iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If you feel the need to add a toggle to remove a (fairly pointless, could've been done by a human artist, hire a human artist!) GenAI feature because you know people won't like it, might I suggest just not doing it in the first place?

Text from the Steam page of Motorsport Manager 2 which reads:

"AI Generated Content Disclosure
The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Generative AI is being used during development solely to create character head portraits. It enabled us to create thousands of portrait variations across three age stages, helping the large cast of characters feel more varied, immersive and realistic while allowing characters to visibly age during long careers.

Every portrait is created in advance and checked by the Playsport art team before being included in the game. Nothing is generated while the game is running. No other artwork in the game, including vehicles, decals, logos or clothing uses generative AI. AI-generated portraits can be disabled in the preferences menu."

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Thronefall 👑 @thronefall.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thronefall is coming to console AND there's a DLC! 🎺 Enjoy Thronefall on Xbox and PS5 on November 11th, as well as a brand new paid DLC in a dwarven mountain 🫅

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Thronefall 👑 @thronefall.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We've got a stack of big Thronefall news today! 🎮 Coming to PS5 & Xbox (inc. Game Pass!) on Nov 11th 🐗 Conquer the Mountain in Craaghelm, the first expansion with all new maps, units & perks on Nov 11th 👑 New Royal Wardrobe update that includes 20 pieces of attire to chose from...out NOW on Steam

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Hello, if you're on the look out for a Unity Developer or know somebody who is (either remotely or London/South-East England), I've been doing it for a decade working on a range of weird and wonderful games both commercially and for personal projects and I'm currently available for hire!

The cover image for the game "Completely Stretchy"

The cover image for the game "Live by the Sword: Tactics"

The cover image for the game "Grow in the Hole"

The cover image for the game "A Classical Kickabout"

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

The dream of game development versus the reality of game development

An image of the "in progress" section of a Jira board showing one task, "Implement Steam"

An image of the "in progress" section of a Jira board showing two tasks, "Convert save system to use a file instead" and "Implement Steam"

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Would you believe these are two different controllers announced by two different companies a couple days apart?

Picture of the GameSir Pocket Taco, a controller which is attached to the bottom of a phone and is stylised to look like classic Game Boy controls

Picture of the 8bitdo FlipPad, a controller which is attached to the bottom of a phone and is stylised to look like classic Game Boy controls

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Beginning to think Blaseball needed to exist just to prevent the same stuff leaking into Baseball.

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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

I don’t talk about it much because the situation doesn’t really change but it’s still insane to me what an enormous amount of really talented game developers are out of work. just whole studios worth of incredible people, often people who worked on beloved games, unemployed.

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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

A lot of the same ‘you don’t get it’ nonsense from when NFTs and metaverses were a sure thing, but I do genuinely believe folks are building these broken tools into their processes, and that’s gonna have so many consequences short and long term.

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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

My main takeaway from replies to my LLM post yesterday is that a lot of people are now tying a lot of their self worth and/or creative processes to a black box tool that’s either gonna crash out or go up in cost exponentially at a later point in the ‘disruptor’ playbook.

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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

I’ve definitely mentioned in interviews how frustrating I find a lot of the work, but the alternative, to just have it delivered, really doesn’t appeal. I’ve seen it compared to working with colleagues, but that reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of what other people bring to creation.

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Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

One lingering aspect of this LLM stuff, even after it collapses, will be the knowledge that many of my peers don’t make things to enjoy the making, but to enjoy the having made. I just assumed everyone really dug climbing that mountain too. Nothing noble about it, no judgement, just a lesson learned

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Well guess I'll be going nowhere near NASCAR 25 then.

Image of text which says:

"AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

We used AI to generate spotter phrases based upon the voices of real-life NASCAR spotters, with their approval. We also used AI to generate crew member photos."

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Warp Digital Entertainment @warpdigitaluk.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

✨ Special Announcement! ✨ Completely Stretchy, the amazing and totally silly video game you all know and love will be 50% off as part of Steam's Daily Deal in 30 minutes time! store.steampowered.com/app/1587570/...

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Kitty Crawford @kittycrawford.com · 27/07/2025

A reminder for all you indie devs; it's a hellscape out there, but there is 100% room to abolish Genocide, transphobia and AI use, AND talk about the lovely little indie game you've been working so hard on. We NEED to talk about the horrors the news won't, but we also still need fun lil escapes ❤️

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

The only metrics I want to hear about on this website are which of their albums you'd listen to first.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

"Leader t-boning a wrecking car, flipping and almost going over the pit wall because they had little time to react and the caution came out way late" is frankly not a reason I ever want iRacing to be an accurate simulation of IndyCar.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Despite being *quite* annoyed at how I probably threw away the win by not leaving the draft soon enough, fairly proud to say that's a P2 in the 6th split (slot 1) of the iRacing Indy 500! Here's a video of the two lap shootout that ended the lap:

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Starting Chants of Sennaar (sorry Resistance series, turns out I *could* resist playing a 19 year old FPS) and have been enjoying it so far (plus it reminded me I should probably play Heaven's Vault at some point!), but sadly it's also going high on the list of "this didn't need a stealth section".

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

*plucks a ripe post straight off the vine* "That's right, at this social media account we're proud to say all of our awful puns are 100% organic, grown free of any artificial-asides."

