Mark's Month - August 2025

Hello Patrons!

I am writing this at the tail end of a much needed break. Some essential time off. Because the past few months have been a lot. But first... let's talk about August.

GMTK Game Jam 2025

We ran the 9th annual GMTK Game Jam, over at Itch. And it was a big success - more than 37,000 participants and more than 9,600 games. It seems to grow bigger every single year. I'm sure that will stop one day and things will plateau. But almost a decade in and it's still growing!

The theme for this year's jam was Loop and that was successful, in my eyes. It was broad enough to allow for dozens of different interpretations but still forced devs to think carefully about how to apply it.

I changed the rating system a little this year by adding categories for art, audio, and narrative. And I also distanced myself from the judging process somewhat. Instead of picking the "winners" from the top 100 rated games, I let the community decide the best games and then picked some winners for myself.

It felt like the right thing to do considering the size of the jam - the final decision shouldn't come down to a single person!

Some people were upset that there's no single "overall" category - but that had to be sacrificed. You see, the new categories - like audio and narrative - are there to celebrate games that excel in those areas. But if they also added up to the overall category then suddenly you'd need to care about the story and the art and the audio... and those just don't matter in a competition to make the most innovative and fun games!

I'll continue to tweak and play with things - but for the most part I'm happy with how the jam is run now. And I'm starting to think what can be done to celebrate the jam's tenth anniversary in 2026!

MOM on Consoles

I talked about this previously on Patreon. Basically: I got a company to port the game to consoles, and it launched simultaneously on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch (six consoles, if you count the Switch 2's back compat) on August 15th.

But there were also teething issues. I got access to the port a few days before launched and discovered that the game was not up to scratch with some big oversights that made it inferior to the Steam original.

Long story short: the porting team immediately created an emergency patch and sent it to the platform holders. And while Xbox and PlayStation were updated quickly, Nintendo only approved the patch mere hours before launch.

It was a super stressful time and a big lesson in how you can't rely on others to look after your baby. You've gotta stand over them.

I also got on stream with Xbox's indie team ID@Xbox to showcase the game on Twitch. That was fun - especially because the host didn't seem to know who I am. Which is fine - I'm not super famous! But I'm just not used to explaining what GMTK is to a gaming literate audience! Still - really fun way to mark the launch of the game.

Oh, and I also made a video about the game coming out which was a lot of fun to create!

Break

And then after all of that I was done. Done diddly done. Absolutely done. Beyond done.

Because here's the thing. I worked non-stop on Word Play from March to July, only taking a break when I, uh, broke my arm. And the plan was to finally take a break when I released the game. But I didn't consider how much post-launch support the game would need. Patches, bug fixes, feature requests, press, etc.

And it was stressful. It's very tough to have a product out to paying customers and have bugs and issues. So I worked non-stop fixing stuff as quickly as possible. For a week I was waking up at 3AM every morning, panicking about bugs.

And there was no time to take a break because it took me right into GMTK Game Jam. Which also has a lot of extra support. Making the page and graphics before launch, and then doing live streams, the video, mod help on the Discord, consoling angry jammers.

Oh yeah - that's something I don't normally talk about. With thousands of people entering the jam, there are going to be some people who get extremely angry that they missed the deadline, or didn't follow the rules and had their game disqualified, or whatever. And then they come to me and tell me to... well, I won't burden you with that. But it's not fun.

And then in all of that I had the Mind Over Magnet console launch. And all of THAT stress.

My overwhelming calendar for July and August

But then... all of my tasks were suddenly just done. And I could stop. I took like 3 weeks off everything. No GMTK. No social media. I didn't even play any new games outside of Donkey Kong (oh, and I just started Silksong!). I hung out with my nephews. I watched loads of movies. Me and my wife went to the beach. It was lovely.

The rest of 2025

During this time off I realised: It's time to take things back to basics.

I enjoy doing all this extra stuff. The jam. Making games. Porting games. Going to events and doing talks. Writing essays and book intros. Doing podcasts and interviews. Helping people with school projects. Consulting work. These are all amazing opportunities and I've been glad to grab them with both hands.

But you know what I love the most? Just making my little YouTube videos. Really diving into the research, then making a cool video, and putting it out into the world. I love it and I miss it.

And so that's what I want to do for the rest of the year.

I'm going to say "no" to 99% of the things that come across my desk. And I'm just going to focus all my time on making cool videos. I've got loads of stuff I want to make and I'm so excited to get them out to you.

And as an added bonus: I can work on YouTube more sustainably. I can take a break whenever I want - just gotta finish up whatever video I'm currently working on. Because there are no talks to write, no patches to make, no podcasts to appear on. I can stop, refresh, and then come back.

Now you may be thinking "okay Mark, sounds great. We'll see you in two months when you tell us that you've sacked off YouTube again to make a third game". But that won't be happening.

I only wanted to make one game - Mind Over Magnet. But I wasn't 100% happy with it. The game itself and - most importantly - the production process. It was a mess and I knew that if I made another game I could do it better. And then I did, with Word Play. The game is great and the process was smooth.

And so if making games was about gathering experience and authority in the world of making games - I've done it. I have made two games. I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars. My games are on every major platform. I'm now a legit game maker. I don't have anything to prove anymore.

So that desire is gone. I'm sure it will come back one day... but not for years. For now I just wanna make my YouTube videos. I wanna help others make cool games. I wanna be the Game Maker's Toolkit - not the Game Maker.

I will still put Word Play on mobile. I'll take a week or two at some point to do the necessary work to get it on App Store and Android. But that's it.

So - I'll be back at work tomorrow and I'll be working on a new video. It's a deep investigation into how games do destruction - in games like Donkey Kong Bananza, Battlefield, Red Faction, and more.

And then going forward I've got lots more videos I want to do - including a Silksong Boss Keys, and continuing my Game Dev 101 series!

Thanks for reading, you're the best

See you soon

Mark