iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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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.

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Oh shit dude you're here?! Prepare to be hunted

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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

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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...

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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

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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...

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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…

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Yarn Spinner @ MIGW @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 💚

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

It's been such a highlight of my PhD! Going to try and find an excuse to go back every year for as long as I can. Hope you get an excuse to go in 2026!

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

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

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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

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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)

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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

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

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

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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

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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…

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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-...

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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'

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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

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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

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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

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Step aside Chekhov's gun. There's a new narrative principle in town

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

I'm pretty easy to please with films, but if your first act introduces a door basically made out of knives and then that door fails to make an appearance in act 2 or 3 i'm going to be sad

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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.

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Seems ok for now! Just on my way to the airport so I guess if there's bad news I'll know soon

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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!

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Making it a core mechanic almost certainly ruins the subversive fun of doing it in unintended games though. Morrowind is my favorite museum maker. They made the insane decision to have the game save the location of every object you drop. Save files get huge but you can curate some amazing spaces.

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I tried to make a whole game about making a post apocalyptic museum! Was originally a survival/crafting game but placing collectables was the most fun system I found so I leaned in hard. The game sucks and I never finished it but I still love the idea olliemakesgames.itch.io/cabin-at-the...

olliemakesgames.itch.io

Cabin at the End of the World by Ollie

Survive the storm and commemorate the world that was!

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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

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

Good reminder to me though that any kind of career that relies on algorithmic traffic is probably not for me. The swings in attention are just so brutal, and no matter how much data they give you its so hard to parse what makes one video hit and another bomb.

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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

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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.

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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. 📜

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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

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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.

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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.

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

Incredible work, and happy birthday! Cannot wait to give the full thing a read. Congrats (soon to be) Dr Nielsen

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Being able to nod at someone and ask for 'the usual' in any establishment is the dream! For a year or so me and a friend had such consistent timing at the pub near our office that they started having our drinks on the bar before we arrived. Never felt more like the main character of life

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Oliver Withington @owithington.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Brilliant paper! Thanks for sharing. This might be too big a question for 300 characters, but what's your process for finding new papers? You always seem to be reading and drawing from a broader set of fields than is typical; something I'd love to emulate but really struggle with

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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."

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

Me about to throw several thousand hours into the furnace of an unwieldy, never to be completed game dev journey

Frame from 'The Enigma of Amigara Fault' by Junji Ito depicting an unnamed man about to climb into a hole in the side of a cliff that is the same shape as him.

He is shouting: 'This is my hole! It was made for me!'

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

I've bought tracing paper and stolen my daughters colouring pencils for the first paper prototype. Getting to be too late for an intervention

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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

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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-...

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