Bread Boys and Dumb Bastards

Oh, have I got a book recommendation for you!

Hello! Happy Tuesday! Five! Five in a row we’ve managed to do this. I like that I write “we” as if I’m a team of people working behind the scenes and not one man who contains two voices: One that says, “You should make things” and another voice that says: “You’ve failed at everything you’ve ever tried, let down everyone you’ve ever loved, and your continued existence is a net negative to mankind.” So you can see how I’m just happy I’m getting this far.

I’m going to be really honest, while writing this Substack, I’ve opened at least three emails and started to type something before I realized my brain had briefly blacked out and pushed me into another, less useful task. Showbiz advice: It is a whole lot easier to email your agent, “Do you think we could send this script to another person?” than it is to type a new script. I’m gonna learn that lesson someday, I betcha! I betcha something good!

Oh my God, I just did the email thing. Not a bit. Totally blanked and switched tasks. AI may always be wrong, but it will never have my brain’s ability to completely avoid doing the things that would provide the life satisfaction I’ve craved since I was four.

Watch Me On Seth Meyers and Get My Book As a Prime Day Sale

Yeah, I’m going to lead with the selfish stuff up top.

If you haven’t yet, I suggest you watch my appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers last Thursday. It made me feel fancy and maybe it’ll make you feel fancy by sheer proximity. It was also really fun seeing a bunch of friends I hadn’t talked to in a little while and I got to make a live studio audience laugh, which is always one of my favorite things on Earth.

Also, if you haven’t gotten my book Good Game, No Rematch yet, it’s going to be half-off as part of Amazon’s 2025 New Releases sale. Look for that as sales go up July 8th. It might actually go on sale a bit earlier, but it’ll definitely be half off July 8th. In fact, I should probably have saved this for one week from now… Which is July 8th.

Unrelated, but fun, I also got the phone number of one of my childhood heroes and we are now somewhat acquainted! I got hired to write something fun about them, so hopefully in a few months I can talk about that if we’re all still here.

Dumb Bastards Run The Numbers

I’m never quite sure where we stand on the “Big Beautiful Bill” because no matter what news story I read, it either sounds like it passed a week ago, it will never pass, or it’s passing as we speak. Regardless, the news always makes it sound like a giant lump of shit that the government is pushing through its bowels, which I guess is mostly true. It seems like literally everyone hates the bill, including Republican voters. Probably because it’s going to strip a lot of healthcare from a lot of people and it turns out, even if you’re racist or afraid of big cities, eventually you will become sick and you will die and that process could either be a gentle slide into the great goodnight or complete horror right up until the end. Right now it’s looking like “complete horror” will be the option we’re given if we’re not billionaires.

Although it is kind of ironic that Elon Musk is so against this bill that Trump is now threatening him and his companies. Elon is threatening to primary anyone who votes for the bill, which would likely be more of a threat if his last attempt at swaying an election pretty much turned it into a landslide for the other side. I’m saying that everyone fucking hates him because he’s an evil, dumb bastard whose gleeful government cuts will cause millions of deaths. This is a situation in which no matter who wins, we lose, but at least we can enjoy seeing two big old idiots hate the shit out of each other. Anyway, can you imagine spending $250 million only to have your entire life in America threatened less than a year later? Masterful gambit, sir.

Is Zohran Mamdani An Existential Threat To New York City?

No, shut the fuck up. Just shut up already. Democrats need to focus on that stupid ass bill and the fact that the government is building alligator-themed concentration camps in Florida. Stop pretending that a baby Millennial nerd who likes rap music and SimCity 3000 is trying to enslave the city in a theocratic form of communism. Stop it. Nobody actually believes you except for weirdos who already believe literally anything negative a government official says about a brown person. Seriously, they know they’re being recorded when they talk into a camera, right? Like, people will be able to look back at those interviews and see who was normal and who was racist? Who knows. I’m dumb. I’m so dumb.

AI Slop Slipping Into Games

I’ll keep this short since I never know who’s into games and who’s rushing to click the “unsubscribe” button whenever I mention this weirdo industry.

Here’s what you need to know: There is a popular new game called The Alters in which you play a guy who can clone himself to run a sci-fi base. By all accounts, it’s a really good game that people have been enjoying. However, recently fans have discovered that there is AI-generated text in the background of certain areas and that AI language translation was used for some of the materials in the game. The company behind the issue, 11 Bit Studios, has since released a statement that both the text and the translations were meant to be placeholders that were meant to, well, be replaced.

Half of the reaction has been, “who gives a shit, it’s only a tiny part of the game,” while the other half has been, “there are better ways to create placeholders and maybe don’t leave those things in the actual release.” And, look, I get it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had a similar issue at launch with a minor AI-generated texture that was later replaced. This is going to keep happening, even in the best of good faith scenarios. And some people are not going to care and some people are going to make entire buying decisions based on that. I dunno. Maybe I’m an idiot, but if I was a developer, I might spend a little extra time to make sure that no one on my team put something in there that’s going to add a new section to our game’s Wikipedia page.

While it’s definitely not true that “everyone is doing it,” it’s true that this crap is going to be more and more of a thing as developers are pressured to cut corners and rush out games under budget. If your game is a failure, who cares if there’s AI? If it’s a success, you can always apologize for getting caught and fix it later. Sometimes it’ll be an honest mistake but, again, there are more honest ways to make that sort of honest mistake.

It’s just a bummer to find AI art in something you like. No, it doesn’t prove people wrong that it’s bad. It’s more like seeing a good movie and finding out that the director was incredibly shitty to the crew. Maybe it doesn’t change the quality of the product itself, but knowing it was made in a bad way definitely infects how I feel about it. Just like a game stealing art assists from human artists - which has happened lately - infects how I feel about a game.

Recommendations

How To Bake A Breadling by Brad Hock

God this book is weird and wonderful. I love, love, love Hollow Press. They make such good books, as I wrote about here. Their works feel like guides and pamphlets that fell out of another, even darker dimension. How To Bake A Breadling is just full of tiny creepiness and horror. It’s almost hard to describe without ruining it. It’s a cursed art book. It’s the type of book that, if I stumbled across this as a child, I would have 100% believed it was real.

Old Skies

Wadjet Eye Games is an amazing small developer who’s been churning out bangers for years. Old Skies might be one of their best. Without spoiling too much, you play a woman who takes a wealthy man on a time travel tourism trip. As you might expect, “don’t change anything” turns into “stop that guy from changing everything.” However, so far it’s a lot more touching and personally affecting than most time travel stories I’ve seen. Definitely worth it. Also, it’s the type of game you can easily play even if you’re “bad at games.”

Naturally by Brad Sucks

I’ve loved Brad Sucks since college. It’s the exact type of semi-upbeat, semi-depressing music specifically made for me. His new album, Naturally, is no different. Songs about loneliness, depression, and struggling to connect. Most of which are danceable!

Your Recommendations?

That’s it for me!

Have you got anything you’re reading or watching or playing? I’ll also take a “listening to” as an option if you’ve got that as well!