{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "content": {
    "$type": "actor.rpg.news#markdown",
    "value": "Over the past week we had the good fortune to visit a private gathering with some of our favourite world-class indie game developers and (amid much revelry) chat a bit about **rpg.actor** and **The Atmosphere** more broadly. Having been so focused on this space for the better part of our last year, it was a good opportunity to catch a vibe check with some prominent game developers working beyond our little **AT-bubble**.\n\n<u>The whiplash was sharp.</u> While we expected some need for returning to simpler explanations, we were unprepared for just how surface-level the broader understanding of this technology was. Trying to convey its value to successful game publishers (who have no need to change) was an invaluable, but eye-opening and humbling experience that has given us better understanding of where this ecosystem sits in the broader game-o-sphere and how to engage with its industry better.\n\n## It's Still Bluesky\n\nFor all our community's trumpets sounding for **Atmosphere Accounts** and the infrastructural distance we've developed, it was impossible to even start these conversations without reverting to the familiar, <mark>\"So your Bluesky account is actually...\"</mark> talking points that we've all felt so proud for growing beyond. It's unshakable still, but not wholly negative — a truly blursed motif.\n\n<u>Reality has a long way to go before the conversation decouples from that centralism.</u>\n\nAs hard as we twisted inside, wanting to extol the details and nuances of our genuine freedom, that connection remains the easiest method of building understanding among those with no awareness of the protocol. We simply cannot escape its port of explanation, or the shield its scale provides against our irrelevance and obscurity. By far, the most bitter humble pie.\n\nWorse though, when time came to engage and showcase some experiences, many of them had to look up their handles, struggle passwords from dusty memory, and generally fumble through recall of an account they've never kept up with. For all the leverage in familiarity that we gained from the butterfly's touchstone, practical leverage was as fundamentally challenging as if we'd asked them to sign-up to an entirely new service. **We might as well have.**\n\nThere was enough interest in data ownership, our cross-game interoperability, and the novelties we presented to mount the hurdle, but where we expected great ease to come from the preexistence of their universal login, we found a new stumbling block in its underuse. Despite their already having a functional account via Bluesky, we cannot presume it has any value to them. Incitement must vary based on the individual user's path of least resistance.\n\nGoing forward we will be reviewing for means to make a one-touch registration easier through tweaks to our existing [Creator Account](https://rpg.actor/creator) hand-off systems, then some opportunity for ingesting the quickly made characters through a later account merge. \n\n## Trust In Games\n\nOnce the handles were remembered, passwords reset, and the uncomfortable logins were through, things got much, much better. There was an almost immediate transition from the mild discomfort of a OAuth approval screen to the simple delight of their [character generation](https://rpg.actor/generator), and the utter joy of seeing it [launched from a cannon](https://rpg.actor/cannon). While soft jokes about elaborate hacker schemes helped overcome the foreignness of genuine security, getting to actually play threw down all the guards.\n\n*Go figure... people like games!* More importantly, there is also **trust** in them.\n\nPerhaps more within our crowd of game developers than among others, there's an understanding of the effort required to produce a playable experience. Making *good* games is incredibly difficult, and has its own methods of reward. Scams by nature are lazy. It's much easier to phish via email than a game engine, and so there's an almost direct correlation between the quality of experiences offered and our trust in those providing it. **This was unexpected, but now obvious in hindsight.**\n\nWhile the games we've made for **rpg.actor** are at-best described as novelties, they do convey a small level of competence that sets the discerning eye at ease. Aware of this now, it encourages us to keep our standard of quality high, and to profess our technical competence more exactly. Big ups to our [Beta Testers](https://bsky.app/chat/oGCArMd) for all your past and future help in this matter.\n\n## It Came From \"The Atmosphere\"\n\nAdditionally, this *trust in competency* reflects in what we showcase. While we cannot (and don't want to) dictate quality, or control the open ecosystem of games developed using **rpg.actor**, we were made very aware of how the presence of our sprites and records within others' games shapes how we ourselves are perceived. While our own little amusements are strong ambassadors, our future is inescapably tied to whatever games rise from **The Atmosphere** and how [these lexicons](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#atproto-overview) are adopted. This will factor heavily into the next evolution of our [Experiences Portal](https://rpg.actor/experiences).