gameis 2026

 the gameis conference was nothing short of inspirational. up until a couple of weeks ago i was convinced that the israeli gaming industry was all about gambling; i arrived a little before the crowds, and i was really impressed by the local games set up to play; extremely high quality, both the studio and the indie games.

a guy i served with sat down next to me during the opening talks, and we were both - like most of the people in the room - made very uncomfortable by the fifteen minutes of "saying the quiet part out loud" explaining how to take advantage of "whales". judging by the audience reactions to that and the marketing talk that followed, and the antithesis in the more sentimental talks that poked fun at the first ones, we weren't alone. the only other uncomfortable talk was by a hardcore liberal american jew, whose thesis regarding making games meaningful was excellent, but who couldn't stop himself from putting his TDS and anti-musk sentiments on display.

lunch was surprisingly good, really decent vegan options.

the rest of the talks i sat in on were interesting, enlightening, and motivated me to want to Make Stuff. i've captured a whole bunch more game ideas, and as soon as i'm done with integrating my auto-doc into my client's systems i'm going to focus on some of them.

there were some awkward moments during the day, but i had an interesting phone call with sailor and a couple of positive interactions (one with an old university buddy who used to be a part of ze germans). in general, i feel much better about the lay of the land. and, considering my current situation - and my anxiety over tomorrow's attempt to renegotiate my salary possibly going awry - i'm wondering if i shouldn't try to move in that direction.

during the day i learned - fortunately from mr smear first - that mr smear and his "friend" had had an incident this morning. i told his friend's mother about the on/off bullying that mr smear's been experiencing the past couple of months, and i think as parents we're all aligned and hoping for the best... but either way he really doesn't want to go back, he's been really disappointed by the summer day camp in spite of a bunch of positive experiences.

i spoke to an organizer a bit earlier, and it looks like they'll refund us if he stops now (which is in spite of their terms and conditions), so we'll ask him in the morning and take it from there. it'll certainly put us under less financial pressure for this month, even if it doesn't really affect the next ones so much...

mr smear and i did a quick grocery shop and then sat down for dinner. gd made home-made hamburgers that were delicious, but none of us was hungry. i ate all my food anyway, because it was delicious and i felt uncomfortable leaving it on the plate, and i kind of regret doing that.

we finished watching chocolat, and we all loved it, which is awesome.

at mr smear's bedtime gd and i had a fight that was triggered by an argument over whether she could be a receptionist in tel aviv if her hebrew isn't great, and it took a lot to get to a point where we both heard each other...

now it's late, and i really don't have energy to work on the auto-doc, so i'm going to chill and go to bed soon and try to get as much done in the morning to be ready for the demonstration 🤞