iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

I was so surprised how good Mint is. It's been a decade since I messed with linux and it's super viable. If it wasn't for some steam games still not working (lots still do) it would be my main OS.

Josh Bycer @gwbycer.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Reposted by Brandon Franklin

It's time for another #indiegamedev shoutout with my weekly showcase video series youtu.be/nGJpIYGvEd4

youtu.be

An Indie Game For Everyone | #indiedev Showcase 336 #gamewisdom #indiegames

YouTube video by Game Wisdom

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

"Good systems are consistent, but good game design is about exceptions." Wish I had a cool name for it, in my head I just call it "oof".

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I'm all for tearing down the Whitehouse, building it back up again is where I draw the line.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Documentation needed for publisher.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Steam has no say directly, but they look at all of your metrics including wishlist conversions, so discounts can get that ball rolling. Afaik though the #1 metric is dollars spent on your game, so I think that's why people say don't discount if you're pretty sure you're a hit already.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

I've heard: if you have a ton of wishlists and a marketing budget, don't discount cuz you will likely have the hype to get many people to buy anyways, and if you're not sure if you have a hit or not do at least 10% discount to try and build momentum from the wishlisters you do have.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

A skeet a week makes the tweets delete 🎵

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

I guess democracy huh. Good news for the first time in what feels like a decade. Fuck yeah @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

I think people are right that games were more affordable relative to the gaming public's buying power in the last 10 years. People are rightfully pissed that they could easily access consoles as an expense, but now they can't. Unfortunately, they're mad at Nintendo instead of global economic policy.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Here's a picture of my lobby earlier where we all just hung out at the beach until the clock ran out. Hope that takes your mind off of it.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Yeah I always chuckle when I see it under "social themes" as well. It's such a funny imagined context they've concocted where that is actually valid consumer information.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

concurrent to American capitalism doesn't seem so much a rebuttal as just another example of the absurd torment that capitalism demands.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I think the point you were originally responding to was pointing out that the current system creates such absurd torment then maybe we should collectively recognize that before picking an ideology we live and die by. The minutia of the Soviet Union's poverty that existed in the context of and

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

He's playing @jesawyer.bsky.social in the dramatic recreation of New Vegas (the Fallout show).

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

This looks like a Disco Elysium thought cabinet piece

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

I think it is because their life has no conflict so the world seems perfect to them. Even if they intellectually understand the negative externalities, they don't emotionally understand it as anything more than a game with those people as liabilities in that game. It's sad. Evil and sad.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

This photo looks like Katy Perry kissing the ground after riding the space bus.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I got real life french lessons from a former employee a year ago, they laid her off to replace her with AI way back then. I guess they still had contractors in the mean time between then and now.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

It feels much better. I remember entire strategies to subvert these systems, and I frequently feel they aren't needed now. I can try to out scale the game, but it's more fun to just play it as it says you're meant to now. Feels like a big win towards recommending the game with fewer caveats haha

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

significant improvements to the core system problems that existed in the original games leveling and scaling systems.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

then be stuck not have any combat ability stats going up more than 1/100 per level. another huge win is the combat system has been overhauled in a way to remove the spamming as much, weapons are more differentiated with range, damage, and speed. Late game could start to be wonky but these are

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

and feeling a net gain from leveling. Part is that the archaic system of you pick 3 core stats to get seemingly random bonuses (its not random it's based on skill leveling). Now that's just a point allocation system so progress however you want. this means it harder to level up non-combat skills,

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Obviously not extensive late game info yet, but my experience as been that yes a lot of the way progression and difficulty relate is changed. First thing is just those first few levels, it was that conventional wisdom was don't level past level 5-10 to avoid bad scaling, but I have been leveling

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

hey @bsky.app plz verify me. there's not much incentive for people to impersonate me, but I make cool games and I go by my real name online so I think I deserve to see a cool checkbox next to my name. thanks :)

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Probably true when talking globally, but there were decades of specialization in game dev in part because of how inaccessible doing even one discipline was and there were (until the last couple years) many specialized junior tracks at big studios.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

I always assumed this meant you stop getting new versions, not that they unlicense you the product. My Photoshop 6 license still works, I just don't get updates anymore 🤷‍♂️

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

It used to be better about 10 years or so ago. They started reducing quality of ingredients pretty hard at that point and paying worse wages so the whole thing just kind of enshitified.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

That was my starting point haha. And at the time I didn't have very articulate reasons why; I think I just noticed that all those people sucked.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

That 3rd stump is in Evangelion I think.

Neha🍰 @nehapolitan.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Reposted by Brandon Franklin

Now that I'm back from the US and not in fear about being detained at customs for my political beliefs, I helped create a charity album for Palestine! 'Composers for Palestine' is a collection of beautiful indie video game music. Enjoy, donate and share! RT's appreciated tinyurl.com/yeyw4yta

tinyurl.com

Composers for Palestine, by Various Artists

16 track album

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

The fact he is not in prison or worse says more.

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Just sounds like Disco Elysium in space and I don't mean that as a criticism haha

GarethMakes @garethmakes.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Reposted by Brandon Franklin

I wanna make a game about Dwarves, what is something you associate with Dwarves? There are no wrong answers! #indie #gamedev

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

underground + the trope of the balrog and other monsters living deep underground (also heavily present in dwarf fortress though idr if you can eat the monsters). The anti-magic trope also comes up in this story on the grounds of it being "unnatural" from the dwarves perspective.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

mining since those are very grounded, earthly activities. The cooking of monsters comes from Delicious in Dungeon, a popular anime, a character, Senshi, helps the main characters survive in the dungeon by making meals out of monsters. This makes perfect sense to me since they mine a lot and live

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

So the aversion to magic is from two things, in D&D up to 2nd edition Dwarves just couldn't become wizards as a class. I think this probably is that way due to their generally distrustful and isolationist traits popularized in lotr, but imo it also makes sense with their affinity for crafting and

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

really encapsulates that tone and personality even in a scifi setting. also if you want the source of any of these things I listed, happy to provide the origin

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

I think deeprock galactic does a great job of highlighting the humor inherent to them. imo the reason why dwarf fortress works as well as it does is because there's some inherent wackiness that people associate with dwarvish behavior (probably a lot to do with Gimili in the lotr movies) and deeprock

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

rock and stone, brother. quantum crate storage, balrogs, racism, craftsmanship, alcoholism, resistance to poisons, always knowing the angle of the ground they're standing on, toxic pragmatism, stoicism (lame kind), religious zealotry, aversion to magic, cooking monsters, axes.

Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Shout out to Avowed for the ambiguous wording

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Brandon Franklin @sagasstudios.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

It's worth noting that in american english classes we are taught that "he" is the default pronoun to use grammatically when you don't know. "They" as a more reasonable alternative default has become more culturally common but still isn't taught that way because america bad.