iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I dunno who is excited by this stuff anyway, we had a big wave of "holy shit this is so wacky" games with Goat Simulator et al. But I guess most people don't actually download these mods anyway they just see a video and chuckle

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 13h

imo we have seen the prelude to "AI mods as clickbait" in the surge in low-effort steam wishlist-bait. Do you pigs like studio ghibli-style harvest moon? retro management game that looks like simcity? Game industry often feels to me like nonstop experiments in pressing people's buttons (derogatory)

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

SWGR is giving me the "maybe i'm a steering wheel controller guy" feeling

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

when can we buy the Sluggo's Terrible New Hat omnibus?

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'm in a group chat with mostly younger nerds and for some reason my 30 year old Simpsons references aren't hitting very hard

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

finally we've overcome game development's biggest hurdle: generating a short prototype area with 6 placeholder assets. Now to simply refine the gunplay, create the UI, implement the pause menu and its various nested submenus, write a story, design the levels, market the game, certify on 3+ storefron

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

the end of that post went haywire and I'm not sure why but the sentiment is correct

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

imo a corollary to this is you shouldn't hate-follow 5000 obscure weirdos, guaranteeing you see something online every second of the day

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

kind of nuts to me that anybody would be wringing their hands over whether to play a jon blow sokoban game in 2026, or really thinking about it all You could do literally anything else

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I both appreciate how not-half-assed it is and am still mashing A through most dialogue to get to the damn racing!!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

why would you give exams about Joe Biden's hometown?

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Star Wars Galactic Racer pretty cool, however it is tarnished by being a roguelike deckbuilder. The podracing game should not be a roguelike deckbuilder. I shouldn't be doing shop rerolls in Star Wars Galactic Racer

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Sloane @sloanesloane.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to the last 1.5 years well, yknow, just organizing with my coworkers to unionize the most celebrated & beloved TTRPG and TCGs of all time 🥰✊ this took buckets of blood, sweat & tears but we DID IT!!! If you want to support us, sign that petition and BOOST!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I don't actually want to download this but what ... what even is the game? Is it just a pirated version of nighthawks? Or is it some vampire-themed phishing app?

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The game is even on sale at the moment, which we're getting afield of the original post but I won't miss an excuse to recommend goty 2026

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A recent Welk spotting I want to share is a small moment in Perfect Tides: Station to Station (which, incredible game), released this year but set in 2003. The protagonist agrees to watch Welk to distract from uncomfortable questions about her dating life

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

this is even assuming that infographic is true. It is from a right-wing group that, for example, also claims that heterosexual religious couples have the most and best sex ifstudies.org/in-the-news/...

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Today we explore the legacy of Lawrence Welk jokes in my 12th monthly post which, if I am doing my math right, means this is one year in the books! Please enjoy. I listened to an entire Lawrence Welk album in researching this and I need that to be worth it

imightaswellexplainthejoke.com

Lawrence Welk

A look back at the surprisingly dark jokes about the TV bandleader.

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

the account that posted it even acknowledged it was AI and posted a phony "alas, we are all able to be fooled!" but still hasn't deleted it. I feel like any account that tries to have it both ways on posting fake engagement bait is a free mute/block

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

What's that? Tomorrow is the first monday of the month, which means a new post on imightaswellexplainthejoke.com? Why yes that's true!! Here's a little tease of what you can expect

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

me reading the sluggo's new hat arc:

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Must be crazy for people just getting into Nancy right now. "Who's this mfer with the hat"

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Yeah that is good. There are like 3-4 good laugh lines in the movie which is why I still basically like it. But I also think a lot of people aged 30-40 are giving it flowers because it flatters them that the stuff they grew up with is Important. That is my "Hater Review"!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

the affair I think is the movie tipping its hand too much, like it's a movie that wants to scandalize you but it's a movie that is scandalized by a very regular extramarital affair? Come on

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I don't think I've seen The Master in ~14 years and I still think about it from time to time. Meanwhile I increasingly think Primetime is just millennial nostalgia bait with an A24 filter applied

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I still believe this but strangely I do *not* think I could be friends with Patrick McGoohan

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Maddy Myers 🏳️‍🌈 @midimyers.com · 01/10/2026

if you aren't already supporting @mothership.blog, you should be. support women and queer people in video game criticism and journalism. we deserve to exist in these spaces but, at least in the case of mothership, we can only exist and pay our writers and introduce you to new writers if YOU help us.

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There are macro factors of course but I can't shake the feeling that the collapse of games media is a "put up or shut up" test for people who play games. We can't control the ceiling but surely we can control the floor? Surely it's in our power to employ at least a dozen women to cover this industry

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

and this is hardly some kind of guilt-trip or altruistic donation. For subscribing to, say, @mothership.blog, you get game reviews and interviews and op-eds and all sorts of stuff! It's the stuff you want to read anyway!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

All things considered, it would only take a small number of people to dramatically expand how many women work in this field. Many of the "larger" sites struggling to make it have a few hundred or low thousands number of subscribers. The financial investment here is not large! We're talking $7/mo!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

last repost: I'm going to continue to be annoying that while we can't solve everything with monthly subscriptions, if you're concerned about a basically single-digit number of women working in video game journalism, then subscribe to one of few sites left that hires women journalists

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Nicole Carpenter @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

jess is right! it’s worse than ever for women in this field, and it was still pretty bad at our peak. im one of the lucky freelancers who has regular work (probably work more than i did at polygon!), and it’s still not a livable amount of pay. it’s pushing important and skilled women out.

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

thank you, I have felt like a hater about this movie. It was pretty tame considering the subject matter!

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

imo what gives the game away is that most people acknowledge these kinds of push-pull relationships: art vs commerce, critics vs the public, etc. But fans never believe they should experience any of that tension. When it's fans vs ANYBODY, fans "should" win (according to them)

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

chaos mode would be logging the word count. "👍 (this person typed and deleted 500 words before reacting)"

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

when someone emoji-reacts to a message it should also tell if they typed and deleted a message first. Especially the thumbs up emoji

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

With the exception of Don, I think every character's interactions with Don are written as "this character fully believes and understands Don is the protagonist of a TV show"

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Mad Men is a really great show for characters understanding each other 50% as "real people" and 50% as other characters in a TV show

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

sometimes I think how weird it feels that if you just want a site that posts reviews, previews, and news, your options are limited and dwindling. Is it actually old fashioned to actually want to hear about cool new games you might play? Do "today's gamers" literally not care about that?

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

feeling vindicated by middling-to-bad reviews for DIGGER. Unpleasant vibes from that trailer. Not even a fun movie to joke about. Now TRUMBO...there was a fun movie name to say

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Honored to join for what might be the most canonical work of video games criticism to date

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grayson @graysond.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

To my understanding, research backs this up. Lots of indicators that people are failing to develop or losing literacy (which would also mean greater numbers of people skimming and guessing at meaning). I'm very interested in checking out this upcoming book: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/829140...

penguinrandomhouse.com

The New Dark Ages by James Marriott: 9780385552943 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • The evidence is clear—we are now entering a post-literate society. In this urgent and timely account, James Marriott shows the potential impact of this shift...

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