Matthew Gatland
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mgatland.com
Matthew Gatland
@mgatland.com
160 followers 150 following 49 posts
Senior System Designer on Minecraft • personal account • he/him

📍Sweden 🔗 https://matthewgatland.com
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Reposted by Matthew Gatland
kchironis.bsky.social
friday soapbox: as a designer, if you want something to be a skillful action for players, and you want growth in this skill to be very deep/meaningful, then you need to also let players be bad at it. sometimes horrendously bad. players hate this pain, and designers often want to mitigate it away.
November 14, 2025 at 8:42 PM
mgatland.com
I want to get a good price on a Lego set that’s retiring at the end of this year. I’m watching the price in maybe eight different stores, seeing it get discounted (but not enough for me) and then sell out in more and more of them. Will anyone have stock left for the big Black Friday sales?
October 22, 2025 at 10:47 AM
mgatland.com
This might be the one I use the most:
lizardengland.bsky.social Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · Oct 21
"is this fun for the player or fun for the designer?"
October 21, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
kchironis.bsky.social
developer: put it down. we don't need another one

concept artist: (clutching tighter) no. this is my emotional support sky whale
October 10, 2025 at 7:58 PM
mgatland.com
I can’t believe I didn’t know this. The feature was added in 1993!
lizardengland.bsky.social Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · Oct 8
Today I showed the designers that you can name cells in spreadsheets and use the names in formulas (i.e. "=PLAYER_LEVEL" instead of "=C12"). You can then use the Name Manager to track or rename them. I thought this was common knowledge, but I guess not, so sharing that tidbit here.
October 9, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
catsuka.bsky.social
Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe) to direct a "Moomins" animated feature film.
variety.com/2025/film/ne...
October 6, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
sachajudd.com
OMG this is amazing

www.instructables.com/LEGO-Skeleto...
a giant lego skeleton made out of styrofoam as a halloween decoration
September 28, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
sylviefluff.bsky.social
it's frustrating when, for example, in a platformer, there's a really hard jump right at the end of the level. so you can come up with game design rules like don't put hard jumps at the end of the level, put something that looks scary but is actually easy to make the player feel good, etc.
September 18, 2025 at 8:18 PM
mgatland.com
My son pointing when a train goes past
mariobrothblog.bsky.social Supper Mario Broth @mariobrothblog.bsky.social · Sep 7
In Super Mario Odyssey, kicking things is Mario's highest priority, overriding all other actions. If a kickable object, such as a football, is thrown at Mario while he is asleep, he will momentarily wake up just to kick it before instantly going back to sleep.
September 15, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
cyangmou.bsky.social
Really nice marketing analysis on pixelart games. Writer knows his datapoint. I was very impressed.
opgamemarketing.substack.com/p/so-youre-m...
So You’re Making a Pixel Art Game?
The brutal 5% success rate and how to beat it
opgamemarketing.substack.com
September 7, 2025 at 7:12 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
vgdensetsu.bsky.social
Ryoichi Hasegawa on the localisation process for the Japanese version of Ecco the Dolphin (released in June 1993 in Japan):
xcancel.com/rio_hasegawa...
It was back in the early 90s, a time when there was no internet, no email, no Excel, no text files, no TrueType fonts—nothing of what we have today. I had to come up with a solution to deliver all the text data to the developer in Hungary (Novotrade), where no one spoke Japanese. First, I created bitmap images of all the hiragana and katakana characters, as well as commas, periods, exclamation points, question marks, and two types of overstrikes (two dots/circles), something like this: ・・・■■■・・・・・・・・・・ ・・・・■■・・■■■・・・・・ ■■■■■■■■■■■・・・・・ ・■■■■■■■■・・・・・・・ ・・・・■■・・・・・・・・・・ ・・・・■■・■■・・・・・・・ ・・・■■■■■■■■■・・・・ ・・■■■■■■■■■■■・・・ ・■■・■■・■■・・■■■・・ ・■■・■■・■■・・・■■・・ ■■・・■■■■・・・・■■■・ ■■・・・■■・・・・・■■■・ ■■・・■■■■・・・・■■・・ ■■■■■・■■・・・■■・・・ ・■■■・・・・・・■■・・・・ ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ I then printed all characters page by page and FAXED nearly 100 pages to the developer, and their artist converted them into nicely shaded Japanese fonts. Each character was assigned a code based on rules such as: H for hiragana, K for katakana 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 for vowel rows A, K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W for consonant columns d for overstriking dots, c for overstriking circles sp for space (Note: I might not remember all the rules perfectly now, lol.) For example, the phrase "こんにちは" should be converted to something like: H05K, H05W, H02N, H02T, H01H The developer sent me all the in-game dialogues via fax. I translated them and assigned each string a number for easy reference, instead of saying something like "the third window of the second dolphin in stage 2." Now here's the best part: once I finished translating all the dialogues, I typed them into a word processing program (like an early version of WordPad), then converted each letter to its corresponding code, character by character. I printed all of this out and faxed dozens of pages to the developer, who then had to convert them back into dialogue data. To my surprise, the system we created was quite robust. There were only a few text-related bugs, mostly caused by my typos. I still work in game localization. It feels like we were in the stone age compared to today's methods, but I still cherish those moments.
August 22, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
maxkreminski.bsky.social
game narrative people like to talk about how worldbuilding isn’t storytelling. i agree; in fact i think worldbuilding is actually its own emerging creative practice, with its own virtuosos & masterpieces; it overlaps with storytelling but often feels to me more like architecture, hypertext, collage
cover of James Gurney's "Dinotopia" cover of "Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons" screenshot of the cool "guys with weapons sneakily floating up a rock" intro scene from Dune Part 2 cover of "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
November 18, 2024 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
mrsambarlow.bsky.social
The background on this waterfall, from the game's director Takatsuna Senba

