Opening the Magic Theatre: Why This Site Exists
Welcome to the Magic Theatre. Notes on indie games, AI in practice, postmortems, and thoughts that have nowhere else to go.
Welcome to the Magic Theatre.
The name is borrowed from Hesse’s Steppenwolf. In the novel, there is a poster that reads “For Madmen Only” — the Magic Theatre is precisely that kind of theatre: a place for those who refuse to pretend to be normal. It is also, more quietly, a ichigo ichie for kindred spirits.
Why this site exists
Three reasons.
- Indie games are a long run. Design, publishing, live operations — each step carries a heavy load of tacit knowledge. I want to write down the pits I have fallen into, both for my own retrospection and as a reference for others on the same road.
- AI is changing how things get done. For an independent maker, tools are capacity. I will record how I use AI to think, to code, to write — and where it gets in the way.
- Some thoughts want to be shared. Miscellany, reading notes, fragments — all of it lands here.
What you will find
- Indie games: design, development, publishing, scars.
- AI in practice: tools, methods, misgivings.
- Operations: growth, community, monetization postmortems.
- Miscellany: everything else.
A motto
Beneath the site name hangs a line of Latin:
Video Meliora, Deteriora Sequor. I see and approve the better, and I follow the worse.
It is Medea’s monologue from Ovid’s Metamorphoses — she knows perfectly well, in her reason, what is right, and is dragged away by passion nonetheless.
I take it as the theatre’s motto because it states the human condition with precision: reason is humanity’s highest light; sensibility is what makes us human. Gods do not fall; beasts do not perceive the good. Only we are caught between the two.
So — welcome in. I hope you leave with something worth carrying.