

All the monster hunting parts of Monster Hunter Wilds are the best they’ve ever been. There’s a lot around the edges that borders on feeling pointless but as a long time fan of the series those elements are very easy to ignore. This is one of those games

Avowed Review

Overall, I liked Avowed. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but despite that I had a good time with it and would recommend it to other people. It’s a fun, visually polished and easy to pick up first person RPG. It lacks the depth of many

You can’t delete the default

Every company has a default. It’s the set of things that happen when nobody is pushing in any particular direction. Usually, its the combined momentum of all the pushing you’ve been doing. There are times in a company where its useful to remove that default. You want to

If your customers don't talk, NPS is a vanity metric.

Word of mouth is a hell of a growth lever, but only when it works. It’s now become almost universal to send your customers an NPS survey and—hopefully—use your scores in the high 80s to show how well you’ll grow organically. Truth is, this only works

Red Bubble, Green Bubble

This post was inspired by, but isn’t solely about, the recent market panic set off by the release of DeepSeek. I don’t claim to be able to pick which new technology fads will be winners. Sometimes bubbles deflate a little but ultimately stick around. These I’ll call

Second Principles

Knowing how to do something from first principles is a valuable skill. However, always starting from first principles is a good way to relearn many mistakes. I am the kind of person who likes to really understand things. I love a good spreadsheet or back of the envelope model. I

Heroes of Hammerwatch II

Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 feels like it sums up what a great rougelite should be. It combines a main gameplay loop that's tough with a slow stream of upgrades that keep pace with your skill. I've yet to feel particularly overpowered, but I have noticed the

Barnacle processes

Barnacle processes, invented when growth is lacking, can slow and kill otherwise great startups. Tech startups have a general culture of going fast. When growth is slow in a culture like that, people often still want to move around quickly. When that happens, people need to run in circles to