iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 8h

ccing @willovergard.bsky.social I thought my halloween fandom had sort of been tapped out; so many bad sequels and clunky licenses etc But for some reason the two of you doing the "Michael! [overly earnest statement], michael!" bit has allowed it to do a 90 degree sit up and rise again, no lie

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 8h

yeah but you posted this on your own video, admit it, what are we even doing here

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

oh god. yep. I see it now. Finishing this script, how many quazillion times did I use the word 'seem'? - I love the sound of it, yes, but there is no excuse for the counter to ever go this high! This is the filthy Dungeon Master in me! It's a weasel-word in my hands, y'all oh NO

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Stephen, my impossibly productive business partner: the full release of @thekillingstone.com will also be available on Xbox and PlayStation, plus the Epic Store. V1 launch date coming *very* soon. 🕯️🪨🩸

Key art for The Killing Stone - a devilish figure confronts you across some kind of board-game like layout. An eye-shaped design in gold behind him has small cut-out shapes resembling horns over his head.

A bloody stone is visible in the center of the game board, itself with another eye-like design. In one of the Devil's hands dangles a headless figure in scholar's robes. Fairly realistic looking blood trails from it to the stone object / token.

Figurines of what appear to be a family await their own fate on the left side of the board.

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Failbetter Games | Wishlist Mandrake on Steam! @failbettergames.com · 30/09/2026

We're hiring! We're looking for a Writer and Narrative Designer to join the Fallen London team at a senior or mid level. This position is permanent, remote, and full time, which for us means 35 hours a week. #GamesJobs

Night. The House of Chimes - a tower which you might immediately think of as Big Ben - is adrift in the River Thames. It still seems to be keeping time. In the background, a large, alien building looms over the city of London.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

fwiw same, but for whatever game I'm making 🙃

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I know this is also a semi-cursed thing to say in 2026 but planning & executing these seems like a nice retirement vision. A few folks around here seem to have made it theirs.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

once again, I can't recommend @locquest.bsky.social highly enough, folks. The thoughtful, probing questions by their translators ... have made the writing better, I'm not kidding. We have this big Q&A spreadsheet with them, and it's a record of me saying ... good point, maybe I should learn English

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

maybe this sky is an uno reverse callout! maybe I'm saying "be like LF" ever think about that? CLEARLY, NO! BECAUSE MUSICAL SELF LOATHING IS STILL SELF LOATH- (etc, you get it 🖤)

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You. Yeah you. I heard you talking the most heinously uncharitable shit about yourself, just now. We can ALL hear it. I'm not gonna tell you to stop, because, y'know, c'mon, it's your whole thing- But at least have the decency to turn it into a jaunty little song

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The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

if you say "The Museum of English Rural Life" three times in a mirror, nothing happens. but if you speak it a fourth time, a man in a smock appears and asks you to incant the poem on the side of this rather menacing jug

harvest festival jug featuring a rather spooky sunshine design

the reverse of the jug, featuring a poem. it reads: "Harvest is come all
busy now in making
of the Barley mow if
you the Barley mow
neglect of Good ale you
can not then expect"

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

you were once *even younger* ? you. wot. mate frankly I think it's all prosecutable behavior (great photo, I mean)

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☀️🌸idspispopd🥀🌙 @bhaalspawn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Happy #TillysGameversary 🎂, System Shock (1994)! Famously, it was a hellish experience using Microsoft SharePoint which gave Looking Glass Studios the idea for System Shock's evil AI, SHODAN. Merciless, evil & totally out of control, SharePoint is still in use today.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

sometimes, recording pick-ups, you just remove big chunks of the script, say "excised for length" and replace it with... whatever is left of your brain: "MORE SCARY GRANDMA BEING A KNOWER SHE HAS CLOCKED YOU AS A TINY CRIME WIZARD"

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Halloween Appreciation Account (gcmaybe) @gcmaybe.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Bloody Tears on a harp. I need a longer version of this in my life. www.youtube.com/shorts/9O33r...

youtube.com

Castlevania: Bloody Tears #shorts

YouTube video by HarpistKT

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Double Fine @doublefine.com · 19/09/2026

We just hit 550K funded, so it’s time to announce our next stretch goal! At 600K, ERIKA ISHII (Ghost of Yōtei, Dropout, Dimension 20) will lend their voice talent to the winning project! 🤯 Back the campaign today: f.mtr.cool/yq0fmuz3wp

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Check the thread, this is a tremendously generous offer for aspiring game writers / NDs

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dr. hazel 🕸️ @hazelmonforton.com · 18/09/2026

Steinbeck, John. (1939.) The Grapes of Wrath.

