iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 23h

Here's a piece I'm really excited to roll out: An in-depth interview with Dropout's Sam Reich, diving deep on the game design of Game Changer season 8. Do I make a parody of myself by bringing up the concept of "the magic circle"? Oh baby, you bet I do. avclub.com/game-changer...

avclub.com

“We really aren’t control of that dial”: Sam Reich on designing the games of Game Changer season 8

The Dropout CEO on encouraging competition in his players and the ways he stops himself from turning into Mr. Beast.

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Nick Pancakes @p.ancak.es · 28/09/2026

The GFM passed the 12k mark, which means I'm on the hook to get Brayton to join me for a one-off podcast episode about Foodfight! (2012), as I've threatened him with for a couple of years. That's why you all pushed to pass 12k, right? It's still open, so don't stop just because that goal was met!

gofund.me

Donate to Duckraiser: Help Duckfeed.tv Recover from Legal Expenses, organized by Kaye Ross

EDIT: Here are the donation incentive for top donors! Write a messa… Kaye Ross needs your support for Duckraiser: Help Duckfeed.tv Recover from Legal Expenses

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My hottest stand-up take is that stand-ups should only get uglier. Sometimes when one breaks big they use the money to get handsomer and it always sucks.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

My friends got hit with a massive unexpected expense, so we're turning it into content. I'm working today, so I won't be on the stream until my shift is over, but you should start watching now! It'll be good!

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. PT, I think we'll be playing some more Deadzone: Rogue, a silly little game that's got fun 3-player action. Reminder that tomorrow I won't be streaming on MY channel: Instead, I'll be participating in the last half or so of the Duckraiser fundraising stream.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The shit that is cool in Control Resonant is so, so cool (and has only gotten better as I've neared the end) but it's buried under some of the most boring core design choices - especially an obsession with constant, insanely repetitive fights - that it's hard to recommend. avclub.com/game-theory-...

avclub.com

Sequel Control Resonant tries to be more than the sum of some extremely boring parts

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A wild thing about my job is that you'll see a new bit of news and suddenly think "Oh yeah, I DID spent like a week watching every Saw movie and ranking most of the traps" www.avclub.com/saw-franchis...

avclub.com

Game on: Ranking the 20 best (and 5 dumbest) traps in the Saw movies

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I don't know if I actually suck at conducting interviews but I for sure suck at not feeling like a huge alien dweeb immediately after conducting interviews.

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Sam Barsanti @sambarsanti.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I would like to join everyone else on bsky in bragging that I also know @erikadams.bsky.social and worked with him for many years at a popular website.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I finally picked up There Is No Antimemetics Division yesterday, and quickly realized that I half-remembered portions of it from old SCP trawls. The rare book where having half-remembered impressions of the same story but with different names and details attached is a feature, not a bug!

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Aw jeez we went to the scary store

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

God grant me the confidence of a mediocre boss fight designer in 2026 deciding that what this tap-a-tap-a-tap-a fest really needs is a full second health bar.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Streaming at 8 tonight! Gonna co-op some Deadzone: Rogue

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I deliberately play up my buffoonery on my streams, but the descent here from sneering jerk to "oaf who is watching his balloon float away and realizes he's about to waste at least 10 minutes of everybody's time" in this clip is both extremely sincere and really powerful.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I reached out to the chain and got the name of the guy who made that super-fun Resident Evil promo short. Good job, Isaac Etter! www.avclub.com/midwest-thea...

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

One of my most satisfying PlayStation Platinum trophies ever, what an incredible game

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m., I believe we may actually fully finish Big Walk tonight!

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Erik Adams @erikadams.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The History Of Concrete starts rolling out this weekend, so I whipped up a quick How To With John Wilson sampler to whet your appetite for a documentary that is definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, about one of the most common building materials on the planet.

avclub.com

How to get into How To With John Wilson in five episodes

A pre-History Of Concrete

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Wrote about Shroom And Gloom, the most fun I've had with a deckbuilder in a minute - specifically because it doesn't worry too much about whether it's letting you build really broken stuff www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

For the record, I'm only smiling like this to make fun of him

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Resident Evil: Fun AF. A video game-ass movie operating on video game-ass logic

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Duckfeed @duckfeed.tv · 18/09/2026

We want to give you a heads up about something going on. This summer we had to resolve a legal matter, and it's nearly wiped us out financially. SO, we are throwing a little streaming party on Saturday, September 26 from 12pm to 8pm Pacific in order to recover. www.patreon.com/duckfeedtv/p...

patreon.com

Duckraiser: Duckbound - Help Us Recover From Legal Expenses | Duckfeed.tv

Hi folks, we're writing to let you know about two related things that are happening very soon, but first a little backstory. This summer we

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Pete Croatto @petecroatto.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

For @avclub.com's Random Roles, I talked with Josh Pais about everything from finding Raphael's soul to learning that Bruce Willis was in poor health to being a leading man, which he is in the terrific CHECKOUT. Plead read and share. I watched JOKER for this, and I didn't even get to it.

avclub.com

Being an original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle helped inspire Josh Pais' line of acting lessons

Josh Pais chats about Sex And The City's "Modelizer," accommodating Bruce Willis' aphasia, and getting notes from Mike White.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Hey! I'm on Slow Horses (Slorses) duty at The A.V. Club this season. Come help me contemplate River Cartwright, Britain's Wrongest Man! avclub.com/slow-horses-...

avclub.com

It’s Bummer Season as Slow Horses returns for a funereal premiere

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I was annoying Conrad by picking him up and holding him when Someone Else decided to hop aboard

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m., as we get closer to getting ALL of the [insert your name for Big Walk Collectibles here] in Big Walk! Going to actually start at 8 p.m.! Unless something happens! I can't control things happening!

