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grahamboree.bsky.social
Graham Pentheny
@grahamboree.bsky.social
130 followers 85 following 56 posts
grahamboree.lol

Senior Engineer @ spryfox.com
Cofounder & Treasurer @ bostongamedev.org
Core Maintainer @ recastnav.com
Game AI Pro 1,2,3
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
jdeegz.bsky.social
I am hunting for work! Anyone in games, or other creative fields have open roles I could apply for? UI Art / Design, Concept Art, Hard Surface modeling, Design, UX... jdeegz.com
Portfolio of Jim DeGruttola
Portfolio of Jim DeGruttola
jdeegz.com
November 20, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
letitmelo.bsky.social
I legitimately didn't know they were competing with Steam and it's crazy to me that they burnt so much money on what sounds like something with very little (or wildly misguided) market research.
Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP As VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we failed multiple times to disrupt the game platform Steam. We were at least 250x bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost. Here's why: The 15+ year long attempt to challenge Steam started before I was VP of Prime Gaming, but we never cracked the code. Not under my leadership or anyone else's. The first way we tried to enter the online-game-store market was through acquisition. We acquired Reflexive Entertainment (a small PC game store) and tried to scale it. It went nowhere. Then, after buying Twitch, we created our own PC games store. Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch. Wrong. Finally, we built "Luna," a game streaming service that let people play without a high-end PC. Around the same time, Google tried the same thing with their product "Stadia." Neither gained significant traction. The whole time, Steam dominated despite being a relatively small company (compared to Amazon and Google). The mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well. At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either. Just because you are big enough to build something doesn't mean people will use it
October 28, 2025 at 10:23 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Build a solid, working system out the gate: nobody notices.

Build a buggy mess and then fix it later after everyone experiences the pain of using it: you're the hero.
October 21, 2025 at 3:20 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Visual scripting is objectively terrible in 99.99% of cases. This is the hill I will die on.

blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com
blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com
October 10, 2025 at 6:01 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Man, C is so much simpler and more fun to program in than C++.
September 27, 2025 at 3:20 AM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
adamdegrandis.bsky.social
friends, full disclosure: i have ZERO recollection of what we talked about when we recorded this. But I was hanging with Alan and Syrenne so I'm sure I had a good time. Go listen and be entertained? Educated? Who's to say, I guess. Go listen.
draknek.bsky.social Alan Hazelden / Draknek & Friends @draknek.bsky.social · Sep 11
Draknek & Friends Official Podcast Episode 36 featuring @adamdegrandis.bsky.social is out now! Topics include the development of the games, his time teaching, a dive through some gaming history, and a surprisingly long tangent about music.
draknek.org/podcast
Draknek & Friends Official Podcast
Join Alan and Syrenne from Draknek & Friends as they talk to developers of some of their favorite puzzle games, shedding light onto how games get made and th...
draknek.org
September 11, 2025 at 9:19 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Can confirm. Adam is one of the best humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to know. Check this out!
andrewfray.dev Andrew Fray Helps Automate Video Games @andrewfray.dev · Sep 11
Adam is one of my favourite people. I think he’s the favourite person of most people he meets? This will be good.
draknek.bsky.social Alan Hazelden / Draknek & Friends @draknek.bsky.social · Sep 11
Draknek & Friends Official Podcast Episode 36 featuring @adamdegrandis.bsky.social is out now! Topics include the development of the games, his time teaching, a dive through some gaming history, and a surprisingly long tangent about music.
draknek.org/podcast
September 12, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
draknek.bsky.social
Draknek & Friends Official Podcast Episode 36 featuring @adamdegrandis.bsky.social is out now! Topics include the development of the games, his time teaching, a dive through some gaming history, and a surprisingly long tangent about music.
draknek.org/podcast
Draknek & Friends Official Podcast
Join Alan and Syrenne from Draknek & Friends as they talk to developers of some of their favorite puzzle games, shedding light onto how games get made and th...
draknek.org
September 11, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
weloveeverygame.bsky.social
Our latest Studio Spotlight: Jake Birkett (@greyalien.bsky.social) on the 20‑year journey behind his “overnight” indie success.

👽 Read → www.weloveeverygame....

