iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Since when can starter packs contain more than 150 accounts? Or has that always been a thing, if you add them directly from someone's profile... 🤔

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Welp. I parted ways with Ubisoft Singapore two weeks ago after nearly three years. Did a short writeup about that in ye ol' blog, for the curious. Now taking a breather and catching up on my Steam Library while keeping eyes peeled, ears sharpened and design senses on alert for new opportunities! \o/

blog.xoduz.org

New Horizons

Two weeks ago, I parted ways with Ubisoft Singapore after nearly three years.

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Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Part 4 of my series about game design aesthetics! In this one I discuss what a personal design aesthetic is, how it comes to be, and how to nurture it. Article five, in a few weeks, will discuss the game design aesthetic of groups: studios, team, cultures. #GameDesign

namelessquality.com

A Game Designer’s Aesthetic

In the first article, I discussed game design patterns, and called them the brushstrokes of game design. In the second article I discussed game genres,…

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I wish I was a more confrontational person so I could tell this taxi uncle to stop pumping the fucking gas pedal/accelerator every 1.5 seconds.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Since CERN shut down my K/D ratio in FPS games increased by 3%.

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Konstantinos Dimopoulos @konstantinosd.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Listening to Raph Koster discuss Star Wars Galaxies is a bit of a game design masterclass. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAv0...

youtube.com

The Story Behind Star Wars Galaxies' Notorious Jedi Problem - /noclip

YouTube video by /noclip

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Pfft. 1980 was the year, with genre-defining and "they were the first to do X"-games like Pac-Man, Missile Command, Zork, Adventure, Rogue, Mystery House, Olympic Decathlon, Space Invaders (Atari port) and Defender.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Hot dinner take: I don't need to play all games through to the end to get enjoyment out of them. I'm ok being part of the "80-90% of gamers don't finish games" statistic.

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Douglas @dmgregory.ca · 09/06/2026

Okay, that's definitely becoming a reading for my #GameDesign systems course. 🤓 Great exploration of the design possibility space, visual and mathematical examination of the consequences, and reflection on what strategic / thematic / social experiences each variant supports. Inspiring stuff!

youtube.com

Rock Paper Scissors 2

YouTube video by Fractal Philosophy

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Katie Chironis @kchironis.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

sometimes late at night i am confronted with a troubling thought: maybe in 2026 everyone has just forgotten how to make video games. then i am confronted with a more troubling thought: perhaps we actually never knew how to make video games in the first place

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Adding full voice-over narration for all NPCs, cutscenes, quests etc in video games is a waste of time and resources. Most players (73.875%, give or take) skip the dialogue, and skip the cutscenes, or play with sound turned off so they can hear their own music.

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jitspoe @jitspoe.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Game development is so funny because we have these grand visions of what we want to do but then get stuck spending hours on trivial things like making ESC close the correct UI element.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

I hope Stephen Spielberg will some day watch Hook and enjoy it, and that all the critics that panned it will rediscover their lost inner child. It's such a wonderful movie.

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Keits @keits.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I’ve been tuning competitive games for 15 years, and I’ve come to one inevitable conclusion. Want to know why people loved our patches on Killer Instinct and Rumbleverse so much? My hour long deep dive premieres tonight at 10pm EST on Game Design Direct! www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCPQ...

youtube.com

Game Balance Isn't Real

YouTube video by GameDesignDirect

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Why is Valve so stingy with the countries they make their hardware available in? They have too much money already, and don't want more? Come on, gabe

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Personal gripe: I wish people would elaborate when they describe games using nothing but blanket statements like "good/bad game design" 😶

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Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 20/04/2026

Wanna think more deeply about game design? Here's some reports on the latest systems analyses from Polaris Design Retreat, from social psychological-safety design to mechanical comedy to loss, and beyond! polarisgamedesign.com/reports/

polarisgamedesign.com

Reports

REPORTS 2022 2023 2023 Understanding Systems Suspense Why is it fun to learn the rules of a videogame? Not just to play the game, but to learn it; to travel from the state of unknowing to knowing, to ...

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

From time to time, the concept of "friction" in game design comes up. People argue about whether or not to remove friction, but I think they're actually disagreeing about what "friction" means and in what context.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Not sure how I failed to see this awesome thread for two weeks, but better late than never! So many good tips :)

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Cairn is such a nice cozy, relaxing gamOHSHITAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh💀 ...10/10 would climb again.

Screenshot from the game Cairn, looking over the shoulder of the main character sitting on the edge of a mountain cliff, looking out over an epic mountainous landscape, with blue sky and white clouds as the backdrop.

