iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

One of the sweetest moments of the march: a bunch of shop floor staff at a fancy boutique suddenly having a flash of inspiration and rushing to grab plain shirts to make a trans flag at the window.

2487

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

M is one of the most exciting researchers in the game. Whatever they are cooking up will 100% be cool as heck and you should help them make it

0103

Reposted by Oliver Withington

The Horror At Highrook - Out Now! @highrookhorror.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Well would you believe it. The Horror At Highrook is ON SALE!!! store.steampowered.com/app/2836860/... So if you have been waiting to see what those 230+ very positive reviews are all about maybe now is the time to check it out! 20% off!

store.steampowered.com

Save 20% on The Horror at Highrook on Steam

The Horror at Highrook is an occult card crafting narrative RPG. Explore a haunted mansion with your team of investigators, summon dark entities, craft powerful protections, uncover the fate of the mi...

12219

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Jack Saint @lackingsaint.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

glad to see people really liked this one! unfortunately it seems like youtube doesn't really know where to send it so impressions are unusually low, so any shares are appreciated

215625

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Samuel Roberts @samuelwroberts.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

These BioShock beta screens are well worth a look, if just for the 'placeholder atrocity'. www.reddit.com/r/Bioshock/c...

219748

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

🏃New blog post!🏃 This time I'm writing about the "triumphal procession" of video games - what gets included in the video game canon? And what makes a video game worthy of study, or even just being remembered? florencesmithnicholls.com/2025/05/23/f...

florencesmithnicholls.com

Failing to Escape the Triumphal Procession of Video Games

Have you read Hurricane Season by Brit Bennett? Or perhaps, Nightshade Market by Min Jin Lee? Actually, those are trick questions- I know you haven’t read either because neither of these novels exi…

24719

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Yarn Spinner 🔜 #MIGW26 @yarnspinner.dev · 16/05/2025

🎉 YARN SPINNER 3 IS OUT NOW 🎉 for Unity, Godot, VSCode + try.yarnspinner.dev Including: - Storylets, enums, simple "run this bit only once" syntax - Better variables, easier-to-customise views - Bugfixes + QoL improvements galore - All-new docs + guides Check it out at yarnspinner.dev/v3 💚

13358117

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Any time anyone points out a pun I'd never spotted it makes me paranoid for ages. Like I'm surrounded by an invisible alien threat who's goal is to make me feel foolish when I least expect it

030

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Dr Holly Nielsen @hollynielsen.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Absolutely delighted that the first episode of the podcast I’ve been making with Ubisoft and HistoryHit is now out wherever you get your podcasts! We discuss creating Victorian London in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, featuring an interview with the lead writer ✍️ open.spotify.com/episode/0kTv...

open.spotify.com

How Victorian London Was Brought To Life In Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Echoes of History · Episode

916758

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

#FDG2025 was an absolute blast! 3rd year attending, 3rd year of it being the highlight of my PhD. Inspiring talks, cool new projects and the most welcoming and exciting community I've encountered. To all who attended and especially the organisers, sending all of my love. Cannot wait for FDG2026!

Selfie of me on the Heldenplatz in Vienna

150

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Konstantinos Dimopoulos @konstantinosd.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

You can find the impressive (and free) BBC sound effects archive here: sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk

sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk

BBC Sound Effects

412727

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Day 2 #fdg kicking off! My favorite event in the academic calendar.

180

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

I really try and finish games before moving onto new ones, but the Blue Prince FOMO I'm getting from all of y'all is getting to be too much to bear

010

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Ahmed Khalifa @amidos2006.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

I just found out about this periodic table of game mechanics that is fun to experiment with for brainstorming and game jams. determined-clams.static.domains/chipped #gamejam #brainstorm #gamedev #indiedev

determined-clams.static.domains

Comprehensive Interactive Periodic Table of Game Mechanics (Indie Focus)

1278

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Buddy of mine is trying to use genAI to make assets for his game. Sent me a mesh he'd generated for a basic targeting arrow and asked if I could give it a quick tidy up in Blender. Opened it up and...lol

A really awful 3D mesh of a 2 ended arrow with strange growths on one side. Produced by generative ai of some kind

100

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

8869107628434

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

New Game: Mike Cook Presents SQORP! A Digital Puzzle Game It's a quick little game about laying tiles in a grid, inspired by a mathematical puzzle. Play free on itch, in the browser: illomens.itch.io/sqorp #pico8

2124453

Reposted by Oliver Withington

headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 08/04/2025

What game had an overall bigger negative impact on singleplayer game design because people took the wrong lessons from it: Half-Life 2 or Dark Souls? — neospring.org/+r/168016012...