\n\n<u>There is an effort-risk for developers adopting this protocol</u>, and if we want them to take it seriously, then those of us deep within the space must take it as seriously. This does not mean some grim march toward respectability, or a rejection of the playful weirdness that got us this far. We adore our novelties, silly joyrides, and quickly built goofs. However, for developers to feel comfortable risking their years of work in association with the protocol, we need to begin the process of producing, and cooperating with \"real\" games.\n\nThat status is a bit triggering to all of us with imposter syndrome, but our meaning is games crafted with deep design intention, higher production values, and the kind of sustained efforts that earn genuine cultural respect within the indie space. Fast-following a sloppy *Candy Crush* clone with an **Atmosphere** login, and touting it as revolutionary won't earn any respect from the broader (and less AT-pilled) gamedev community who are prone to stigmatize anything overstating its importance. The pretense that everything should become lexicons and personal data servers is a fast-track to the same <u>peripheral dustbin</u> that the Kinect and Power Glove currently occupy. Nothing is the FUTURE of gaming.\n\n<mark>AT Protocol is valuable for its interoperability and data ownership, but <u>it is not magical</u>.</mark>\n\n##  A Black Hole Called Algo\n\nOne sobering reality from our conversations was realizing how little talented game developers *need* any of this. Building a successful indie game today requires more than \"just\" making a great experience, and now extends into the dark art of surviving the opaque social and storefront algorithms to court wishlists. Every thriving game developer has carved their own niche within the existing algos, or outsources it to a publisher. <u>There is no escaping it, and it is their livelihood.</u>\n\nWhen discussing the risk of adopting an unproven protocol — a genuine threat to those algorithms — none of the developers *wanted* things to change. The work they've put in to find some foothold and the fight to keep it has been as difficult as learning to create games in the first place. Those with success are entrenched in these machines and see no benefit for pivoting... so long as it continues working in their favor. Asking them to do more than sideline service is requesting they abandon the very mechanics of their survival.\n\nInterestingly, this is where the publishers got most interested. By their own accounts, their new talents are having a harder and harder time getting that same foothold in the old platforms. Revenues are increasingly coming from back catalogue rather than forward investments, and it's driving an expiry in their value as a pathway for fresh developers to find success. The latest crop of indies are increasingly wary of full-service publishers who dominated the [seventh and eigth console generations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles) and are now preferring lower-rate and lower-recoup investments from funding-only providers, since there's no guarantee the lifts from full-service marketing can get them any traction the way they once did back in the day when conventions, press articles, and ad buys were still relevant.\n\nClever publishers realize this problem, and want to get ahead of it. We were stunned by the foresight of their questions, and their comprehension of the future **AT Protocol** presents. They want to figure out how developers can be willfully chosen for inclusion, in a world where everyone builds their own custom algorithm. The best answers our talks came to rested on the same tropes of personability, auteurship, and genuine connection that currently earn follows, but agreed that the mechanics of output and delivery may change dramatically if the freedoms of **The Atmosphere** become dominant with the publisher's role shifting away from megaphone and toward directory.\n\n*Disappointingly, none of this felt like less work for the game developer.*\n\n##  Our Community Obligation\n\nThis begs the question: what *is* the actual value **AT Protocol** is offering games? Blunt truth says that a any lexiconal game data is just a .json which can already be *owned* via local save or cloud backup; no protocol required. Any developer worth their salt can already permiss data control, or leverage the interoperability promises we love touting. There's no escaping the necessity for co-operation, even in permissionless spaces. However, the true leverage of **The Atmosphere** lies entirely in transforming this co-operative interoperability into a known standard.\n\nAdopting these shared identities and opening their worlds to the wider community, developers are surrendering the tightly controlled (and very comfortable) silos of their creations. It is a sacrifice of constraint to the unknown, and invites an entire ecosystem to elevate, alter, or destroy the vision within their executable. \n\n**NOT EVERY GAME IS SUITED FOR THIS.**\n\nThere is a reason that modding is a contentious topic among devs, and those who wish to protect the purity of their experiences don't do the legwork to support it. There's a world of QA headaches, tarnished artistry, and general ghastliness that openness... opens. This is a surrender to unknowns that most game devs who pour years into their work are simply (rightfully) unwilling to take. We cannot applaud the *theory* of open games without acknowledging the incredible risk that its adoption represents.