iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There's another episode of the Majuular Ultima retrospectives. Ultima is a key component of the evolution of Immersive Sims and JRPGs as well as CRPGs. It's impertitive to understand it's history to make games in these genres. www.youtube.com/watch?v=35SK...

youtube.com

Ultima Online Retrospective | The Last Hurrah

YouTube video by Majuular

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

latest @backpagepod.bsky.social mailbag episode is good, I liked the chat about word counts. Games press never talk about it and online writing is always too long. Most writing should be under 700 words imo

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My backlog has hit 4 rows 🫣

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Something that's obvious in hindsight but was unthinkable 10 years ago is that when our dark age approached I'd be sprinting towards it like an oasis in a desert.

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Samuel Roberts @samuelwroberts.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This, and big websites should stop writing for the people that *don't* read their sites and prioritise the people who do. They are the ones who will pay for stuff.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I've been thinking about what a system that verifies humanity anonymously that actually works could look like and I like the idea of async crypto signed hand written letters

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Andy Robinson @andyrobinson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Without the support of our readers, theres a genuine chance VGC wouldn’t have survived until now, and it’s getting tougher. Half of all games media traffic has gone since 2023, thank to Google/AI. Thousands of journalists have left. This is a conversation we need to have, before it’s too late.

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The Back Page: A Video Games Podcast @backpagepod.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is why we're so grateful for your support. When we set up the podcast, we never really envisioned it as this little island in the storm affecting games media – but The Back Page *is* basically our outlet now.

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Brendy_C @brendyc.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sprinting into games media collapse discourse like a slavering hyena, barking: "jAnK! heeeheeehaheee! JAnK!!"

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

a lot of people don't seem to know how game budgets work. If Sony spends $400 million on a game and then drops it and Microsoft pick it up, it costs Microsoft nothing. They don't buy Sony out or anything, Sony just spends a lot of money on someone else's game

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Brendy_C @brendyc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ace Combat isn't Top Gun - it's Star Wars. www.jank.cool/ace-combat-8...

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Cara Ellison @caraellison.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think there should be a law against firing people at the end of a project so that you can steal their future wages??

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Right, I've thought about it cause it's a really interesting design challenge and this is my Wolverine game pitch: - He's invulnerable, no health bar - It starts with just his healing factor & there's 2 major skill progression beats, he gets his claws & skeleton, he gets his suit

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Jan Willem Nijman @jwaaaap.com · 23/09/2026

if you’re a games company that wants to survive it has been proven over and over again you need to do whatever it takes to stay away from being publicly traded. you’ll be turned into wood chips the moment it’s convenient.

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Jank @jank.cool · 17/07/2026

Stop calling it a 'reset'. It's an amputation. www.jank.cool/stop-calling...

jank.cool

Stop calling it a 'reset' when it's an amputation

Cut out your corporate tongue

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Lewis Gordon @lewisgordon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Silent Hill: Townfall is good — very good, in fact. Especially the sequence in a municipal-style high rise building which plays like a slow-burn, Ballardian take on The Raid. It's a game less of psychosexual terror than psychosocial dread: I was hooked. www.theguardian.com/games/2026/s...

theguardian.com

Silent Hill: Townfall review – shame and suffering on the Scottish coast

Tragedy, and an apocalyptic fog, befall a fishing community. It is up to outsider Simon to offer some kind of closure

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"Plagiarism is hard to detect so we should allow it" coming from actual University Professors is a clear sign that we're entering a dark age.

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Kyle Hilliard @kylehilliard.com · 21/09/2026

Good morning. Reviewed Silent Hill: Townfall.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

If I was making a Wolverine game, I'd start with no health bar and work from there, it's essential to the fiction of the character that he can't get hurt. I don't think action games _need_ health bars.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I just found out Wolverine's QTEs are fake and nothing different happens if you do nothing. QTEs are bad enough but this is an affront to the medium. The entire art form is being turned into dopamine swill and Sony are largely to blame. It makes me so angry.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I stopped using spotify because it's legalised piracy. I recommend checking out spytify and navidrome if you feel like doing the same ;), it's incredibly easy to run your own service & then you can take the money you give to spotify and give it to the artists instead.

404media.co

I Hijacked a Real Artist's Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly Easy

A glaring loophole in digital music distribution makes it very easy to piggyback on the talent of real artists with AI generated music.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Phantom Liberty really is such a huge step up in quality, it's hard to believe they're the same game sometimes.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It's hard to overstate the psychological impact this conduct by management has on a team, it doesn't just ruin the lives of the people who make the games you love, it also makes those games worse. www.rockpapershotgun.com/rockstar-had...

rockpapershotgun.com

Rockstar had a mole in the union worker Discord server "for over two and a half years", GTA 6 company reveals during legal battle

Court filings from the battle between GTA 6 studio Rockstar and fired workers have revealed how Rockstar accessed a Discord server set up by union organisers.

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Jeremy Peel @jeremypeel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Interviewed an imsim legend: “For Xbox to buy Arkane Austin and quickly turn around in a few short years and dissolve the studio was just a pretty dire warning.” www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/th...

pcgamer.com

Thief designer Randy Smith Evergreen refused to work for Xbox because it would be like 'walking past some stakes with human skulls on them' and pretending 'it's probably fine in this direction'

The immersive sim will find a way outside of AAA.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I really love reading pc gamer in print form, no flashing bullshit demanding your attention, no consent pop ups, word limits, beautiful graphic design. Even when the exact same words are available on the website, it's just so much nicer.

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Austin Kelmore @austinkelmore.com · 10/09/2026

Closing out the rally, @nershly.bsky.social beautifully speaks about her experience being fired by Rockstar and how they try to use fear.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

5000 * 342 million = $1.7 trillion. I.e. more than the entire US deficit before Trump.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

So much of the world's ills can be attributed to the latency between success or failure and it's consequences. The PS5 thrives because of what they were doing on PS4 and the PS6 will fail because of what they are doing now but the latency allows the blame to be obfuscated

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I refuse to believe that the idf were incapable of repelling an attack they knew was coming and I think it looks increasingly likely that Netanyahu at least knew exactly what was coming. How convenient for him that he avoided jail thanks to that attack. 🤔 www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPI4...

youtube.com

Netanyahu under fire over report UAE warned of October 7 attack • FRANCE 24 English

YouTube video by FRANCE 24 English

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Brendy_C @brendyc.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

An average reviewer will say "the vampires drink blood" but a good reviewer will say they "imbibe vein Vimto" and "slam neck Negronis". This is why we hire Nic.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The Zelda theme is bloody brilliant.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I've no idea who made it but I watch this video whenever I need cheering up

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

This is a really positive thing to do in response to the techno-feudal assault on our freedoms - www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Kn...

youtube.com

We Could Get Sued for This

YouTube video by Gamers Nexus

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I can say from personal experience that devs getting desensitised to the horror in their own games is absolutely a real phenomenon and is one of the key challenges with making this kind of game - www.videogameschronicle.com/news/hideki-...

videogameschronicle.com

Hideki Kamiya says Resident Evil developers have lost sight of how scary their games are | VGC

The Resident Evil 2 director wants players to be able to turn down the horror…

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I Listened to Minnmax talk about duskbloods today and it made me go from not caring a single bit about that game to actually being quite intrigued despite not really being a multiplayer gamer these days. It sounds bizarre in a way that multiplayer games just aren't anymore.

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Dan Marshall @danthat.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I'm a "reasonable consumer" and I genuinely consider this an actual crime.

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Andrew Haining @1st-c-lord.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Fund the people who make the work, defund the corporations who own it.

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