iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 17/07/2026

please enjoy these photos of ruby and queenie (photos by myself and @hey.paris)

A very small black and tan chihuahua wearing a blue knitted jacked and a patterned harness sits on the beach and grins up at the camera. Her mouth is slightly open, revealing very tiny pointy teeth.

A very small black and tan chihuahua wearing a patterned harness runs towards the camera with a very small tennis ball in her mouth. Her two front paws are off the ground.

A very, very small sable chihuahua stands with her front two paws resting against a human's leg. An arm is reaching out to scratch her back. The dog's head is tilted upwards slightly, with an expression of bewildered enjoyment and folded-back ears.

A very, very small sable chihuahua sits on a human's lap. She's looking attentively out to the side of the frame with an expression of deep concentration.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 20/01/2026

Aurora australis over nipaluna/Hobart tonight. Photos by me and my dad in the backyard.

Aurora australis over kunanyi/Mount Wellington. The lights are delicate and shimmering, almost rainbow-like in that many streaks have green and purple throughout. The bright lights of nipaluna/Hobart below light the bottom of the frame. The silhouettes of trees and roofs are visible in the foreground.

Aurora australis, seen looking straight up. The lights take on a blue to purple tint, and the streaks seem to converge right in the center of the frame. The effect is like a huge beam of light shooting down on the viewer. Stars pinprick the image throughout. Almost no part of the image is black, aside from a dark patch near the top left corner, and the silhouette of a tree at the bottom of the image.

Aurora australis over kunanyi/Mount Wellington. The lights are calmer and softer now, and look almost like glowing clouds. A faint purple haze surrounds the green structures. A house is silhouetted in the bottom right of the image, with a cozy warm glow peeking through closed curtains. The lights of nipaluna/Hobart reflect off the river.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 27/09/2025

I mean everyone already working in the industry already knows the answer is “nevermore”, ho ho ho ho #NZGDC

A man sits at a lectern, preparing to deliver a talk. The first slide is visible on the projector: “What Edgar Allan Poe Can Teach You About Game Design”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 27/09/2025

A cool idea: to test the dialogue apart from the rest of the narrative elements, @osaurusstudios.bsky.social did a table read of the interactive dialogue to ensure that it wasn’t too dense and that it was stylistically natural. (They’re just all playing through the game’s script in Inky together!)

A woman presents a slide, which contains a photo of a group of people at a coffee shop, all looking at a number of laptops. The slide has the title “Isolate the Script: Table Read”

The same woman stands and presents a different slide, containing a screenshot of the Inky dialogue editor. The slide shows Ink script on the left, and dialogue on the right.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 27/09/2025

In which @osaurusstudios.bsky.social pulls a bait-and-switch half way through her talk, “How Do You Playtest Stories”, where it turns out that in order to understand how players react to stories, we need to realise we’re actually playtesting feelings.

A woman stands at a lectern and presents a title slide: “How do you playtest FEELINGS”?

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 27/09/2025

“Loot structures are useful for figuring out how to make a lot of items. In this example, we can use a table like this to figure out what we need to now make because we let players decide what their characters were going to be. Gosh, wasn’t that a mistake.”

Carl de Visser stands in front of a projected slide showing a table describing lootable armour, organised by character class and by tier, some of which are empty and ready to be filled in.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 26/09/2025

“This is an example of real-world late-game loot. This is not a museum. This is someone’s house in Wales.” Carl de Visser talking about loot design.

A man stands in front of a projected slide showing an opulent collection of looted artefacts from India. The caption reads “Loot - early 19th century (as a verb), from Hindi lūt, from Sanskrit luņțh- ‘rob’”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 26/09/2025

Checked out KUU by @interactivetragedy.com, a game with an absolutely gorgeous and stark aesthetic and amazing storytelling. Go take a look!

A photo of a video game called KUU, showing a highly stylised black-and-white illustration of a pyramid against a field of stars.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 26/09/2025

It’s the last day of #NZGDC! Track me down (or book a meeting via yarnspinner.dev/nzgdc) and learn about how @yarnspinner.dev can help make your game’s narrative sing!

A man wearing a black beanie, a yellow shirt and a black mask kneels by a sign that reads “NZGDC 2025”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 26/09/2025

#NZGDC, home of “we literally have Taika Waititi at home”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 25/09/2025

“A former boss of mine said that ‘culture is a year 3 problem - focus on success, and then you can fix the culture later.’ Nothing has so succinctly explained the games industry to me as that attitude.” - @liamesler.bsky.social and @davidgaider.bsky.social at NZGDC

Two men stand on a dais at a conference, presenting to a large room of seated people. A projector shows their current slide: “Lesson 1: Your team’s culture is YOUR problem”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 24/09/2025

Team @yarnspinner.dev (well, this bit of it, anyway) is off to #NZGDC!