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

At last, I get to do the thing where I watch somebody play a game I worked on and just repeatedly laugh in disbelief as they swiftly pull off things that were very much never planned for.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

The new Fox IndyCar graphics displays completed laps rather than what lap they're on, which means when it says 4/90 there actually on lap 5 and that'll never not kinda bug me.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

It's a bit alarming when the Sky commentary booth is wondering why the F1 formation laps/lap count rules "aren't more generally available to fans", when I'm pretty sure they're meant to be the ones giving that info to fans and were getting it wrong for about 15 minutes...

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Despite the plethora of options, sometimes curiosity gets you playing a game that may not be worth it, a product of its era that likely doesn't hold up to modern standards, just because it's new to you. At least that's the excuse I'm going with as I start the Resistance series before it leaves PS+.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

It's Election Day in the UK (in some places, anyway), so as per tradition it's time to find out if you can speedily count ballots with the most accurate* (and only) ballot counting simulator ellisspice.itch.io/duckton-decl...

ellisspice.itch.io

Duckton Declares by Ellis Spice

The race is on. Can you count all the votes accurately before Duckton South announces their result?

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

I fell into a pretty deep hole trying to solve as many of the puzzles in Blue Prince as I could and it's *deeply* concerning that I don't think I've even been in the room this was in, let alone seen the note.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Looking forward to finding out tomorrow that the C Button is for "Chime" and it just makes a nice jingle every time you press it.

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Alanna Smith @alannamode.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Sometimes I think of the meme just a couple minutes too late

A meme of two basketball players on the same team. The one in the forefront has his arms held wide as if in victory, while the one in the background is in the air, about to slam dunk the ball. The man in front is labelled "the game you gotta show off to prove you're making a game" while the man behind him is labelled "the game you're actually making".

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

It's almost impressive that F1 is down 3 cars from 3 different incidents before the end of the second lap, and only one of those was when they were actually racing.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Computers are incredible machines because you can go from using one perfectly fine to another which is theoretically more powerful, and instead of stuff working better than before they'll instead randomly and horrifically break, with the logs spat out being "yeah that wasn't meant to happen sorry".

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RWTema @rwtema.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Looking through the source code of the Command & Conquer games that EA just released github.com/electronicarts. Some fun stuff in the comments.

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Warp Digital Entertainment @warpdigitaluk.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

🥳 New Patch Alert! 🥰 Completely Stretchy 1.3 update released! Featuring a whole host of QoL fixes and updates. See the full change log here: steamcommunity.com/games/158757...

A cream coloured humanoid with giant googly eyes (called a Grombi) sits on a sofa while behind them through an Ultrawide window is a giant weird fish creature half submerged in water with it's mouth open and large teeth showing.

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Edd Coates | Game UI Database @eddcoates.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

I’m seeing a lot of soft takes from industry mutuals at the moment that we shouldn’t be so hard on those who use generative AI because it’s becoming harder and harder to resist. Wrong. Betraying your ethics (and your peers) because ‘everyone else is doing it’ does not suddenly make it acceptable.

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

You best believe that the "power of generative AI" is not as powerful as my ability to basically ignore anyone who claims it's a great boon to use it as part of their game design or development process. If you can't be bothered to work on it yourself, why should I be bothered to want to play it?

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Gotten into playing Fortnite Festival over the past month-or-so and seeing Godzilla on Lead rock the hell out of Green Day and Sum 41 broke me out of the slight funk I was having today. Sometimes it's All The Small Things, you know?

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Free game idea for Capcom (instead of doing the AI generation nonsense they're apparently planning) - free to play mobile crossword themed fighting game. That's right, it's time for Street Fighter X Words.

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ohay @ohay.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

we made it! Blåhaj United Motorsports - Pink Harlequin Catshark finishes P4 in class at the Daytona 24 🦈 @leahnudle.bsky.social @slowbird.bsky.social @ellisspice.bsky.social @n0mm3rz.bsky.social @georgiotre.bsky.social

so much fuckin smoke as everyone burns it down after the 24

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

While the amount of somewhat cursed looking handhelds being announced at CES pleases me to see, where are all the slightly cursed controllers that'll one day be purchasable at a price cheap enough for me to make the immediately regrettable decision to buy hiding?

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Ellis Spice @ellisspice.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

It's been a Christmas tradition of mine for a few years now to play through some shorter games throughout the day, and I'm glad to say that this year a bank was successfully robbed by Turnip Boy and a Princess was slain (kinda).

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Warp Digital Entertainment @warpdigitaluk.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

We're really excited to bring you the first update to Completely Stretchy! But what's in the update you say? Lots of quality of life updates! From a clearer map marker for where you are, additions to accessibility for disabling body lean and hand bobbing and more! 🖐️ tinyurl.com/2nsajz7a

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Warp Digital Entertainment @warpdigitaluk.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

✨RELEASE DAY✨ It's time for adventure! Grab your Grumple Fruit and get ready to SWING, CLIMB and STICK your way around the Grombi Isles in our first independent release COMPLETELY STRETCHY! Grab it while it's HOT! (And 10% off!) store.steampowered.com/app/1587570/...

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Steam Release Bot @steamreleasebot.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Completely Stretchy store.steampowered.com/app/1587570 $17.09 A befuddling mishap has made you COMPLETELY STRETCHY! Stretch, swing and stick around the delightfully odd and vibrant Grombi Isles in this eccentric and light-hearted 3D platformer.

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