sid riff

pro game designer + ai

building

[sid riff @sidriff]

Orbital Ops is my #vibejam 2026 entry

iteration 4 adds:
- multiplayer
- 100 other things that support having it

elevenlabs took the footage and delivered 11 minutes of synthwave heaven. accidental outrun vibes 🌄

here’s some tips for jamming your own multiplayer game with ai 👾😎✏️

[sid riff @sidriff]

@Jason ai can't steal data anymore than a printing press can steal a book.

but the public receives benefits downstream of agentic machines proliferation. no seizing required.

we'll build a better world, and yet, we'll continue trying to burn it down over the injustice of it all.

[sid riff @sidriff]

@AmericaPapaBear the thing is, if you posted this unironically half of this site would go for it

[sid riff @sidriff]

@icreatelife i can’t help myself

[sid riff @sidriff]

@TC_Poole as a designer i’ve noticed this. i’ve seen about 200 posts this week describing similar processes for turning 2d pixel characters into 3d characters.

absolutely zip on game design, user experience, storytelling, world building, etc.

[Three.js @threejs]

@SeloSlav People can now focus on gameplay design without having to worrying about runtime fees.

[sid riff @sidriff]

@SeloSlav i have over 5000 prompts in my current codebase, just because some things are easy doesn’t mean building great games isn’t still hard.

[sid riff @sidriff]

@Ahwhwh2740394 i’m having a great time

[sid riff @sidriff]

If you see this, post a container ship.

[Alpyro @Alpyro_art]

If you see this, post a container ship.

I though I have more. But mostly military ships it seems. haha

[sid riff @sidriff]

@BeanJuiceStudio anything with highly detailed or realistic humans. it simply raises the bar for everything else.

i’d rather make an MMO out of stick mans than a single player out of metahumans

[sid riff @sidriff]

@alightinastorm i’m dying

[sid riff @sidriff]

@BecomingCaptain this is the kind of dev culture I can get behind

[sid riff @sidriff]

@alightinastorm the scale is inspiring. you’re going to need gas stations!

[sid riff @sidriff]

@frogpitgaming the live service boom/bust cycle was more leading indicator on the larger issue: runaway costs due to competition

sure you can 1-up the other guys doubling your dev budget. but you can’t double your price. so what do you do? build your game as a re-investable platform.

[sid riff @sidriff]

that these are still going kind of proves his point. the top 10 live games are dominated by stuff from previous generations. how many more forever games does the market need?

this issue compounds when your costs are out of control and it takes an army of devs to add new content. wow and runescape are pipeline success stories as much as anything else

[sid riff @sidriff]

@maheshnani122 except you missed the part where the house on the right has a structural flaw and a hidden termite problem, but also cost 300x in time labor and maintenance.

trade offs..

[sid riff @sidriff]

@0x45o maybe not properly but i’m using it

[sid riff @sidriff]

@BeanJuiceStudio

[sid riff @sidriff]

so far the models have really good at merging code. sometimes I'll just spin something up here to save an idea, get a basic implementation, and i won't even review it until much later.

[sid riff @sidriff]

i'm afraid i've been worktree-pilled. the 'claude agents' beta really got me over the hump

at first i was frustrated with my dev stack workflow, but then i remembered i could just have the agent write a little interface for it...

[sid riff @sidriff]

that's correct, I automated that. from a fresh install I have dev script that installs everything and runs the stack with a single command.

by default claude agents starts everything in a worktree, so while it was possible to run, it was taking precious iteration time to tediously manage ports and processes.

this tool simply runs the script when I hit start, giving me handy links to client, tools, etc. the really nice part is I can play two version of the game side by side.