I'm a game developer, professionally!

You may know me from things like: Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, The Museum of Mechanics: Lockpicking, Gone Home, Bioshock 2, or maybe something else.

Right now I work as a Technical Narrative Designer at Remedy Entertainment in Stockholm, Sweden

Perhaps there are other aspects of my personality that may also be revealed here on this website


Email
johnnemann@dimbulbgames.com
Discord
Johnnemann

geometric
@geometric

i no longer wish to loot
i no longer wish to craft
i no longer wish to unlock my skill tree
i no longer wish to follow the waypoint on my minimap
i no longer wish to clear this area of enemies
i no longer wish to increase my lockpicking level
i no longer wish to sell valuable items to a merchant
i no longer wish to see the good ending
i no longer wish to hit the enemy's weak spot for maximum damage
i no longer wish to compare armor stats
i no longer wish to return to the quest giver for my reward
i no longer wish to return to the play area



eniko
@eniko

I think a lot about how much of my life is subject to algorithms. Like, I can make a great game but if the game doesn't please Steam's algorithms I'll be lucky to get 10 Steam reviews and make $2,000 off it. When I make a YT video, I have to tailor it so it has enough algorithmic viability that it can blow up, because the alternative is it'll get buried. To compensate for curators using shitty algorithms I build a following on social media, so I can hopefully continue to eat. But then the social media sites also use algorithms which seem, to the best of my ability to discern such things, entirely random and which will never pick up anything I actually need them to. Even for tv shows I wanna watch I'm dependent on an algorithm because if the streaming service's algorithm doesn't vibe with the show they'll just fucking cancel it and I'll never get more.

Anyhow, when I think about this I almost feel thankful for what Musk did to Twitter. At least on cohost and mastodon there's no fucking algorithm. When I post something big and important it gets more pickup than when I make an unimportant shitpost. I no longer feel gaslit by algorithms and I can build a community that I can reliably reach.

So when people on these sites start asking for an algorithm it makes me want to fucking scream. My whole life, including whether I get to eat or keep a roof over my head is ruled by shitty fucking algorithms. If you want those, they're fucking everywhere, so go somewhere else and leave my fucking sanctuary alone, thanks.



Like, I've seen both The Atlantic and disappointingly, Ars Technica write fawning "self-driving cars are so safe!" articles recently, and I feel like I'm seeing the ripples on the surface that indicate a monster PR campaign has begun swimming in the deep.

The main thing that both of them say that I HATE is "we have to give them access to public roads in order to improve, because these could be so much safer than human drivers", and first off, no we don't, we do not have any obligation to any private company to provide access to a public good so they can monetize it. We do not have to do that.

And second, this is a false binary. The choice is not exclusively between "human driven cars" and "robot driven cars". You are foreclosing so many better, more interesting futures by narrowing your imagination in that way. Please be mildly curious about things being Different.