HeyJaredGame Production Alchemist
Prepare to encounter unconventional perspectives on game production, LiveOps, leadership and transmutation.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 10
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
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- Aug 3, 2026
Latest issues
For Indie Developers, Runway Is the Only Timebox That Ever Worked, and Claude Is Burning Through It (opens the original)
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AI coding agents make fixed-length sprints pointless for small indie teams, but they make quitting criteria more important than beforeWhy indie developers should separate cadence, iteration and timebox now that AI removes the batchWhat the METR and Faros AI research on perception gaps and review bottlenecks means for solo and small-team game developmentHow to write quitting criteria in attempts and playtests instead of weeks<a class="image-link image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$
I Have Never Seen a Small Team Escape the Producer’s Job By Refusing To Hire One (opens the original)
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Production is a set of activities, not a job title, and small indie teams are already doing them badlyWhy rejecting Agile ceremony left a generation of small teams with no way to make decisionsThe four jobs to hand out by name, and why the one that matters is the hardest to give awayWhat changes at eight to ten people, why fractional production comes first, and what to look for when you hire<a class="image-link image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qb8Y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pro
I Read Every Word of Steam’s AI Disclosure Policy So You Don’t Have To (opens the original)
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What actually triggers a Steam AI disclosure, and what does notWhy the share of new releases carrying that disclosure went from one in ten to one in threeThe grey zone between AI assisted and AI generated that trips up honest developersWhy treating disclosure as a trust signal beats treating it as a compliance box<a class="image-link image2" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qb8Y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fim
The biggest objection I get to Monte Carlo is the one the data says is wrong (opens the original)
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Why producers reject Monte Carlo forecasting for big, complex projectsWhat 5,094 IT projects reveal about size and cost overrunWhy the smallest projects carry the fattest tail of riskHow forecasting from flow data captures the tail your estimate hides<di
I’m 60, I Lead on AI Adoption, and My Industry Still Treats Me as the Liability (opens the original)
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Older game developers use generative AI more actively than younger colleagues, per GDC’s 2026 State of the Game Industry surveyA federal case against Workday’s hiring software just survived a motion to dismiss on age discrimination groundsThe “can’t keep up with technology” excuse for cutting veteran staff has no data behind itWhat producers should check in their own hiring pipeline before assuming this is someone else’s problem<a class="image-link image2" href="https://su
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