Twitter user Alyssa Sabo.

If I had huge knockers like like Sidney sweeten I’d actually be breastfeeding the hungry, not freaking posing nude for sports commercials. Jeez.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

You absolutely should, as an archive sicko they should send you one in a crate of other extremely hip compression themed merch. Too much, in fact - for a weirdly improbable Mary poppins style unboxing

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Karla P Zimonja @eternal.observer · 16/09/2026

Look, there's a Famicase jam! itch.io/jam/famicase... You get to pick one of the existing famicases famicase.com/26/index.html and make a game for it. I got to see an exhibition of them in person recently, and they are super charming.

itch.io

Gamejam My Famicase Barcelona

A game jam from 2026-09-16 to 2026-10-05 hosted by indiedevday. From 16 to 30 September 2026 we're running an open gamejam where games are based on the My Famicase Exhibition 2026 cartridges . Pick on...

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This went beautifully btw. 🫀 Fairly soon we’ll also release a big interview Emma & I did together about this game. We are so lucky that she, Liam, and Anna-Maria believed in us. TKS somehow competes w/ our actual live-theater project, in terms of human frailty & specificity that AI could *never*.

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danielleri @danielleri.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Have some BIG NEWS, and it really is wild that today is also the anniversary of the Fanbyte Apocalypse. But my time at Game Developer is done, and hence, my time as a full-time game journalist has come to an end. 20 years in a career sure is something. www.tumblr.com/danielling/8...

After 20+ years of writing professionally about games, including time at Polygon and Idle Thumbs, launching Waypoint, serving as editor in chief of Fanbyte and finally as EIC at Game Developer, my time is done. I'm officially out at Game Developer. Given the state of game journalism, this obviously means leaving the profession, at least as a full-timer.

I'm out, with respect to my colleagues, and a lot of love for the site as it was. We've published work that I'm extremely proud of, particularly our reporting on labor and on how workers are finding things in a miserable, gutting moment in the game industry. I'm proud of the dev-authored features we had for so many years, the resources and knowledge and bits and pieces of know-how that I still use, to this day, in my own game design courses.

What's next? Well, I'm not leaving games. I'll always be making and teaching and writing about games, it just can't be my full time gig anymore. I've actually been doing narrative design on a game since 2022, with a team I really believe in, and I can't wait until I can show that off properly. I am also OPEN TO WORK. Anything involving writing or editing words, editing video, teaching (I've been teaching college since 2009), and hey, I'm an EMT and got my phlebotomy cert a couple years back. I'm versatile!

For full-time employment, I am eventually going to try my hand at medicine. I've served as an EMT here in NYC since 2016, and I've been taking science courses post-bac since January 2025, usually 2 or more at once concurrently with... the full time job, my part time adjunct job, and volunteering on said ambulance. Exhaustion set in years ago, lol, so I've settled into something beyond that at this point. I feel like I've been climbing a mountain, and trying to make many things work at once. I had a pretty good rhythm going, truth be told, despite all the burnout. I'm proud of myself for that.

I'd really like to be a physician assistant one day, or potentially a nurse practitioner. It's a very, very long and hard road to either of those paths, but I'm going to make my way as best as I can.

How do I feel? Again, devastated was years ago. We're pretty far past that at this point. What's happened to journalism in America is... a topic for a very depressing, very well-researched book. I hope someone writes that one day. What happened to game journalism... well, it's more of a niche, but I can say only that reporting honestly on layoff after layoff and corporate malfeasance writ large and executives gambling the whole industry down the drain was tough, but somebody had to do it.

But it's not something one can do without editorial independence.

It's dramatic, but I'm going to mourn this career. Twenty years of my life, at 42, is just about half of my days alive. I put a lot, and I do mean *a lot* of myself into this. I tried at all times to lead with empathy and care for the human beings around me and to be as honest and frankly honorable as possible in my work. I really, really tried to live my values in my work in this career, and the only way I can keep that reputation is the path ahead of me.