Anonymous Coward
What game had an overall bigger negative impact on singleplayer game design because people took the wrong lessons from it: Half-Life 2 or Dark Souls?

half life 2 and isn't close. the fully first person yet paradoxically cinematic fps spectacle campaign produced a few bangers but also a lot of absolute trash in the 360 era, as it is ultimately a pretty boring formal structure, emphasising budget above all. call of duty's single player doesn't have THAT much better "core gameplay" than i dunno. homeland or whatever. but it has better pacing, more bespoke assets, more exciting setpieces. not that if you have tons of money your game will automatically be good, but it is very hard to make a game that can compete in the space without tons of money, and the history of the genre bore it out. i don't think it's a coincidence that modern indie shooters take so much more influence from pre half-life boomer shooter design, when budgets and team sizes were so much smaller.

meanwhile i think dark souls has pretty inarguably had an incredibly positive impact on singleplayer game design. i know people are bored of the soulslike formula and i sympathise because it's certainly oversaturated, but also, it got that way because it's really good. and not just really good but really simple too. the core rules of the genre have interesting decisions built into them. enemies respawn at checkpoints so you're encouraged to push on. but you have limited health so you're incentivised to be cautious. it's just a more rich and more adaptable formula across all scopes of production, one that emphasises intentional level design and moment to moment decision making over spectacle and setpieces. but obviously still has room for both in boss fights especially.

so yeah. i'm generally pro dark souls and i think while its initial waves of clones focused too much on surface level elements of slow combat and brutal difficulty, at this point the elements that make the formula are well un…

1524735

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Aftermath @aftermath.site · 08/04/2025

‘An overwhelmingly negative and demoralizing force’: what it’s like working for a company that’s forcing AI on its developers aftermath.site/ai-video-game-...

9759237

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

After 2+ decades of it being hyped up I've finally been playing Planescape: Torment and fair play, its amazing. I especially love how it lets you add your intent to dialogue choices. Feels so cool every time and i'm shocked I've not seen that ripped off more in other RPGs

Screenshot of planescape torment - highlighting that it lets you annotate your dialogue choices with your intent. Here you can pick between two identical dialogues, one highlighted as a 'Vow' and the other as a 'Lie'

000

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Dr. Nic Junius @quakefultales.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

It's trans day of visibility so I'm going to yell more about all the games I make outside of my day job My main project is a lesbian post apocalyptic road trip visual novel that I started as a way to make a visual novel in an engineering department (also Rika is trans <3)

quakefultales.itch.io

Tracks in Snow (In Development Version) by Nic June

A post-apocalyptic roadtrip

24921

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Nathalie Lawhead @alienmelon.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

brutalist bloki a thread with an accumulation of screenshots from all the modeling i've been doing for my procedural city . . giant abandoned structures . . #gamedev

under a building held up by concrete columns

a side view looking up at a brutalist building with bars on each window

looking up at a brutalist concrete building, the varying windows each have bars on them

the top of one of the buildings, with overlapping geometry and windows with bars on them

917514

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Dr Holly Nielsen @hollynielsen.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Absolutely delighted to be writing for Amberspire!! When Nic approached me I jumped at the opportunity to work on such a brilliant project and with a ridiculously talented team 💫 So excited for people to see what we’re creating… I think it’s really special

1013917

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Finally watched Alien Romulus on the flight home and it was...fine. But introducing a door that looks like this and at no point having it chop anyone or anything in half is an Art Crime.

160

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Thank you GDC! What a strange, tiring but delightful week. More cogent thoughts to follow but for now: safe travels, and hope to see you next year!

180

Reposted by Oliver Withington

localthunk @localthunk.com · 12/03/2025

The reason I went back to making Balatro 3 months after I essentially gave it up in March 2022 was because I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn't play Rocket League

736042558

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

New video out! This time talking about the three cruelest pieces of game design I've ever experienced. Algorithm was not a fan of this one but I loved making it and based on the handful of lovely comments, folks who gave it a go are enjoying it.

youtube.com

Arcanum, Braid and Lisa: Three Tales of Exquisite Game Design Cruelty

YouTube video by Bard Hard

1114

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Liz England @lizardengland.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

There's a great gdc talk from many years ago about games of skill, games of chance, and games of labor (where it's about time invested not skill or luck). Which makes me think that maybe this all maps to Power Fantasies, Productivity Fantasies, and maybe Lottery Fantasies.

619922

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Roguelike Celebration @roguelike.club · 03/03/2025

We will be having a Roguelike Celebration GDC meetup this year! ✨ The gathering will take place at Yerba Buena Gardens on Tuesday the 18th from 12:30-2:30pm. Add it to your calendar! Let us know if we'll see you there! Until then, beware of unidentified scrolls. 📜

13410

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Hello! I have a little survey about procedural generation and games. No expert knowledge required - it's for anyone to take and fill in. It'll take about 5 minutes to complete. RTs appreciated! forms.gle/AN4zFDxodQyx...

forms.gle

148175

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Tom Francis @pentadact.com · 03/03/2025

Hello, I'm giving a talk at GDC about writing Tactical Breach Wizards, called How to String a Joke Out for 15 Hours. schedule.gdconf.com/session/inde... It's on Monday at 4.40pm, and it features things like this shot, illustrating why our tactical wizard generator did not produce anything useable.

A list of randomly generated tactical wizard class concepts, including such misfires as Wand Mage and Staff Operator.

