iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Been doing something a bit different lately - I reached out a couple months ago to an independent print magazine about writing some reviews/articles, and the issue I've contributed to has just been published! Huge thanks to Zeitgeist Gaming magazine for the opportunity

zeitgeistgaming.itch.io

ZeitgeistGaming

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Googled to check the SGF show time this week and ai spat out Thursday 5th June 2026. The 5th is Friday. It cant even read a fucking calendar....

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Only been a year and Clair Obscur love has already seeped into trophy lists in other games. Love when studios do this

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Honestly, partly why I spend so little time here now. Chill out a bit guys

000

Reposted by Mike Cockayne

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

The US military has 22 sites in the UK. Every day long range US bombers are taking off here to drop bombs on Iran. This is a rogue state carrying out war crimes, and threatening more. The UK Government must grow a spine - and stop our bases being used for this war.

10241481227

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Reckon Nintendo put their foot down and said the movies can't have a narrative that exceeds any in the games? Forgetting that there isn't any in the games to begin with. Seems like something they'd do

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Always the way. I dont know what it is about being creative that means you only ever get shit done between 11pm and 2am...... On more than one occasion I gave up trying to sleep at 1am and started recording riffs instead haha

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

@gameovergreggy.bsky.social have these hit US shelves yet? We need your verdict

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Im in my 30s and own a strat, so naturally i only play John Mayer now

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Indie in games just followed the same trajectory as music. Started as an indicator of the artist composition and slowly devolved into a genre when other artists imitated the style of music. At this point its best to just draw a line in the sand with "independent" and "indie" being separate things

130

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Slightly diminish a game: Penultimate Fantasy

020

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

So far so good! Frets feel very different to my other guitars but im getting used to it haha. More than anything, its just inspiring to play, and its nice to have that feeling again

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Not posting here much anymore, the vibes have been off. But this christmas i spent the last of my redundancy pay on my dream guitar, and its an absolute dream. I now want 100 strats.

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Doesnt seem to be much of an overlap in audience either. The esports guys dont seem too bothered by the show and the games on display, and the game awards fans seem largely clueless/uninterested in the esports side of things. It would feel weird to ignore them, but does either side really care?

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Esports and content creation categories. Who are they there for? The nominees/winners never get a spotlight, and im not sure they ever attend anyway (creators often stream the awards from home for....content).

100

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

That Horizon mmo is such a monkeys paw situation. Not on ps5....im sorry, what? And mobile focused to boot. And looks like the guy who gave us airbrushed Aloy is the lead character artist. Which is whatever, but its so far removed from Horizon that its jarring

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

XBox out here celebrating their most successful generations 20th anniversary by making their subscription $360 annually. Inspired.

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Just looked it up (I have no gundam knowledge, sorry), and apparently they have a counterpart for every weapon. And they all look sick!

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Im getting big diamond weapon vibes

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Drove through a town yesterday completely plastered in England flags. It felt gross as hell. I dont think thats the reaction they want, maybe they should be a bit introspective and ponder why that is

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

It took 36 hours but I finally beat hollow knight (87%, i was done). It was great, then I found out it has 5 endings and I am absolutely not doing that

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

That doesn't sound like confirmation of a simultaneous release to me, just that the game will come to all platforms eventually, which wasn't the case with the last 2. Those announcements came much later. At this point it would be insane for them to attempt to launch pt3 across 4 platforms

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Quickly coming up to being unemployed as of October 1st. Job search is going poorly, even among the jobs id absolutely loathe to do. If anyone knows of any entry level art roles or is willing to give a guy a chance, I will fully convert to the church of you mikecockayne.artstation.com

mikecockayne.artstation.com

Mike Cockayne

3D Artist

021

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Did my environment piece, now I guess I'll do some props, then some tileables, character art after that, back to some hard surface, next up vfx, better put some money aside for houdini etc..... I admit i wasnt expecting this career path to have such an anti "learn on the job" outlook

040

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

When i started learning 3d I was constantly told to narrow in and focus on a discipline. 4 years later and I still haven't found anything and am constantly trying to learn something new because the only jobs going seem to want expertise in everything.

140

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Carbonara. Just some eggs, parmesan, pancetta and black pepper. I tend to always have the ingredients at home because it only takes 10 mins to make

020

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

And no two are the same. Everytime I make it, it tastes different, I swear to god

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Ah fair, there are a few of those for sure. Don't usually bother me though as theyre mostly brief and have fun dialogue or interactions going on. Loads of ridiculous characters in that particular quest area that I enjoyed bumping into

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Founder of limit break, you probably are a fan haha

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Not a fan of the og? Minigames are about 40% of that game so I kinda loved the absurdity of how many they put in here aswell

100

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Do you mean mandatory on the player or dev side? Because I blew through the game in about 40 hours by skipping sidequests

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Yup. "Ai has always been in games". No you fucking dingbat, stop conflating procedurals and machine learning with generative slop. These are not the same thing

020

Reposted by Mike Cockayne

Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 @chimeracoder.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

RT if you also wish ill upon JK Rowling.

2632270021987

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Thanks for the heads up, ill try to hop in while I'm making dinner haha

010

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Am I right in thinking it's all prerecorded materials and critiques with maybe a live session once a month? Curious how you've found those reviews since it's not in a 1 to 1 format where you can discuss?

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Yup this is the one I was looking at. Gave this a watch earlier and do like the look of it. Being made redundant soon with a little severance package so I can afford to go in on some courses, but I just wanna know I'm not wasting my money haha

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Does anyone have any experience with Sierra Division art courses? Curious about the environment course and the student work out of it looks pretty great. Feel like im brute forcing my way through projects and could do with a good pipeline and better fundamentals

211

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Ah I get ya, I thought you meant the thousands of videos that use the same weird ai voice haha. I didnt realise they were looking to demonetise faceless narration, that would eat into a lot of the video essayists content..... definitely something to figure out there

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Straight out banning ai I'm sure would be an insurmountable task to keep on top of, so atleast demonetization dissuades so many people from churning out hundreds of slop videos. Yeah i can see that being an issue. Though id rather they use plain text to speech than steal someone's voice

120

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

It happened about a month ago, but no way to tell from that screenshot when the guy posted it. Braindead either way

110

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Did this guy not hear about youtube demonetising all ai content? Literally pissing into the wind

120

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

I dont like the idea of effectively modelling a prop twice, but thats the next plan: use the cad high poly as reference to model on top of. Hopefully having a base mesh already will help navigate a lot of the sticking points I've had with complex shapes in the past

000

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Well, I was very hopeful that plasticity would be the answer to alot of my hard surface modelling woes, but alas, the cad to low poly workflow just isn't working for me. It's a much faster modelling tool for high poly meshes, but thats as far as it goes when it comes to game assets I think.

100

Reposted by Mike Cockayne

Des Walsh @deswalsh.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I have been in the industry 14 years now and have been part of 14 games and many of them and my personal work can be seen on my portfolio and I'm available for environment work in the UK, Here is some work for 4 of them titles. #gamedev #3dart www.artstation.com/pikminman

High poly helicopter made for jurassic world evolution

Track for the racking game Stampede royal racing

Level art for the game South of the Circle

12842273

Mike Cockayne @mraygames.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

The thought of going straight from this soul destroying admin job into another one, with the likely addition of office based and micro-management, is just the most miserable thing imaginable.

030