So there it is. Expect to see me making games, making art, teaching game design, writing about games from time to time @VeeGeeBees. Expect to hear more about my adventures as an EMT, and hopefully, soon as a PA student, and eventually, as an advanced practitioner. I've kept telling myself, in the darkest and worst days of the last few years, that I'll fly again, somehow. It'll just look very different.

To sign off, and pull an old favorite out of my pocket: be good, and be good at it.

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Heatherface Wixson @thehorrorchick.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Hey everyone, the next entry in my One-and-Done Horrors series is SOCIETY. This had been in the works before we lost George so writing this was a bittersweet. But man, Brian Yuzna was right on the money: from-the-desk-of-the-horror-chick.ghost.io/one-and-done... - open to free/paid subscribers!

from-the-desk-of-the-horror-chick.ghost.io

One-and-Done Horrors: Society

Exploring horror, film, and pop culture, all while celebrating the creators, history, and artistry that keep the genre alive.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

💪 I searched for "warrior salute" and this vibe is far cheekier than I meant it - yet too good not to use. "You speak with courage. As did Xena. Under a conspicuously deleted looking sky"

static.klipy.com

Xena Warrior Princess: Lucy Lawless's Salute

ALT: Xena Warrior Princess: Lucy Lawless's Salute

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Ed Smith @edwardsmithwriter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Final Jewel Cases, right here, right now.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It's a recording week! I get to hear @emmagregoryvoice.bsky.social breathe marvelous, layered (twisted, renaissance girlboss) energy into Mariken for @thekillingstone.com tomorrow.🕯️🫀🕯️ This was the strongest GIF Bluesky had for Lady Macbeth, and frankly, all your Wednesday AMs deserve to be *judged*

static.klipy.com

The Lady In The Lake Film Noir

ALT: The Lady In The Lake Film Noir

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Chris Wade @luckshotgames.com · 08/09/2026

Valve should lower their rev share portion to 15% for the first $1m a game earns. Not because it would would help small teams survive to make more games (it would), but because they would earn more money in the long term.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

musicians, I know the court order SAYS no-contact. But- I love you all forever.🕯️If I couldn't loop some neurally-resonant banger on deadline days? Like one of those jars of goo that, when near a speaker: produce tiny, leaping waveforms of joy- I- -would- well. Be far less productive goo right now

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

You are my goddamn hero, Kel. Not only for pivoting from games when your soul said so, which... 🤘- I can't think of anyone I'd more want to see, charging through smoke to extract one of us questionable bipeds, their cat, or - knowing you - their goldfish. Do the thing.

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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 02/09/2026

Underrated god-tier advice

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Kris Straub (كريس) @krisstraub.com · 05/09/2026

hi pax! i’ll be in bandland (level 4 SCC summit) today with a new pin, and on the pitch-your-game panel tonight at 9p in frog theatre!

pax west floor map of the seattle convention center summit, level 4.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I'm here to loudly support this demonstration of visibility for the eye-positive community which is to say, when you have more than two. 👁️🕯️👁️🕯️👁️

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Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Big fan of this game and have put many many many hours into trudging around in the virtual Canadian wilderness.

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

you know... I really liked the internet. if by any chance you're the guy who did this to the internet, I'd sure like to sock you in the mouth

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Chris Plante @plante.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Game publishers want the staffing of film and TV without the unions that make gig-to-gig work a viable living and a sustainable business.

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Ryan Mattson @rmattson.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Today in kids saying silly things: daughter (5) said we were going to do a science experiment, “but I need my goggles so I don’t get science in my eyes.”

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J. "null" Thomas @nullspeak.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Saddest game dev whiteboard. Big red caps, cradled by fastidious black drop shadow. Two pens. Shameful already: “BRAINSTORM” “1. Immersive Sin (Two underlines) Then… “Is this anything?”

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Cara Ellison @caraellison.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

glamour (a visual illusion, often suspiciously good) is a Scots origin word but it is also very funny to think about how it came from the word ‘gramarye’, because Scottish people seem to have been extremely suspicious of something written and the internet and AI have truly proved us right

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SaraAAAGHH A GHOST!!! Ford 🐍🎨👻 @angeloslh.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Oh right they mean let electricity do the chores

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