The first half of our Anthology is dedicated to engaging with the zeitgeist of the current video game development landscape. From the politics of labour organizing to the economics of recovering from mass layoffs, between the creative crisis of AI and the funding crisis for indie developers, we wanted to find experts who could tell us something about these difficult topics and hopefully teach us valuable knowledge from their extensive experience.

How do I start a co-op? How do I unionize my studio? What should I know if I want to start an independent game company? How do I keep AI from aggressively redefining my labour rights and my creative humanity? How do I build my dreams against production realities? And how do we challenge the digital fiefdoms in our industry? These questions, and more, are what we wanted to answer in the first half of our book. We felt these insights would help not only the reader, be they a developer or a player, but also ourselves, as we embarked on this perilous journey of building a brand new game development co-operative.

For the past five months, we've been doing the legwork of cold outreach to a number of our personal heroes, game developers who defined our lives and thinkers who shaped our worldviews and the boundaries of our imagination. We called in on old connections. We enlisted the help of a friend, a professional headhunter. We cashed in on some serendipitous meetings. We spent hours writing questions, and recorded hours upon hours of interviews.

Today, we're incredibly proud to announce we'll be bringing you conversations with spectacular guests, including:

YANIS VAROUFAKIS, world-renowned economist, politician, author, academic; former Finance Minister of Greece; former Valve economist-in-residence

TED CHIANG, visionary science fiction writer, multiple Hugo, Nebula and Locus award winner, Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inductee

RICHARD WOLFF, America's most prominent Marxian economist; advocate for worker cooperatives; Harvard, Stanford and Yale-educated Professor of Economics Emeritus

DAVID GAIDER, legendary narrative designer and writer since 1999; writer on Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, lead writer and setting creator on Dragon Age: Origins, II, Inquisition; founder of Summerfall Studios

MARK DARRAH, Bioware veteran game developer from 1997 to 2021, lead programmer on Baldur's Gate I and II, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire; executive producer on Dragon Age: Origins, II, Inquisition; industry mentor and educator

We'll also bring you interviews with:

UVW-CWA, representing the perspective of videogame worker unions

Aftermath, worker-owned games journalism news site

Peregrine Coast Press, small independent TTRPG maker.

You will also be able to read an organisational recap of our first year as a studio, including a walkthrough of the lessons learned during the founding and establishment of our ambitious multi-cooperative structure.

For this special project of documenting and presenting the fever dream that is Summer Eternal, we have commissioned an accompanying infographic from the inimitable Lur Noise. We can't resist but give you an exclusive preview of the two-page spread right here:

(It's always good to throw in something for the process perverts.)

With all of these contributions, the first half of the book is almost entirely content complete and will proceed to layout and design early next year.

  

In parallel, covert work is underway on Project Red Rooster. On this, we are sworn to secrecy, at least until the Anthology release date in Summer 2026.

We can say, however, that our concept artists are moving full steam ahead and the first drafts have got us feeling ecstatic. Our game designers are building the first playable prototype to validate some of our unusual gameplay innovations, while the musicians are refining their demo tracks. This kind of shared creative excitement is really what we work for, and we're beyond grateful to everyone who helped us keep the burning roof over our head to keep doing what we love just a little bit longer.

As a thank you for the holidays, we'll be giving away three free pre-orders of the Summer Eternal Anthology Deluxe Edition; one on our Twitter, one on Bluesky, and one on Instagram. Find us there for a chance to game the odds.

Yours in every season,