\n\n<mark>*If* (not when) a \"real\" indie developer takes this heavy step, we must recognize what they have given up to support this ecosystem, and this community must be their cheerleading safety net for the risk to be seen as worthwhile to others.</mark>\n\nThat means a real understanding of high vs low efforts, an appreciation for the nuances of this craft, and support within our feeds, networks, and social reach to offset the cost of their risk. These days, quantity is assured. What we need is an eye for quality, and then actually show up, play their games, and talk about them. More than that, we need to recognize the difference between novelty that flatters our ideals and serious work that leverages them.\n\nWhen (not if) we can manage that, we will see a modest success story emerge. There's no industry dominance awaiting **The Atmosphere** yet, but with strong social support we could see an integrated title holding an audience on Steam within a year, and its open data becoming the seed for a handful of connected web experiences alike those we're already enjoying. It will take a brave developer to make the jump, and we all need to be there keeping the social net ready to catch them.\n\n## Jamming Forward\n\nTremendous progress is being made. For all our hitches said in this *blog post* let's not lose sight of how well games in **The Atmosphere** are growing, compared to where we were last year. Our own project has only been around for <u>3 months</u> now, and there are already over a dozen games / experiences to enjoy with your **rpg.actor** sprite. Over 800 characters now live in the [Compendium](https://rpg.actor/compendium), as more developers are joining our [Game Jams](https://rpg.actor/jamming), expanding the lexicons, API, and infrastructure based on genuine utility requests. <u>We're still in early stages, but footholds have been found! </u>\n\nOur task right now is not scaling... it's planting seeds. *It's invitation.*\n\nIf you're a developer (or play one on TV) feeling curious about what lightweight integration might look like, or if you know of a project that could benefit from a collaborative home away from the crushing gravity of the old algorithms we invite you to [**reach out**](https://bsky.app/profile/rpg.actor). We are just one part of this expansive community, but we recognize our place as experienced fascilitators and we want to help make that first plunge as easy as possible for anyone brave enough to take the leap of faith these changes demand.\n\nWe are here for the long haul, ready to build strange little bridges to a new world we haven't fully seen. **Let's make sure it's a fun one!**"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreibcce4ls52cm3wye2lkkjfjcpo52rkun4wlj4ljxmyl6gk6zf6r3m"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/png",
    "size": 91684
  },
  "description": "What Do \"Real\" Devs Think? — We left our bubble to chat with some world-class indie developers and experienced a sharp whiplash from The Atmosphere back to terra firma and developed a better understanding of the future both near and far in terms of game development on the AT Protocol.",
  "language": "en",
  "path": "/vibe-check-effort-risk-and-games-in-the-atmosphere",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-24T22:21:00.840Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:kwgllf365cwmxbnxitx4pjdj/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "industry",
    "creators",
    "developers",
    "publishers",
    "atmosphere",
    "protocol"
  ],
  "textContent": "Over the past week we had the good fortune to visit a private gathering with some of our favourite world-class indie game developers and (amid much revelry) chat a bit about rpg.actor and The Atmosphere more broadly. Having been so focused on this space for the better part of our last year, it was a good opportunity to catch a vibe check with some prominent game developers working beyond our little AT-bubble.\n\n<u>The whiplash was sharp.</u> While we expected some need for returning to simpler explanations, we were unprepared for just how surface-level the broader understanding of this technology was. Trying to convey its value to successful game publishers (who have no need to change) was an invaluable, but eye-opening and humbling experience that has given us better understanding of where this ecosystem sits in the broader game-o-sphere and how to engage with its industry better.\n\nIt's Still Bluesky\n\nFor all our community's trumpets sounding for Atmosphere Accounts and the infrastructural distance we've developed, it was impossible to even start these conversations without reverting to the familiar, <mark>\"So your Bluesky account is actually...\"</mark> talking points that we've all felt so proud for growing beyond. It's unshakable still, but not wholly negative — a truly blursed motif.\n\n<u>Reality has a long way to go before the conversation decouples from that centralism.</u>\n\nAs hard as we twisted inside, wanting to extol the details and nuances of our genuine freedom, that connection remains the easiest method of building understanding among those with no awareness of the protocol. We simply cannot escape its port of explanation, or the shield its scale provides against our irrelevance and obscurity. By far, the most bitter humble pie.\n\nWorse though, when time came to engage and showcase some experiences, many of them had to look up their handles, struggle passwords from dusty memory, and generally fumble through recall of an account they've never kept up with. For all the leverage in familiarity that we gained from the butterfly's touchstone, practical leverage was as fundamentally challenging as if we'd asked them to sign-up to an entirely new service. We might as well have.