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If you like chaos and gaming (or just wanna support some indie devs), wishlist Fish Stick Protocol now!🔥

It helps a ton, and we appreciate every single one of you. ❤️
store.steampowered.com/app/3367500/...

Here's a quote from Satoru Iwata that I come back to as I've been doing a lot of interviews recently.
We ask questions as naturally as possible to have a nice conversation and give candidates many opportunities to tell positive things about them and their work.

Before coming back from GDC, we visited the Walt Disney museum and came back with a few too many books. But it's for work! Park maps for level design, Cinderella concept arts for art direction, and imagineering because it has a lot of similarities with game design.

Today we are in Málaga as part of the SpielFabrique program.
So we're working from an airBnb 10 min from the beach...

Last week I replaced my partner for the 1-1 monthly meetings with employees and thought about that quote from Ask Iwata: "One thing Iwata valued was meeting one-on-one. [...] He made a point of sitting down with every employee working on development. There must have been over two hundred people."

Each time someone joins Maracas (employee or intern), we take the on-boarding process very seriously. Part of the "welcome pack" are a notebook and a pen, to make sure they are able to take notes during meetings—and to secretly nudge them into paying attention :)

Took a picture today of a door to show students an example of good design.
It's the designer's role to make sure the user doesn't have trouble with basic interactions. In this case, the vertical handle invites you to grab and pull while the horizontal bar is more convenient to push.

GDC D -1, the Belgian booth in construction as we walk around before our first meetings. Because the real GDC happens in crowded hotel lobbies, and it has already started!

Team building is a real challenge when you work in remote. That's why we have weekly game sessions during work hours so we can get to know each others in a different context. And it doubles as a way to stay up to date to the latest trends.

Long story short: we've been playing Lethal Company a lot!

Since the last one was a success (it wasn't but I liked doing it), here is another game design themed game of Connections: connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-Nn-dAL...

Last afterwork gathered a record number of 75 persons to chat and network around a drink. Will we beat that number? See you tomorrow!

This Friday is the @maracasstudio.bsky.social Afterwork, an in-person meet-up that we do every other week after our day of work. It's an informal networking event that doesn't feel like it. I get to meet old dev friends and new students discovering the industry in the same evening.

I made a custom game of Connections themed around game design!
connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-Nn-eGZ...
Note that it might be too difficult, I didn't playtest this...

We've moved to a new workspace for our in-person work day. This means I have to take step-by-step pictures to update our "how to get to the studio" onboarding wiki page.

The first day of newcomers is stressful enough without adding the stress of finding their way inside.

For the new year I've revamped the Discord server where we invite all our gamedev friends and past interns.
It's a way to keep in touch even if we don't see each other much, and to maintain an alumni network as if we were a big company 🙂

Hi there!
I like to talk about game design tips and tricks and share the philosophy of Maracas Studio, of which I am the co-founder and creative director.
I have a few things planned to share, and then we'll see how it goes...