(the whole interview is pretty great stuff:
web.archive.org/web/20191230...)
August 23, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
kchironis.bsky.social
3yo in her play kitchen: mommy make food with me!

me, half asleep bc it's 6am: mommy's tired but i will provide thoughts on your cooking strategy

3yo: why isn't mommy making food

me: i am involved in the work, just at a different layer

3yo, stamping foot: mommy you aren't DOING anything though
August 14, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
stcymsn.bsky.social
Wow we’re having “games are art” discourse again! Just gonna leave this here.

From my dissertation:
2.1 Lenses, Not Boxes I wondered whether this section was necessary, but games discourse seems to repeatedly find itself adrift in questions of whether _ counts as a _. We have seen the question repeatedly: Do games count as art? Do games without goals count as games? Is The Sims a game? Are hypertexts interactive fiction? Are Twine pieces literature? In fairness to the researchers cited here, all of whom I respect immensely, many of these sources pose or imply the question rhetorically. Still, the necessity of such a framing frustrates me. "Is _ a _?" is, in my opinion, a fruitless question. The question can never be answered to anyone's satisfaction, and it often serves as either a provocation to espouse politics or as a cover to institute gatekeeping. Its agenda is usually opaque to onlookers and bewildering to those trying to advance the field from across disciplines. We should be thinking in lenses, not boxes. It is always more interesting to ask "If we think of _ through the lens of _, what do we learn?" We know it is more interesting to ask "What do we learn by considering Tom Stoppard through the lens of poststructuralism?" than to ask "Is Stoppard's work poststructuralist?" And while some works may be more or less fruitful when examined through different lenses, sometimes the most unlikely pairings of lenses and objects are the most rewarding. Certainly any of the questions above would be much better served by reframing them in this way.
August 4, 2025 at 12:17 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
joshmlabelle.bsky.social
Sometimes in focus tests you get a phenomenon where instead of articulating a real feeling they had, the test audiences start to self-consciously look for stuff to critique and so give a bunch of weird notes that don't match any real audience sentiment.

variety.com/2025/film/ne...
‘Superman’ Test Screenings Asked ‘Why the F— Is He Saving a Squirrel?’ and James Gunn Originally Cut It Out: ‘I Put the Squirrel Back Despite Protestations’
James Gunn says "Superman" test screenings revealed audiences hated when Superman saves a squirrel. He refused to cut the moment.
variety.com
July 30, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
twitter.bitoclass.uk
I didn't even think it was possible to *have* a favourite page of a freezer manual…
November 20, 2024 at 12:39 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
caraellison.bsky.social
I don’t know what it is about videogames that make people into some sort of soldier role but it sure is something that surely cannot backfire on anyone at any time
July 28, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
bryantfrancis.me
This is an insane thing to write about game development. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/a...
Most experts acknowledge that a takeover by artificial intelligence is coming for the video game industry within the next five years, and executives have already started preparing to restructure their companies in anticipation. After all, it was one of the first sectors to deploy A.I. programming in the 1980s, with the four ghosts who chase Pac-Man each responding differently to the player's real-time movements.
July 29, 2025 at 2:10 AM
mgatland.com
I’m getting back into Lego after a 20 year break. There are so many new bits! But when I see one I recognise from before it feels like meeting an old friend.
Some Lego parts including a rod and a circle with four bumps on top that the author remembers from their childhood
July 8, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
eev.ee
down with Whatever eev.ee/blog/2025/07...
The rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of eve...
eev.ee
July 4, 2025 at 1:46 AM
mgatland.com
I lost my library card months ago. It finally showed up in the strangest place: a box labeled ‘USEFUL cards, earplugs, USB, wifi code’ 🤷
June 16, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
kchironis.bsky.social
husband: i’m green goblin and i’m gonna burn down the city!!
3yo: no you’re not!
husband: have you ever heard of the “yes and” improv rule? ok, i shoot my traps at you
3yo: (running away) ha ha. no you don’t!! you don’t shoot any traps!!!!
me: you are gonna get kicked out of your RP server for that
June 12, 2025 at 1:45 AM
mgatland.com
I’m gonna post all my dad content now
February 24, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by Matthew Gatland
terrycavanaghgames.com
Finally got around to blogging about the new collection, with a little bit about the why of it all: distractionware.com/blog/2025/02...
Screenshot reading "Terry's Trainwrecks" in a big logo
February 18, 2025 at 5:43 PM