Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Mike Prinke Profile picture
Mike Prinke
@Mike_Prinke
Technical Writer at Epic Games. Find me at https://t.co/xoJbvkP1i1 and @mike-prinke.bsky.social
Jun 28, 2023 • 49 tweets • 17 min read
As someone who once aspired to reproduce Kingdom Hearts-style combat, I’ll weigh in on why people don’t borrow its design as much as you might think/hope. 🧵

KH’s combat is great, and worth study. But, it’s exceptionally hard to borrow from because it’s so specifically KH. Quick primer: Kingdom Hearts is an action-RPG series started by Square-Enix in 2002 in collaboration with Disney. The original was a FF/Disney crossover nobody asked for, subject to bemusement/confusion when first announced, but it over-delivered with engaging story and gameplay.





Jun 19, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A mainstream TV show brings on a famous oncologist and a man who drinks urine to debate cancer treatment. The man who drinks piss lies about urine curing his cancer.

Congratulations, you have assigned validity and credibility of an oncologist to a guy who drinks urine. The audience isn’t going to research this and probably doesn’t have the background to fully grasp the complex issues of cancer treatment. They just know you weighted these two voices with equal credibility, and they are now more likely take the urine drinker at face value.
Jun 18, 2023 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
Yes. My first training in college was art. However, my realization that I had a bad attitude, frustration at my lack of improvement, and overwhelming discouragement from peers drove me to give it up. I currently struggle to draw without having anxiety attacks. On my attitude: I was snotty, obnoxious, and more than anything, deeply frustrated. I felt like I was shut out from my local game dev community on day one, felt like I wasn’t being seen or heard despite a lot of (often misplaced) effort, and knew I wasn’t learning anything.
May 27, 2023 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
Time for a crash course in how video game budgets actually work. 🧵

TL;DR: Even at seemingly well-resourced game studios, nobody working on the project gets to make financial decisions for the project. Budget is there only if the suits say so, and they can cut it at any time. When setting up a game project with a publisher, you need to provide a breakdown of how much budget you need and what the production schedule will be. The schedule is based on "milestones" -- different states of progress with explicit criteria for when you've reached them.
May 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Part of the problem is that the average game makes the majority of its money within the first month or so on initial release. After, it's a long tail before the product eventually fades from popular consciousness. The economics of live service differ only if it has staying power. Because you can't verify the quality of a game until you play it, quality doesn't drive the initial wave of sales as much as the perception of potential quality -- hence why hype and marketing play such a significant role in the industry.
May 26, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
To add to this, there were definitely skeptics of the iPhone, but NOBODY contested the capability of the device. It was more about whether the value matched the price. Like Apple was breaking into this market they'd never been in before, with a device that was more expensive than any that had been produced, and a data plan more expensive than any phone carrier had pushed. "Yes, the device is cool -- you want me to pay HOW MUCH?" was the note.
May 26, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I really, really don't, actually. There is no time in my career I've ever wanted to work on an IP that I was a fan of. Maybe Star Wars? But at a certain point I shifted from focusing on the type of game/IP to focusing on the people I end up working with instead. Like, Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy are closest to things I'd want to work on -- but them being made by Japanese studios makes the whole prospect a non-starter. The culture gap and language barrier makes it pretty unfeasible for me to work at Squenix or Capcom.
May 26, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I can relate to this. Best guess at what could be going wrong for this person is that they don't know what the job actually is. They may have basic skills, but they don't actually know what the position entails on a full production, so they're doing the job search unequipped. So, writing, for example.

You probably think that entails outlining the story and developing a script.

There's also an ongoing maintenance need for adjusting dialogue according to design requirements, or adding new dialogue/text as new situations pop up that need it.
Sep 14, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Time for a little sneak peek of the #UE5 #UI optimization notes I'm writing. Optimizing UI and Slate is often challenging as people aren't always aware of what's expensive within this system. We're hoping to illuminate that a bit! Here's a🧵 with some of the bigger stuff. First off, avoid Canvas Panels whenever you can. Slate groups draw calls by LayerID. Whereas other containers condense the number of draw calls by consolidating child elements' LayerIDs, Canvas Panels increment them, so they use MULTIPLE draw calls. This makes them CPU intensive.
Apr 11, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Went on a #Pathfinder2e and #StarfinderRPG book binge. It turns out Paizo has been very busy since I initially got these. Sooooo much new stuff to see! So they have mechs now
Apr 9, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The short version is that I work on documentation on the Unreal Engine docs site at docs.unrealengine.com. I write stuff mainly in platform support, pipeline tools, and programming.

There are a lot of ways that this job is surprisingly not so simple! 🧵 Imagine writing the manual for a feature that has not been released yet. You cannot google the answer, and there's no Stack Overflow post demystifying it. 100% of the knowledge about that feature is internal to the company, and you need to find it.
Apr 8, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
#SonicMovie2 is a BIZARRE ride. Like right when you think it’s going to become rational for a minute there’s all these left turns into chaos. This movie is surely made by goblins. I do not know how to describe what I just watched. There is this insane clash of like three different kinds of movie happening. It’s all following the same, reasonably cohesive plot, but you just never know which style of movie it’s going to veer into on the way to the goal.
Jun 14, 2021 • 33 tweets • 12 min read
Thread time again.

I will both answer the question the OP is asking, and explain why the point of view expressed in the article is … frustrating.

JRPGs don’t really need fixing as much as people think, but it’s a very common point of view from game devs to want to change them. To lots of people, the appeal of the genre is from a handful of examples and the surface-level traits the genre brings to the table: novel-like storytelling, with detailed worldbuilding and clean exploration. Interesting places and characters with a full plot wrapped around them.
Jun 13, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
As an extremely career-driven person, I cannot possibly overstate the level of maliciousness in this person’s advice. She is deeply out of touch with the realities of the current job climate, and adopting these kinds of habits will ruin your life long-term. If you give your boss your weekends with blind enthusiasm, they will begin to schedule around the assumption you will always do it. I spent years filling a role as an “indispensable” programmer, and many of the folks I worked with would ping me on Slack after 11 PM on a Sunday.
Jun 11, 2021 • 32 tweets • 6 min read
Thread time.

I’ve worked on several Kickstarter-backed projects, and Doc’s take here is accurate. KS is far from an ideal way to build a video game budget.

I won’t reveal specific information about projects, but I’ll fill you in on some budgeting realities. 1/ To give a ballpark figure on what games cost, think $10,000 per person per month. That’s not necessarily everybody’s salary, but rather an average estimate of their pay plus running costs, like software licenses, office space, etc. 2/
Jun 4, 2021 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
Time for a thread.

I’m going to let everybody in on a little game development secret: when you work on a bad game, almost everybody on the team is PAINFULLY aware that it’s bad. Morale drags, everybody struggles to try and at least make their contribution acceptable. It’s like standing in the path of an oncoming bus, too late to get out of the way. The time at which you realize it’s going to hit you may vary, but at some point ahead of the game’s release, you see it coming in slow motion.