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Will Maiden @willmaiden.dev · 10/04/2026

Incredible numbers! On paper the idea of building an endgame around ruthless PvP provides cheap, endless content. In truth it all but killed the game, as the PvE audience got an experience contrary to the previous 60 hrs. Very useful case study for designers.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

All seats in all flights (domestic, international or interplanetary), should all be aisle seats only. All. Also, no reclining possible.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

My lunch take on game design: One thing people always get wrong about game design, is... ...treating "emergence" as a happy accident. Emergent behavior is the end-result of a carefully orchestrated possibility space by designers, not just random luck!

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Chris @timeachris.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

IMO the three most important tools for game design are MS excel, thesaurus dot com, and a reliable stopwatch.

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Freyja Valentine, Girl IRL Cat URL @freyjavalentine.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

introducing more people to my favorite game design problem, the Horse Archer Problem: you either make archery and mobility suck individually or when paired together, or you rediscover why the Mongols were so successful

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Dan Marshall @danthat.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

PROTIP: pop a credits list at the start of whatever design doc/ database setup you've got going on, and add people who help you out as you go. It makes things a LOT easier at the end, especially if those names rack up over a long period of time.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

1am onwards are the golden hours of creativity and feature creep.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I am a perpetual side-project tinkerer, by which I mean I always have a bunch of those cooking on the side, with no clear end-goals in mind. 🧵1/3

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Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 15/02/2026

If you prefer your game design thoughts podcasts via Spotify, we're also there! Listen and learn at your leisure: open.spotify.com/show/5ewr7SE...

open.spotify.com

Spotify – Web Player

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Of the six mobile games I worked on over five years in my previous job, two never made it past limited releases in test-markets, one was cancelled because of a studio pivot, two were released on Apple Arcade, and one was released as a browser game. None of them are playable today... RIP 💀

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Alec S // Renegade Sector Games @renegadesector.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Something which is pretty core to the way I think about game design is what I call "Considerations." In other words, what is the player thinking about at any given time. What information are they given, how do they parse that information, and what do they do with it.

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Jón Kristinsson @jonkk.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

does anyone have any game design articles/videos/talks about non-addictive game design principles? lots of "the perfect feedback loop!" and "how to make your game extra addictive!" videos out there, so was just wondering if someone's done the opposite in terms of design philosophies.

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Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 21/01/2026

It's the Polaris 2025 reports! They've come! They're here! It's a bumper crop of five, count'em FIVE papers! We got comedy, we got death, we got cringe, we got trust... something for the whole team. Piping hot game design knowledge and insight await: polarisgamedesign.com/reports/

Screenshot of the five 2025 Polaris reports, too small to comfortably read, with image previews of 2 flow charts, a sticky note collection, a game screenshot with text interface, and a geological pattern.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Is it a sequel to Betrayal at Krondor and prequel to Return to Krondor, based on the second book (Krondor: The Assassins) of The Riftwar Legacy trilogy, to complete the game trilogy using an updated version of the flight sim engine used for the second (soon? to be third) game in the series?

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I'm sorry for the language, but... What the fuck, Google? They just ripped out the scrollable tab bar feature in Chrome, "just because". I'm doomed! Tab search is NOT a viable replacement for this. GGGGrrraaahhhh! 🤬 Maybe this is the drop that finally pushes me over to Vivaldi.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Harmless discourse: Even with dedicated community teams, I still like to dive into raw player feedback myself, especially for features I own. Nuances that I find helpful as a game designer are sometimes lost in translation/summaries or overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

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Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 11/12/2025

designeritis - the condition in which, after learning or practicing the craft of game design, your intrinsic joy of playing games "for fun" is damaged, lower, or difficult to sustain. sound familiar?

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Getting so, so tired of randomly getting logged out of Bluesky on my phone when my connection switches between WiFi and 5G, or 5G and lesser Gs, for instance when I leave home to go to work. Or come back home. Takes more and more mental effort to log back in every time it happens. Sigh...

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Brandon Sheffield @brandon.insertcredit.com · 24/11/2025

We did something different with the credits for Demonschool. We used this format: name, title, lengthy description of what they did. Often you see credits in games where you don't know what the credited developer was actually responsible for. We wanted to give people proper, actual credit.

Credits for Brent Porter (3D art lead) and Catherine Menabde (2D art lead) are shown here. There's a lengthy description of what they did, with a pastiche of various Demonschool characters underneath, messing around with a computer.

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Where Winds Meet looks as good as it plays, though these non-HDR screenshots really don't do it justice...

Hero dressed in white robes looks down a wide empty street with a beautiful sunset in the background

Hero dressed in white robes poses for a screenshot with a countryside village and amazing sky in the background

Hero riding a horse in an open countryside environment with a reddish sky in the background

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

If you manage to "humanize" yourself to players in ARC Raiders, they are less likely to outright shoot you. They might still overcome their brief flash of empathy and betray you out of greed, though... Thanks for nothing, sLowRaiderXY_69, did our shared experience mean nothing? Was it all a lie? 😢

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Geir Ove Alnes @geirovealnes.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Instructions unclear. Now all my players are upset 🙃

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