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I was on Staff Picks duty with @mcastimovies.bsky.social again; she opted for a thoughtful, emotionally affecting documentary and I went for a bunch of idiots trying to make each other guess shit like "You used to be Timbuctoo but now you're Timbucthree because you're mad about Pringles"

avclub.com

Staff Picks: A New Wave journey and the most deliberately irritating improv game

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Cozy Snugglefield @garybutterfield.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

While you kids were playing Minecraft, I was buying doing Mind Craft

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Christopher Nolan taking vengeance on Warner Bros. for shoving Tenet onto HBO Max by ascending to some new tier of box office godhood for a rival studio will never not be funny to me. www.avclub.com/odyssey-univ...

avclub.com

The Odyssey just became Universal's highest-grossing movie ever

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

One thing about the current mining of online horror by Hollywood is that it's a shift in how things used to work. I still think about this viral story called The Dionaea House that scared the shit out of me in the early 2000s. Horror-as-emails, shockingly effective. web.archive.org/web/20041030...

web.archive.org

The Dionaea House

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Stream will be late tonight, FYI. Starting at roughly 8:45 Pm Pacific

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is incredibly wild to me: The SCP Foundation Wiki Licensing Team gave me a statement this afternoon confirming that nobody making the V/H/S/: SCP movie that A24 has just signed on to has talked to anybody from the Wiki.

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The A.V. Club @avclub.com · 11/09/2026

Our TV team, senior editor @erikadams.bsky.social and critic @salonig.bsky.social, make their predictions for who will win (and stump for who should win) at this year's #Emmys. Get up to speed and follow all the news with #EmmysWatch over @surf.social! #promoted www.avclub.com/emmys-2026-p...

avclub.com

Who will and should win at the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards?

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Re-upping for night time folks: My review of the slick, but unambitious attempt to give Wolverine the Marvel's Spider-Man treatment.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

There are many reviews of Marvel's Wolverine out there this morning but I'm reasonably sure mine is the only one that uses "tetchedness" to describe the game's Rage mechanic. avclub.com/marvels-wolv...

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

We finally give in and picked up our previous cats' ashes todays after having them both pass last summer, and it was a fun reminder that grief is not madness but a kind of horrible sanity; the temporary stripping of the comforting and necessary delusion that anything you love will survive.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Y'all shamed us "calling it sportsball" types but guess what: People are still ascribing too much meaning and importance to sports in a way that allows bad actors to hijack the cultural conversation! It could not fucking matter less if teen sports are "fair." It's all just games!

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I can usually at least wrap my brain around the Bad Gamer Opinion du jour, but the people mad Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie doesn't slavishly recreate the games baffle me. I promise you, friend, the characters and plot are not really what you're responding to! Vibes-based franchise.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It's wild that they deliberately didn't say there's a new Ace Attorney game in this Direct so they can surprise me with it later. It's wild that they'd do this, just for me.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

You enjoy Noel from Swan Boy's current string of improbable successes because you have come to like and identify with him despite his inherent flaws. I enjoy them because it will make it all the funnier when the pendulum inevitably swings back and his nuts get mangled again. We are not the same.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Credits on Mortal Shell 2! Some frustrations, but I appreciate a) they're really found a lot of ways to vary the play via the Shells and weapons and b) it has the weird ambiguity that so many Soulslikes struggle to capture.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Streaming tonight at 8! I swear to god, we will actually play Big Walk tonight. Probably.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I think about the essential fragility of everything I love about once every 20 minutes, so it was DEFINITELY a good thing for my day that a trip to Hasbro's Wikipedia page sent me down a rabbit hole on David Snow, The Guy Who Got Lawn Darts Banned For The World's Saddest Reason

latimes.com

Daughter Killed by Lawn Dart : Grieving Father Is Given a Bitter Lesson in Civics

"I took American government in high school," David Snow said.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

If someone had made a 3D version of Zork using real game design tools, I wouldn't have LIKED it - the game's text-based nature is intrinsic and good - but I would have at least respected that there was passion motivating it. I want to burn that AI-shit-out version and salt the Earth beneath it.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Trying to shape a Lanterns thought: I think the show thinks John Stewart's "unmoving sniper" thing is Kind Of Cool/Heroic? And it's a real dividing point for me. There's SOME shading there but I do think we're meant to think it's at least a little badass, and not just Pure Uncut Sociopath Shit.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Here's a fun piece for your Labor Day perusal: 17 movies about telling your job to kick rocks. (Not my pitch, I like my job. Re-watch Joe Vs. The Volcano.) www.avclub.com/inventory-la...

avclub.com

Take this job and…: 17 films that extol the virtues of anti-work

This Labor Day, celebrate the holiday with 17 movies that remind us that we work to live, not the other way around.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

We had a nice time with Rocky, and then we Put Him Away! This is how it should all be.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I don't often give society its plaudits, but I just wanted to compliment y'all for getting really into, and then becoming clearly over, Rocky from Project Hail Mary in a reasonable amount of time. Didn't wear out its welcome!

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