iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

We LOVE our first BGD fan art!! The characters from local studios carrying our BGD banner 🥲

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Elliott Mitchell 🎥 🧀 @mrt3d.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Boston Gamedev Week is next week! Check out these cool happenings in Boston leading up to and including PAX East. I’ll be leading a BGW MiniCon roundtable, “XR in Transition,” on Tuesday. Hope to see you there! gamedev.boston

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

If you're in town for PAX East, be sure to stop by Boston Gamedev Week! It's a developer-focused mini-con before PAX as well as some events and meetups in the evenings. @bostongamedev.bsky.social gamedev.boston

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

We’ve got our own fancy little mini conference coming up! Boston Gamedev Week's MiniCon will host talks + round tables in a neat little 2-day package It kicks off Tues 3/24, full schedule and pay-what-you-want tickets here -> gamedev.boston/events/minicon Thanks to our sponsor, @gamemaker.io!

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Kevin Regamey @regameyk.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

GG to all the very-early-morning climbers who managed to make it to our annual GDC Bouldering Meetup! Already thinking about how to make next year even better... 🤘🕹️

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Boston Gamedev Week is BACK March 23 - 29! If you're in town for PAX East, come hang out, meet some other devs, and maybe learn a lil something! The current schedule, with events both at PAX and outside the con, is posted on gamedev.boston

gamedev.boston

BOSTON GAMEDEV WEEK

Get a full week of gamedev goodness here on the bay. Coinciding with PAX East, Boston Gamedev Week is a slate of events focused on developers.

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Spry Fox @spryfox.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

“All those who are lost deserve kindness.” 🧡 Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is coming to Steam later this year! 🚐 Discover a relaxing island oasis 🐻 Bond with a charming cast of characters 🎁 Exchange gifts with other players asynchronously .. and more! Available to wishlist now: s.team/a/2021960

store.steampowered.com

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit on Steam

All those who are lost deserve kindness. Help cute, ghostly bears find peace in this relaxing sequel to the beloved life-sim game Cozy Grove, where kindness rules and new crafting, building, and campi...

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Andrew Eiche @buddingmonkey.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Better pay that Maya invoice or you’re going in the black sedan

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Andy Hall @testtubegames.com · 10/03/2026

A peek at Agent Higgs 2 -- my particle physics puzzle game coming out this summer... testtubegames.com/blog/

Title Screen of a game with a shadowy cartoon style.

Title: Agent Higgs 2: Escape from the Standard Model.

Underneath is a scene of a red H wearing groucho-marx glasses hiding among some wooden crates and particles. The particles shown are proton, electron, and muon, all drawn as colorful tiles with letters.

Along the left are several UI buttons drawn as file folders: Play, Editor, and About

Cartoony scene of a tall billboard shown outside among grassy hills.

There's a happy blue character wearing a red jester's hat, holding out their arms forming a rainbow filled with particles: electron, muon, tau, proton, neutron.

The top says: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Particle Physics.

The bottom says: Now including the Higgs Boson.

The area that would show the Higgs boson is mysteriously missing. The mysterious dark figure in a hat is nearby on a ladder, holding a roll of paper.

Screenshot of a level in the game, titled Electric-8. It's grid-based, with a white floor and wooden tiles forming walls. There are two protons and an electron, with a photon pulling on an electron and proton.

Agent Higgs is a tile at the bottom of the level. A mysterious figure wearing a hat is near the top, saying:

"The scientists caught you last time...
...but with my help you'll never get trapped again!"

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I'm setting up a linux Jenkins server. This is the state of modern Unity: * Official Installation instructions for unity hub were wrong. * Unity hub won't run headless because it still needs a virtualized display. It just segfaults. Had to install xvfb and route all commands through that.

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Boston Game Dev will be hosting a Global Game Jam site again this year! We'll be at the Nonprofit Center downtown all weekend, 1/30 - 2/1. Come make a game with us! More info + registration here: www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-gam... Huge thank you to our sponsor @unity.com for making this possible!

eventbrite.com

Boston Game Dev Global Game Jam

Come make a game over a weekend with Boston Game Dev! Global Game Jam is a non-competitive opportunity to collaborate, experiment and learn.