\n\nThere was enough interest in data ownership, our cross-game interoperability, and the novelties we presented to mount the hurdle, but where we expected great ease to come from the preexistence of their universal login, we found a new stumbling block in its underuse. Despite their already having a functional account via Bluesky, we cannot presume it has any value to them. Incitement must vary based on the individual user's path of least resistance.\n\nGoing forward we will be reviewing for means to make a one-touch registration easier through tweaks to our existing Creator Account hand-off systems, then some opportunity for ingesting the quickly made characters through a later account merge. \n\nTrust In Games\n\nOnce the handles were remembered, passwords reset, and the uncomfortable logins were through, things got much, much better. There was an almost immediate transition from the mild discomfort of a OAuth approval screen to the simple delight of their character generation, and the utter joy of seeing it launched from a cannon. While soft jokes about elaborate hacker schemes helped overcome the foreignness of genuine security, getting to actually play threw down all the guards.\n\nGo figure... people like games! More importantly, there is also trust in them.\n\nPerhaps more within our crowd of game developers than among others, there's an understanding of the effort required to produce a playable experience. Making good games is incredibly difficult, and has its own methods of reward. Scams by nature are lazy. It's much easier to phish via email than a game engine, and so there's an almost direct correlation between the quality of experiences offered and our trust in those providing it. This was unexpected, but now obvious in hindsight.\n\nWhile the games we've made for rpg.actor are at-best described as novelties, they do convey a small level of competence that sets the discerning eye at ease. Aware of this now, it encourages us to keep our standard of quality high, and to profess our technical competence more exactly. Big ups to our Beta Testers for all your past and future help in this matter.\n\nIt Came From \"The Atmosphere\"\n\nAdditionally, this trust in competency reflects in what we showcase. While we cannot (and don't want to) dictate quality, or control the open ecosystem of games developed using rpg.actor, we were made very aware of how the presence of our sprites and records within others' games shapes how we ourselves are perceived. While our own little amusements are strong ambassadors, our future is inescapably tied to whatever games rise from The Atmosphere and how these lexicons are adopted. This will factor heavily into the next evolution of our Experiences Portal.\n\n<u>There is an effort-risk for developers adopting this protocol</u>, and if we want them to take it seriously, then those of us deep within the space must take it as seriously. This does not mean some grim march toward respectability, or a rejection of the playful weirdness that got us this far. We adore our novelties, silly joyrides, and quickly built goofs. However, for developers to feel comfortable risking their years of work in association with the protocol, we need to begin the process of producing, and cooperating with \"real\" games.\n\nThat status is a bit triggering to all of us with imposter syndrome, but our meaning is games crafted with deep design intention, higher production values, and the kind of sustained efforts that earn genuine cultural respect within the indie space. Fast-following a sloppy Candy Crush clone with an Atmosphere login, and touting it as revolutionary won't earn any respect from the broader (and less AT-pilled) gamedev community who are prone to stigmatize anything overstating its importance. The pretense that everything should become lexicons and personal data servers is a fast-track to the same <u>peripheral dustbin</u> that the Kinect and Power Glove currently occupy. Nothing is the FUTURE of gaming.\n\n<mark>AT Protocol is valuable for its interoperability and data ownership, but <u>it is not magical</u>.</mark>\n\nA Black Hole Called Algo\n\nOne sobering reality from our conversations was realizing how little talented game developers need any of this. Building a successful indie game today requires more than \"just\" making a great experience, and now extends into the dark art of surviving the opaque social and storefront algorithms to court wishlists. Every thriving game developer has carved their own niche within the existing algos, or outsources it to a publisher. <u>There is no escaping it, and it is their livelihood.</u>\n\nWhen discussing the risk of adopting an unproven protocol — a genuine threat to those algorithms — none of the developers wanted things to change. The work they've put in to find some foothold and the fight to keep it has been as difficult as learning to create games in the first place. Those with success are entrenched in these machines and see no benefit for pivoting... so long as it continues working in their favor. Asking them to do more than sideline service is requesting they abandon the very mechanics of their survival.