1517920

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Jon Walmsley @arghzombies.com · 03/03/2025

You know who should've won an Oscar last night? The person who designed the little 'Gravity on / off' buttons in Alien Romulus.

An dusty, industrial looking control panel in a wall. There are two big white square buttons on it. The one on the left has a red border and the letter 'i' touching the bottom, representing a person stuck to the ground (the dot of the i being their head). The 2nd button also has a red border, but inside the button is an upside down stickman figure, arms and legs spread out. To indicate this person is floating around helplessly in zero-gravity.

50145591805

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Max Kreminski @maxkreminski.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

good philosophical deep-dive on “value capture”: the phenomenon of people outsourcing their values to external metrics; the mechanisms by which it occurs; the potential benefits and (especially) costs philpapers.org/rec/NGUVCH

Screenshot of linked article's title page: "Value Capture", by Christopher Nguyen. Abstract: "Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests."

56211

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

I'm on the precipice of starting a new game project and I might need someone to stop me. This project has '5 years down the drain' written all over it and yet I cannot resist the call. Been thinking about this game for over a year now and I think I need to see if I can bring it into existence

110

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

New Post - Muse: Before You Tweet Hello! Microsoft's new Muse system isn't trying to generate game ideas. If you want a concise summary of what the paper tries to do, and a few notes and criticisms about the project, I wrote something about it. www.possibilityspace.org/blog-before-...

1415472

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Two nice milestones over on Youtube. Hit 2k subscribers and 200k views on my Skyrim vid on the same day. Been my first time getting significant online attention which obviously come with downsides but overall I've been loving this new(ish) journey

Screenshot showing the @ bard_hard youtube channel page, highlighting the over 2k subscribers and over 200k views that one of the recent videos received

130

Reposted by Oliver Withington

.chantal//RYAN @thoughtrise.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

this advice can be applied to any creative pursuit and is SO important this idea of creating the "masterpiece" held me captive as a young creative. i never let anyone see my work because it was never perfect yet. those works were wonderful—and long buried in dust relish CREATION not perfection

2457

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Aura @aurahack.ca · 16/02/2025

i'm absolutely devastated man... 52... i don't use the word lightly but antonov was an actual visionary. his eye for art direction was unlike any other and has been so incredibly inspiring. one of the few who's work you could instantly recognise. this is heartbreaking

71690397

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Week spent in hospital with my youngest was made so much better by this view out our window. Fire safety door inexplicably leading directly onto a 3 story drop, secured only by the worlds smallest padlock. Perfect black comedic surrealism, 10/10 no notes. Every time I saw it it lifted my spirits

Hospital fire door opening out of side of building

Hospital fire door opening out of side of building secured by tiny padlock

020

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Tommy Thompson @tommy.aiandgames.com · 12/02/2025

In this weeks newsletter, I recount my trip to Dagstuhl Seminar 24261: Computational Creativity for Game Development. Discussing how research AI for games can evolve in a world where generative AI runs rampant but is often useless in actual game production. www.aiandgames.com/p/a-week-dis...

aiandgames.com

What's it Like Attending a Dagstuhl Research Seminar? | AI and Games Newsletter 12/02/24

A week talking AI for games in the German countryside.

052

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

hey did you know there's a website called nudel.cc where you can just watch like a dozen different people livecode art and music at the same time, in a huge amazing mess? and you can just edit anything?

A screenshot of a livecoding environment. Several windows with code in are laid out, and behind there is a kaleidoscopic design made by one of the code snippets.

35411

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Best in the game returns! I dream of being able to write with the clarity and passion of Noah one day

000

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Ok so if you want actual thoughts on DeepSeek, here are a few tweets: first, benchmark performance is of dubious usefulness except for AI companies competing with each other to claim superior performance. We have too many benchmarks that don't reflect real usage. themarkup.org/artificial-i...

themarkup.org

Everyone Is Judging AI by These Tests. But Experts Say They’re Close to Meaningless – The Markup

Benchmarks used to rank AI models are several years old, often sourced from amateur websites, and, experts worry, lending automated systems a dubious sense of authority

33512

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I wonder how many players the game industry is _still_ losing to the complexity of 3D game controls, but they feel so normal to those of us WITHIN the industry after all these years that we don't even think to make that easier.

13635

Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Thrilled that this March I'll be speaking at my first #GDC2025! Catch me at the AI Summit talking techniques for visualising procgen system output that could be useful for your next game. If you're attending and want to talk anything and everything procgen I'd love to chat!

schedule.gdconf.com

Game AI Summit: Techniques for Visualizing the Output Diversity of Generative Systems | 2025 Schedule | Game Developers Conference (GDC)

Attend 750 sessions for game designers, programmers, artists, producers, audio, business, and marketing professionals over 5 days at GDC.

191

Reposted by Oliver Withington

Rianna @vividfax.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Favourite piece from the Electric Dreams exhibition at Tate Modern is by Davide Boriani. I recommend seeing these iron shaving creatures in person if you can time it right, as they take little rest breaks www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-moder…

171