iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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JBR @jetblackraider.itch.io · 04/10/2026

Commorragh working as a real city is so important 2 my heart

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Seann, or: a Wretched Beast @seannb.bsky.social · 9h

Employees of Wizards of the Coast, and company that has been known to employ the Pinkertons, have announced their intention to unionize. Godspeed and good luck.

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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

HUGE: The Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes have both voted to impose a three-year moratorium on data center construction on tribal lands — temporarily banning dara centers on 8,000 square miles. The Cherokee Nation, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Tribe have all imposed similar bans.

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

one of the rare musicals that doesn't have a single bad number

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

the game feels a lot easier *up to* this point but i wonder if rather than being easier overall they just created a more sensible difficulty curve where getting a really huge city is trickier while the early game isn't quite as brutal

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

made it to a solid 4k pop city in Songs of Syx, which is big enough to start needing dedicated haulers and secondary warehouses for at least some goods + naive design choices in my housing blocks started coming back to haunt me. i think i made it up to 10k in an old patch? unsure how lol

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matte jones @pillowfort.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

without any doubt:

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

i'm hoping the empire is a freak accident of terrain and/or faction generation and not just how things work this patch, otherwise i don't really know how the player is meant to compete

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

made it to ~2700 lizards but i'm hemmed in to a tiny peninsula by a massive empire of pig-men who almost have more troops than i have citizens in total. probably gonna restart rather than try to get to ~2k troops with only my capital to break out.

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

*extremely sean connery voice* they're all good dogsh, brent

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Jjinandtonic @jjinandtonic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I can’t believe we’re back to medieval level conflicts like “local merchant princes attempt to bribe theologians and the Pope’s advisors so the Pope will issue a favorable proclaimation”

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

i've compared it to treating the DM like a computer running the game, rather than a fellow player. drives me batty. it would also make me bored witless as a player, like why am i even playing a game this crunchy if i'm not directly engaging with the rules?

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

ultimately your only real option is to keep cranking up sliders until you accumulate a surplus and it gets really tedious doing that for everything instead of, like, actually being able to plan

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

i love the vibes and basic gameplay of Songs of Syx but every time i get back into it and get a city to a decent size i remember that all the numbers re: how many resources you have, how many citizens a given service can provide for, etc. are complete fucking nonsense and lose the will to play

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

yeah. like i'm not actually against difficulty levels on principle at all (and there are finer gradations there, like approaching it as a "menu" vs. hand-picked tweaks arranged as ascension levels) but the conflation of "video game is too hard" with disability rights makes my blood boil

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

adapting yourself to overcome a challenge is a fundamentally different experience than adapting the challenge to you. they're fun for different reasons, they communicate different things, they have different implications for how you design everything else, etc.

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

and honestly thank god. can you imagine the damage it would have done if a fighting game with a F2P monetization model ACTUALLY hit it big?

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

c'mon ny'all, let's say it one meow time

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The Onion @theonion.com · 29/09/2026

Cornell Vows That Rapists Will Be Forced To Write Much Longer Essays In The Future theonion.com/cornell-vows...

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

and this logic of substitution applies even to games that don't directly monetize via gambling or battle passes or w/e. the common element is just this method of persuading the player that they're having fun via an abstract symbol that you've taught them stands for fun they've already had

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

you're given the option to purchase progression directly for money. the progression still "stands for" whatever you initially enjoyed about the game, for whatever made it engaging at the start, and still holds a certain allure even though the actual act of play has become boring.

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

and then finally -- at the same time that the original activity starts to become rote and trivial, partly through repetition, partly because the virtual progression has completely eclipsed any sense of challenge, and (often) partly helped along in the middle by a spike in environmental difficulty --

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

you're rewarded for doing this with some form of virtual progression ("virtual" meaning it lives in the game, not in the player; it's not YOU that's improving, it's your character or your gear or w/e); this virtual progress is first associated with, but then substitutes for the actual act of play

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

it's like a series of substitutions, or fetishes in the classic sense. you start playing something like Warframe or Genshin Impact (to use examples I know well) and you encounter engaging gameplay, whether that's combat, puzzles, exploration, whatever; point is, intrinsically interesting activities

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this is especially visible in f2p / GaaS stuff, because the financial incentives those games create almost inevitably focus on squeezing money from whales, and the archetypal whale is someone who will pay money to AVOID having to actually play the game, by out-scaling or even outright skipping it

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

the ideal form of commercial gamedev is a fidget spinner that is also a slot machine it's not about communicating anything, it's about self-soothing. this is the rosetta stone to understanding like half a dozen different recurring game design discourses and the design trends that kick them off

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Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Result of sneezing during CT scan Original post

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joe @shariauncle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

increasingly feels like my Perfectly Fine liberal arts education was an artifact grabbed fleeing a burning temple

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i only saw bits and pieces of this conversation without context and was very confused for a minute. "why is everyone talking about Tupac like he only just died?"

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Every college in this country decided that expelling and/or sending the police to beat the shit out of their own students for the crime of being opposed to genocide was their top priority. That and giving Trump complete control of what they teach. Contrast that with how they treat rapists.

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tanze bravopueblo / w.s. healed @tattletale.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

a rulebook should never give players 'permission' to change or break the rules -- the 'permission' is inherent in the fact that it's an inanimate object that can't do anything to stop you. it's at once condescending to the players and denigrating to your own design work

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Kayin @kayin.moe · 28/09/2026

I feel like when people get concerned by FGC jargon they're like tattling on themselves for not having hobbies outside of videogames like some people would see how skate trick are named and described and die like a dorito-peasant.

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dustmop is over here now @dustmop.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

the straw that made the camel start fat rolling

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Venus

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Cage @ridiculouscage.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"why would I deceive you?"

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merr-itt came from outer space @merrittk.com · 26/09/2026

warhammer demon names khorne: bloodskull 'the skull' skullblood slaanesh: lusciousa, the forbidden hole tzeentch: [unpronounceable bird noises] nurgle: goopy poopmeister, fartmagus in queef

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

doesn't hurt that this arc is almost literally CHURCH... BAD? DRAGONS... GOOD? *grabs the mic* CHURCH BAD BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO LET YOU FUCK DRAGONS *raucous cheering*

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

okay the series is terrible about undercutting its own stakes (and taking forever to even introduce a real dramatic conflict in the first place) but it just made me cackle out loud, so i'm gonna stick with it for now ("I'll stick with you. I wanna be there waiting when you croak!")

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

the worst part is understanding things rationally still doesn't prepare you. you can study war or bigotry or poverty or whatever for a living and still be staggered when you encounter the specifics. all the abstract framework does is make you feel worse!

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Tuxedo Catfish @tuxedocatfish.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

it's not even that my tastes have changed all that much; like i'll defend jank and wild experimental swings on principle but for the most part i like very polished, very conventional games in well-established genres. the only difference is who's actually making those for most of my preferred genres

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