#IndieDev #GameDev #Interview
September 5, 2025 at 4:30 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
"Don't repeat yourself" (aka "DRY") is the foremost pitfall of our generation of software engineers. It's followed so myopically and dogmatically that people perform heroic code structure contortions just to enable re-use of a 10 line method they could have copy/pasted.
August 25, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
victoriatran.bsky.social
✨ MY BOOK IS OUT NOW ✨

"Mastering Community Management" is finally here! 😭

Learn what goes into community management for video games from pre- to post-production. ❤️ Get my step-by-step strategy for creating meaningful online spaces!

Shares appreciated. AHH!!

Buy: www.victoriatran.com/book
Holding up my book "Mastering Community Management: Chaos, Compassion, and Connection in Games". Picture of me in between shelves of books, holding up my book.
July 18, 2025 at 4:01 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Maybe we'd have flying cars and world peace if Windows had switched to LF and case-sensitive file systems like everyone else... 🤔
July 15, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
spryfox.bsky.social
Hi everyone! We're Spry Fox. 🦊

As some of you may have heard, we've been working on our newest project: Spirit Crossing, a cooperative life-sim focused on friendship & community.

Let's take a look at the world we've been crafting:
🌲 www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKb...

☀️ playspiritcrossing.com
Spirit Crossing - 14.2 Trailer
YouTube video by Spry Fox
www.youtube.com
July 14, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
innes.bsky.social
the thing about "move fast and break things" is that not breaking things is often quite a lot faster
July 11, 2025 at 8:09 AM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Dumpster fire fighter 🗑️🧑‍🚒
June 27, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
tanyaxshort.bsky.social
just ship it. shut up, theseus.
June 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
bostongamedev.bsky.social
There's a reason the summer community BBQ is one of our favorite events of the year! So great to see our amazing community come out and make an already sunny and beautiful day even better.

#gamedev #indiedev
A big group photo of the BBQ attendees. People sitting on the grass and gathering under tents in the park. People chatting under tents in the park. The tops of trees against a blue sky.
June 23, 2025 at 8:07 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Please, Windows, just be an operating system for me. That's all I want.
June 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
grahamboree.bsky.social
Imagine not being able to open your game engine editor today because it can't phone home. status.unity.com
Services Status
Unity Services's status page provides information on the current status and incident history of Unity Services.
status.unity.com
June 23, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
dihuh.bsky.social
hypernormalisation
drawing of the artist full body walking in profile holding a bag and bouquet of flowers, her head and hand is in a neon color fire, her head/hand reduced to skeletal form
June 22, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
cipherzerogame.com
Join us today at the very first Thinky Direct, filled with trailers and announcements from all the games that scratch your brain.

Tune in to see #CipherZero news!

6pm BST/10am PDT/1pm EDT!

www.youtube.com/live/iXyyhQd...

#PlayCipherZero #IndieGameDev #IndieDev #SolveForX #ThinkyDirect
May 29, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
jdeegz.bsky.social
Yo!

I’ve been working on my game, a tower defense called Spires of Morosith: Gossamer Sundered, and I've just published a Demo! Please give it a try, you can get it on steam here: store.steampowered.com/app/3094970/...

If you dig the game, tell a friend!

#indiegames #steamdemo #towerdefense
May 26, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
bostonindies.bsky.social
Boston GameLoop tickets went up the other day!

GameLoop is one of our fav local events, "like a day full of all the best hallway conversations you’d have at GDC" as they say. Tell your game makin' friends and coworkers!

August 16th @ MIT

Tickets here -> www.bostonfig.com/gameloop-2025/
GameLoop 2025
GameLoop 2025
www.bostonfig.com
May 22, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
majormcdoom.bsky.social
Some of y'all are gonna think I've gone completely nuts, but I'm gonna talk about rounded corners and why circles suck.

Most devs take it for granted that rounded corners are circles. Spoiler: They don't have to be!

There is a much more aesthetically pleasing and cheaper alternative. 🧵👇
#gamedev
A picture showing two diagrams of rounded corners, one using a circular equation and the other using a parabolic equation.
May 22, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Graham Pentheny
desolus.bsky.social
After nearly a decade of development, I am very excited to finally announce Desolus!

Explore a city of Gothic architecture torn between past and future in Desolus, a first person puzzle game.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxfV...
DESOLUS Announcement Trailer
YouTube video by Mark Mayers
www.youtube.com
May 19, 2025 at 4:17 PM