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jdeegz @jdeegz.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

I am hunting for work! Anyone in games, or other creative fields have open roles I could apply for? UI Art / Design, Concept Art, Hard Surface modeling, Design, UX... jdeegz.com

jdeegz.com

Portfolio of Jim DeGruttola

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Melo @letitmelo.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

I legitimately didn't know they were competing with Steam and it's crazy to me that they burnt so much money on what sounds like something with very little (or wildly misguided) market research.

Ethan Evans, former Amazon VP

As VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we failed multiple times to disrupt the game platform Steam. We were at least 250x bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost. Here's why:

The 15+ year long attempt to challenge Steam started before I was VP of Prime Gaming, but we never cracked the code. Not under my leadership or anyone else's.

The first way we tried to enter the online-game-store market was through acquisition. We acquired Reflexive Entertainment (a small PC game store) and tried to scale it. It went nowhere.

Then, after buying Twitch, we created our own PC games store. Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch. Wrong.

Finally, we built "Luna," a game streaming service that let people play without a high-end PC. Around the same time, Google tried the same thing with their
product "Stadia." Neither gained significant traction. The whole time, Steam dominated despite being a relatively small company (compared to Amazon and Google).

The mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam

It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well.

At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available

We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either.

Just because you are big enough to build something doesn't mean people will use it

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Build a solid, working system out the gate: nobody notices. Build a buggy mess and then fix it later after everyone experiences the pain of using it: you're the hero.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Visual scripting is objectively terrible in 99.99% of cases. This is the hill I will die on. blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com

blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Man, C is so much simpler and more fun to program in than C++.

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Adam deGrandis @adamdegrandis.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

friends, full disclosure: i have ZERO recollection of what we talked about when we recorded this. But I was hanging with Alan and Syrenne so I'm sure I had a good time. Go listen and be entertained? Educated? Who's to say, I guess. Go listen.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Can confirm. Adam is one of the best humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to know. Check this out!

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Draknek & Friends @draknek.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Draknek & Friends Official Podcast Episode 36 featuring @adamdegrandis.bsky.social is out now! Topics include the development of the games, his time teaching, a dive through some gaming history, and a surprisingly long tangent about music. draknek.org/podcast

draknek.org

Draknek & Friends Official Podcast

Join Alan and Syrenne from Draknek & Friends as they talk to developers of some of their favorite puzzle games, shedding light onto how games get made and th...

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WeLoveIt.io @weloveit-io.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Our latest Studio Spotlight: Jake Birkett (@greyalien.bsky.social) on the 20‑year journey behind his “overnight” indie success. 👽 Read → www.weloveeverygame.... #IndieDev #GameDev #Interview

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

"Don't repeat yourself" (aka "DRY") is the foremost pitfall of our generation of software engineers. It's followed so myopically and dogmatically that people perform heroic code structure contortions just to enable re-use of a 10 line method they could have copy/pasted.

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Victoria Tran ✨ @victoriatran.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

✨ MY BOOK IS OUT NOW ✨ "Mastering Community Management" is finally here! 😭 Learn what goes into community management for video games from pre- to post-production. ❤️ Get my step-by-step strategy for creating meaningful online spaces! Shares appreciated. AHH!! Buy: www.victoriatran.com/book

Holding up my book "Mastering Community Management: Chaos, Compassion, and Connection in Games".

Picture of me in between shelves of books, holding up my book.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Maybe we'd have flying cars and world peace if Windows had switched to LF and case-sensitive file systems like everyone else... 🤔

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Spry Fox @spryfox.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Hi everyone! We're Spry Fox. 🦊 As some of you may have heard, we've been working on our newest project: Spirit Crossing, a cooperative life-sim focused on friendship & community. Let's take a look at the world we've been crafting: 🌲 www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKb... ☀️ playspiritcrossing.com

youtube.com

Spirit Crossing - 14.2 Trailer

YouTube video by Spry Fox

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innes mck @innes.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

the thing about "move fast and break things" is that not breaking things is often quite a lot faster

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Dumpster fire fighter 🗑️🧑‍🚒

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Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

just ship it. shut up, theseus.

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

There's a reason the summer community BBQ is one of our favorite events of the year! So great to see our amazing community come out and make an already sunny and beautiful day even better. #gamedev #indiedev

People sitting on the grass and gathering under tents in the park.

People chatting under tents in the park.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Please, Windows, just be an operating system for me. That's all I want.