A man with long brown hair wearing a black beanie and a black hoodie sits on a plane. He wears a black face mask. A small white and silver Yarn Spinner pin is attached to his chest.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 24/09/2025

Come see me talk about DREDGE and Yarn Spinner at #NZGDC on Friday! Learn about the wild tricks that @blacksaltgames.com did in the dialogue system we make!

NZGDC: Weaving the Net: DREDGE and Yarn Spinner. Fri 26th Sept 2:25pm, Tawhirimãtea E (Level 2). Learn how the indie hit DREDGE used Yarn Spinner, the friendly tool for interactive dialogue!

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 15/08/2025

We got commissioned to make a thing for ACMI, the screen museum! So we’re (@secretlab.games and @yarnspinner.dev) making Hint Line ‘93, a little game about being a game hint line worker! It’ll be on the museum floor from 18 Sep later this year! Learn more from ACMI: www.acmi.net.au/about/media/...

The words "Hint Line 93" appear in a garish pink font, over a garish 90s Memphis design pattern. Below, eight people stand holding retro cabled phones, with a mixture of expressions: angry, confused, happy, smug. emi doi looks relieved and wears denim overalls on a pink T-shirt; Emesha Rudolf looks exasperated and wears a blue cap sideways over pink, white and black striped jacket; Mick Davies yells into a phone while wearing a plain white T-shirt; Oli Potter looks smug with a hand on his hip, wearing a knitted grey jumper; Harris Sari looks confused and wears a red and black checkered flannel jacket; PJ Madam wears a tartan flannel shirt and looks like she's demanding to speak to your manager; Bryce Tollard-Williams wears a backwards baseball cap and a brightly coloured shirt and is yelling into the air; Scott Lleonart wears circular tinted glasses, a headband and a blue denim jacket, and looks up at the sky, evidently pleased.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 21/04/2025

Yarn Spinner for Unity is 💐🌼 50% off 🌸🌺 during the spring sale! It’s the best possible way you can support our work on making the best dang tools in the world! assetstore.unity.com/packages/too...

Composed tile has a large headline “We’re in the Unity Spring Sale!” Content reads “The Yarn Spinner Package is 50% off. It works with the Yarn Spinner Speech Bubbles and Dialogue Wheel Add-Ons. On sale now, buy on the Unity Asset Store.” Small text at the bottom reads “Yarn Spinner is Open Source. Extras like these save you time and let us keep working on it. Consider supporting our work by buying. Sale ends May 8th.”

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 16/03/2025

We made it to San Francisco, and a busy week of great Yarn Spinner stuff is coming up! Start your GDC week with @mcjones.bsky.social’s talk on Monday at 9:30AM, and then come to mine on Thursday at 2:30!

Yarn Spinner at GDC

Tim: Making Room with Yarn Spinner: “If we want more voices in games we need less barriers to entry. Learn how we're doing that with Yarn Spinner!” 9:30 Monday

Jon: 'DREDGE' and Yarn Spinner:
Building Narrative with Open Source. “See how the DREDGE team created an accessible, localized dialogue system with deep integration into gameplay systems, and how you can do the same!” 2:30 Thursday

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 05/02/2025

yarn spinner demo character goes to space

A blue capsule-shape floats in space. Bright blue and orange stars glow behind him, along with blue nebulae and black void. He wears a perfectly spherical space helmet that covers most of his body, and the collar of the helmet is around his waist. A grey antenna with a red tip extends from one side of the helmet. The character is arching his back, looking up at his surroundings. His face is a wide-eyed expression of wonder.

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 19/12/2024

"hey Jon that's cool and all but what about scifi settings" don't worry babe I got u

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 19/12/2024

yesterday: "hey we should add some props to our demo characters for the yarn spinner tutorials" today: cowboy pillboi

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Jon, from Videogames @desplesda.net · 27/10/2024

I made an updated version of my hand-bound Yarn Spinner adventure books, with a better cover, nicer materials, and a bit more time spent getting the stitching right!

Two yellow hand bound books rest on a table surrounded by a needle, a bobbin of thread, an awl, and scissors. A hand is holding them flat. Both of the covers of the books read “My Pirate Adventure: A Yarn Spinner Adventure Book by Cap’n Salty”, with an illustration of a sailing ship.

A hand holds a yellow printed hand bound book. Green stitching is seen along the spine. A needle, a bobbin of thread, and some beeswax are seen in the background.

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