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TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.

Theme

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.

Tom’s Timer 5

The Bone Queen And The Frost Bishop: Playtesting Scavenger Chess In Plasticine

Gridcannon: A Single Player Game With Regular Playing Cards

Dad And The Egg Controller

A Leftfield Solution To An XCOM Disaster

Rewarding Creative Play Styles In Hitman

Postcards From Far Cry Primal

Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem

Kill Zone And Bladestorm

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

What Works And Why: Multiple Routes In Deus Ex

Naming Drugs Honestly In Big Pharma

Writing vs Programming

Let Me Show You How To Make A Game

What Works And Why: Nonlinear Storytelling In Her Story

What Works And Why: Invisible Inc

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

What I’m Working On And What I’ve Done

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

Improving Heat Signature’s Randomly Generated Ships, Inside And Out

Raising An Army Of Flying Dogs In The Magic Circle

Floating Point Is Out! And Free! On Steam! Watch A Trailer!

Drawing With Gravity In Floating Point

What’s Your Fault?

The Randomised Tactical Elegance Of Hoplite

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

One Desperate Battle In FTL

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

My Short Story For The Second Machine Of Death Collection

Not Being An Asshole In An Argument

Playing Skyrim With Nothing But Illusion

How Mainstream Games Butchered Themselves, And Why It’s My Fault

A Short Script For An Animated 60s Heist Movie

Arguing On The Internet

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

Why Are Stealth Games Cool?

The Suspicious Developments manifesto

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

Understanding Your Brain

What Makes Games Good

A Story Of Plane Seats And Class

Deckard: Blade Runner, Moron

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

An Idea For A Better Open World Game

A Different Way To Level Up

A Different Idea For Ending BioShock

My Script For A Team Fortress 2 Short About The Spy

Team Fortress 2 Unlockable Weapon Ideas

Don’t Make Me Play Football Manager

EVE’s Assassins And The Kill That Shocked A Galaxy

My Galactic Civilizations 2 War Diary

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome

My Short Story For The Machine Of Death Collection

Blood Money And Sex

A Woman’s Life In Search Queries

First Night, Second Life

SWAT 4: The Movie Script

What A Shame

People being a chaotic, belligerent, vicious lot, it’s rare for anything publicly defacable to remain pure. But the comments section for this video is just such an oasis of uniform brilliance, some 238 random people all being genuinely funny rather than trying to stand out or one-up each other. What little rebellion there is among the commenters – the few that add smileys or add incorrect punctuation – is quickly Thumbs-Downed by dilligent voters, and will soon fall below the default viewing threshold.

If you’re signed in to your YouTube account when you click this, by the way, I’d love it if you could help preserve this rare and beautiful social event by contributing, or showing the Smiley Rebels the business end of your virtual thumb. They are a dangerous and subversive splinter faction that must be stopped.

Update: God damn it! I hope the dribbling hicks who just broke this didn’t come from here. Jesus, has that meme ever been funny? Since, like, the nineties? What a shame. We need two more people to thumb the dunces down and they’ll disappear from public view. Can you help?

I just discovered today that the User Reviews for a gallon of Tuscan milk sold by Amazon.com is a similarly superb collaborative work of a straight-faced communal sense of humour. I hope there are loads of these Everyone’s In On It havens dotted around the net. And I hope that some day Andy Baio bags and tags the phenomenon like the Attenboroughesque social-tech naturalist he has become. I leave you a milk review by Buster Foyt:

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“This milk worked well when I first got it, but within a few days it wouldn’t hold a charge. I called their customer service department and, I don’t know if it’s in Bangalor or Ireland, but I couldn’t understand a word that they said and they began to scream at me.

“Finally, though, they sent me another one – but that wouldn’t hold a charge, either. I’m beginning to wonder if this is truly meant to be a portable product. I still haven’t been able to retreive my email and the video is murky.

“It’s a bit heavy, too, to wear on your belt. The good news is that it keeps your hip cool during this sultry summer weather – for a while.”