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Diana Huh @dihuh.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

hypernormalisation

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CIPHER ZERO @cipherzerogame.com · 29/05/2025

Join us today at the very first Thinky Direct, filled with trailers and announcements from all the games that scratch your brain. Tune in to see #CipherZero news! 6pm BST/10am PDT/1pm EDT! www.youtube.com/live/iXyyhQd... #PlayCipherZero #IndieGameDev #IndieDev #SolveForX #ThinkyDirect

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jdeegz @jdeegz.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Yo! I’ve been working on my game, a tower defense called Spires of Morosith: Gossamer Sundered, and I've just published a Demo! Please give it a try, you can get it on steam here: store.steampowered.com/app/3094970/... If you dig the game, tell a friend! #indiegames #steamdemo #towerdefense

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Boston Indies @bostonindies.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Boston GameLoop tickets went up the other day! GameLoop is one of our fav local events, "like a day full of all the best hallway conversations you’d have at GDC" as they say. Tell your game makin' friends and coworkers! August 16th @ MIT Tickets here -> www.bostonfig.com/gameloop-2025/

bostonfig.com

GameLoop 2025

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Zi @majormcdoom.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Some of y'all are gonna think I've gone completely nuts, but I'm gonna talk about rounded corners and why circles suck. Most devs take it for granted that rounded corners are circles. Spoiler: They don't have to be! There is a much more aesthetically pleasing and cheaper alternative. 🧵👇 #gamedev

A picture showing two diagrams of rounded corners, one using a circular equation and the other using a parabolic equation.

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Mark Mayers @desolus.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

After nearly a decade of development, I am very excited to finally announce Desolus! Explore a city of Gothic architecture torn between past and future in Desolus, a first person puzzle game. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxfV...

youtube.com

DESOLUS Announcement Trailer

YouTube video by Mark Mayers

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I really struggle with this when I talk about my interests and career. I always have to say “game AI, not LLM ChatGPT stuff”

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Whenever I ask colleagues about bizarre Unreal things the response is often "Oh right yeah that's a thing. Yeah you'll get used to it." Unreal is the C++ of game engines.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Today's fun Unreal-ism: Unreal is right-handed Z-up, so Euler angles in Unreal are: Yaw = Z, Pitch = Y, Roll = X Rotations are often defined by FRotator. There is the FRotator::Euler() method that gives you an FVector with the correct axis rotations in the correct places.

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Noa Beazley @noabeazley.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Five years ago I went to my first PAX not knowing anyone and with no clue how to start connecting with people in the industry. This year could not have felt like more of a full circle moment.

A PAX '25 special guest pass and a blue pin. It features a yellow bird wearing a cap with "BGW 2025" Written below. There's a very tiny "#1" next to the letters.

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Rami Ismail (رامي) @ramiismail.com · 10/05/2025

Unity just is not stable enough as a business or a company to rely on it for developing multi-year projects.

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Seth Rosen @sirrosen.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Are you already in Boston for PAX East? Boston Gamedev Week organized by @bostongamedev.bsky.social is happening through Friday! There's a demo night and wonderful social meetup (Make Games, Make Friends) tonight and I'll be at both. Come hang out?! Details here: gamedev.boston

gamedev.boston

BOSTON GAMEDEV WEEK

Get a full week of gamedev goodness here on the bay. Coinciding with PAX East, Boston Gamedev Week is a slate of events focused on developers.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

My favorite part about parking at South Station is this 26 year old Mapquest printout in the elevator. #boston

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

TTR: "Time To Rust". How long until someone mentions and subtly advocates for Rust in any tech conversation about any topic.

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Boston Game Dev @bostongamedev.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

We’re one week away from Boston Gamedev Week, so we thought we’d make a thread to talk about everything we’ll have going on! Okay here we go 🧵 #gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedev

It says BGW in big white letters with blue and yellow borders.

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Today's Unreal pain: * UE saves your perforce username and workspace info in a config somewhere that's _not_ the normal .p4config * Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v, rename "foo.uasset" creates two files: "foo 1.uasset" and "bar.uasset" but Content Browser only shows "bar.uasset"...because Redirectors

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Graham Pentheny @grahamboree.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I love how p4's "reconcile offline work" can take multiple minutes in large directories, while git status takes less than a second to do the same thing. 🤔

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