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The games jobs board has a new home: The Games Jobs Index

It started as a page on my personal site to help people find work after the 2022 layoffs. It has grown a fair bit since then, so today it moved out and got its own site, with a proper redesign to go with it!

What it does, and what it deliberately does not do:

  • 14,300 live jobs from 600+ studios hiring right now, read every morning at 07:00 UK directly from each studio’s own hiring system.
  • Every listing links straight to the studio’s own application page. No accounts, no application forms, no CV collection, and I take no cut of anything. Free means free, forever!
  • If a studio takes a job down, it is gone from the board the next morning. No ghost jobs.
  • Filter by discipline, country, remote and entry level, with a page for every country and every discipline.
  • 1,767 studios listed in total, including the ones whose systems I cannot read, so you still get a direct link to their careers page.

What else is new?

  • New Country and studio pages: easier access to finding studios in your area and seeing what other jobs a particular studio offers
  • Improved accessibility: light theme and screenreader improvements
  • Share functionality has improved and now works seamlessly on iOS devices and Android

I have also published how the whole thing works: how the counts are made and checked, exactly what I read from a studio’s hiring system and how to opt out of it, and what you can and cannot reuse from the board. That felt like the least I could do for a site that lists other people’s jobs.

gamesjobsindex.com

Old links still work. alexanderrehm.com/gamejobs and everything under it now redirects, so any bookmark or post you have saved will land in the right place.

If you spot something broken, or a studio I am missing, please comment or message me.

More to come.

Fighting Deceptive Patterns

Deceptive patterns can be hard to spot, but they are all around us: Social media apps forcing us to connect our phone numbers, “free trials” that automatically turn into paid services without a reminder, or prompts where the “no” option is well-hidden. The list could go on. Luckily, there are some great initiatives out there that take a stand against Deceptive patterns.

One of them is the Dark Patterns Tip Line. To raise awareness of the harm that manipulative design can cause, it crowdsources stories of digital manipulation. The goal is to help policymakers and enforcers hold companies accountable for their practices. So whenever you come across a dark pattern, don’t hesitate to report it to the tip line.

The hall of shame by Deceptive Design also collects stories from users who had to deal with deceptive patterns. The same goes for the Dark Pattern Detection Project. Their goal is to develop an open-source, AI-based text analysis tool that detects deceptive patterns automatically and redesigns them in a personalized manner for the respective customers.

The Design Systems Guide

Getting a design system right is hard. There are so many different types of design systems and so many ways of setting up one and maintaining it over time. Fortunately, there is plenty of incredible resources all around design systems. But where do you even start? What would be a good process to use to make sure that your efforts don’t hit the wall of tough deadlines and final tweaks? The Design System Guide, kindly released by Romina Kavcic, has got your back. The guide is a very comprehensive interactive book on the foundations of design systems, design metrics, design tokens, checklists, and handy resources for managing design systems.

https://thedesignsystem.guide/

JavaScript frameworks security report 2019

The folks at Snyk published their state of JavaScript frameworks security report for 2019. It investigates the state of security for the Angular and React ecosystems as well as security practices for the popular JavaScript frameworks Vue.js, Bootstrap, and jQuery. Given the fact that Angular and React both have their proponents with ongoing discussions whether one or the other is a true framework, the report doesn’t intend to venture into rivalries but reviews each of them as viable front-end ecosystem alternatives, while focusing on security risks and best practices and the differences between them.

Read more: https://snyk.io/blog/javascript-frameworks-security-report-2019/

How to GraphQL

GraphQL enables a client to specify exactly what data it needs from an API, so instead of multiple endpoints that return fixed data structures, a GraphQL server exposes a single endpoint and responds with precisely the data a client asked for. If you want to wrap your head around GraphQL, here are two great resources to get you started. How to GraphQL is a free open-source tutorial to take your GraphQL skills from zero to production. Divided up into two parts, part one covers the core concepts of GraphQL while part two gives you a broader understanding of the GraphQL ecosystem.

Read more: https://www.howtographql.com/

Having fun in Infinitown

Do you enjoy WebGL tech demos? Imagine a little town with perfectly square city blocks, a park, a coffee shop, a factory, a gas station and cute little homes. Cars and trucks are driving through the streets, but as you navigate through the town, you realize that there’s a twist: no matter where you go, you’ll never reach the town limit.

Infinitown is a WebGL concept made by the team at Little Workshop. It’s an attempt to create a city that is alive and fun to watch.

How it was done: Little Workshop generated a finite grid of random city blocks, then the viewpoint wraps around this grid, and thus makes it seem infinite.

Check it out here: Infinitown

Tools used: Three.js, Blender, and Unity

 

The biggest checklist for of inclusive design…. ever!

…ever?? Yes!

A lot of aspects add up to an inclusive web experience. Considerations that might not come to one’s mind in the first place — like the use of inclusive language or providing alternatives or descriptions for complex visualizations.Or, accessible considerations such as providing transcripts for audio content.

To get your site on the best track of becoming truly inclusive, the magical Heydon Pickering has put together an Inclusive Design Checklist. The biggest and most comprehensive one available. It includes items for accessibility, performance, device support, interoperability, and language.

Do check it out!

 

The updated Transformers Universe website is now online

Great times! We launched the new version of the Transformers Universe website yesterday, and it is looking fantastic. From the splash page over to the new game info and downloads page – just have a look yourselves, I’m sure you’ll like it 🙂

Transformers Universe website screenshot

Click here to visit the Transformers Universe website

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