\n\nInterestingly, this is where the publishers got most interested. By their own accounts, their new talents are having a harder and harder time getting that same foothold in the old platforms. Revenues are increasingly coming from back catalogue rather than forward investments, and it's driving an expiry in their value as a pathway for fresh developers to find success. The latest crop of indies are increasingly wary of full-service publishers who dominated the seventh and eigth console generations and are now preferring lower-rate and lower-recoup investments from funding-only providers, since there's no guarantee the lifts from full-service marketing can get them any traction the way they once did back in the day when conventions, press articles, and ad buys were still relevant.\n\nClever publishers realize this problem, and want to get ahead of it. We were stunned by the foresight of their questions, and their comprehension of the future AT Protocol presents. They want to figure out how developers can be willfully chosen for inclusion, in a world where everyone builds their own custom algorithm. The best answers our talks came to rested on the same tropes of personability, auteurship, and genuine connection that currently earn follows, but agreed that the mechanics of output and delivery may change dramatically if the freedoms of The Atmosphere become dominant with the publisher's role shifting away from megaphone and toward directory.\n\nDisappointingly, none of this felt like less work for the game developer.\n\nOur Community Obligation\n\nThis begs the question: what is the actual value AT Protocol is offering games? Blunt truth says that a any lexiconal game data is just a .json which can already be owned via local save or cloud backup; no protocol required. Any developer worth their salt can already permiss data control, or leverage the interoperability promises we love touting. There's no escaping the necessity for co-operation, even in permissionless spaces. However, the true leverage of The Atmosphere lies entirely in transforming this co-operative interoperability into a known standard.\n\nAdopting these shared identities and opening their worlds to the wider community, developers are surrendering the tightly controlled (and very comfortable) silos of their creations. It is a sacrifice of constraint to the unknown, and invites an entire ecosystem to elevate, alter, or destroy the vision within their executable. \n\nNOT EVERY GAME IS SUITED FOR THIS.\n\nThere is a reason that modding is a contentious topic among devs, and those who wish to protect the purity of their experiences don't do the legwork to support it. There's a world of QA headaches, tarnished artistry, and general ghastliness that openness... opens. This is a surrender to unknowns that most game devs who pour years into their work are simply (rightfully) unwilling to take. We cannot applaud the theory of open games without acknowledging the incredible risk that its adoption represents.\n\n<mark>If (not when) a \"real\" indie developer takes this heavy step, we must recognize what they have given up to support this ecosystem, and this community must be their cheerleading safety net for the risk to be seen as worthwhile to others.</mark>\n\nThat means a real understanding of high vs low efforts, an appreciation for the nuances of this craft, and support within our feeds, networks, and social reach to offset the cost of their risk. These days, quantity is assured. What we need is an eye for quality, and then actually show up, play their games, and talk about them. More than that, we need to recognize the difference between novelty that flatters our ideals and serious work that leverages them.\n\nWhen (not if) we can manage that, we will see a modest success story emerge. There's no industry dominance awaiting The Atmosphere yet, but with strong social support we could see an integrated title holding an audience on Steam within a year, and its open data becoming the seed for a handful of connected web experiences alike those we're already enjoying. It will take a brave developer to make the jump, and we all need to be there keeping the social net ready to catch them.\n\nJamming Forward\n\nTremendous progress is being made. For all our hitches said in this blog post let's not lose sight of how well games in The Atmosphere are growing, compared to where we were last year. Our own project has only been around for <u>3 months</u> now, and there are already over a dozen games / experiences to enjoy with your rpg.actor sprite. Over 800 characters now live in the Compendium, as more developers are joining our Game Jams, expanding the lexicons, API, and infrastructure based on genuine utility requests. <u>We're still in early stages, but footholds have been found! </u>\n\nOur task right now is not scaling... it's planting seeds. It's invitation.\n\nIf you're a developer (or play one on TV) feeling curious about what lightweight integration might look like, or if you know of a project that could benefit from a collaborative home away from the crushing gravity of the old algorithms we invite you to reach out. We are just one part of this expansive community, but we recognize our place as experienced fascilitators and we want to help make that first plunge as easy as possible for anyone brave enough to take the leap of faith these changes demand.\n\nWe are here for the long haul, ready to build strange little bridges to a new world we haven't fully seen. Let's make sure it's a fun one!",
  "title": "Vibe Check: Effort, Risk, and Games in The Atmosphere",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-28T15:50:08.663Z"
}