iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 14/10/2026

Thanks for the heads up, feeling pretty good about this usage chart. They also made it so you can finally remove the stupid gDocs AI button.

Google Workspace Admin panel showing Gemini usage per interaction as 0 times by 0 users across every app.

150

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 13/10/2026

You wanna see something extremely funny from their stats page

Screenshot of the "Character AI Engagement Quality Index (CAEI™)" from Axis Intelligence that reads "Revenue Efficiency — $2.50 revenue per MAU per year"

120

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 11/10/2026

And the writeup even covers the solved problem problem.

Easy Fox says the surge of players has forced them to take out a bank loan to keep the demo operating. Maintaining the demo is apparently costing them more than $1,000 a day, which they admit they will have to factor into pricing the final product. While a number of game developers have flocked to AI to create in-game assets and code on the back-end, Teach My Little Sister is a more unique case. **Leveraging an agent for sustained real-time gameplay, the game has found an expensive way to recreate what Lifeline and Hey You, Pikachu! accomplished over 20 years ago.**

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 29/09/2026

Two more long conversations down about how useful AI tools are to narrative design. This conversation has happened so many times that I made a graphic to summarize it.

A chart showing a "Marketing" bar with the label "PROMISED genAI VALUE" above a "Reality" bar, where most of the bar is marked "THE SAME WORK DONE THE SAME WAY" except for a tiny square that says "some AI stuff maybe"

140

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 04/09/2026

Fun fact: I leaned into a bunch of the “Texas-isms” I grew up with. 🤷‍♂️

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 02/09/2026

Texts I would send if I had gone into STEM part 5

Apple Messages blue text reading “I dont want to go to a lab I want Döner and beers”

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/08/2026

You know, I make all this stuff and then forget about it and then I find it later and it’s a treat

A loosely colored parody of the Donkey Konga bongo bundles from the 2000s featuring an annoyed looking big circle named “Guerilla Max”

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 26/06/2026

welcome to your Lifelike Child gets an update today, with a bunch of very neat audio revisions and a couple of bug fixes. Check it out if you haven't yet! The vibes are immaculate (deeply unsettling)! westinlee.itch.io/lifelike-child

An eerily empty pixel art playground lit by intense, sunny skies. The text below reads:

The child runs to you and asks, "Did you see me play? Are you happy?" He waits patiently for you to respond.

You say, [the player has selected] "Can you try and be more normal?"

The child nods, as if it understands what you said.

020

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 12/06/2026

Whose notes are these in the screenplays?? Are they in-world???

100

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 12/06/2026

The Lost in Cult IMMORTALITY Design Works is…enormous. Pikachu amiibo for scale. So much stuff! And this was only like £60. How. That’s a cassette tape

100

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 02/06/2026

capsule art update, this feels like quite the upgrade

010

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 02/06/2026

I wasn’t kidding about Honest Ed’s being a traumatic backrooms experience. That place was as creepy as its depiction in Scott Pilgrim

A roped off, empty area of Honest Ed’s lit by a single line of fluorescent tubes and, bizarrely, what looks to be a chandelier hanging from the drop ceiling to roughly chest height over a bunch of weird display islands.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 29/05/2026

Launch announcement! I love when a game hands you an in-world guide that looks real, so I made one. welcome to your Lifelike Child is a puzzle game designed around a 10,000 word user guide packed with disturbing, Robocop-tier satire. Enjoy! westinlee.itch.io/lifelike-child

welcome to your Lifelike Child
a short user guide-diving game from Westin Lee

Troubleshoot your robot son with a detailed 10,000 word user guide.

A screenshot below depicts the guide's top page, with over a dozen sections, tiny, dense caution and warning sections, and an advertisement to "visit Finger-BayerDyn's showcase at CES 2054, booth C18098".

A PC-88 style pixel art image depicts an eerily liminal, empty playground.

In game text below the says 'The child runs to you and asks, "Did you see me play? Are you happy?"' followed by 'You say, "You're doing great."'

Copy below that reads "engage with the Child as if it were real (or don't)"

Over dense examples of user guide pages, text reads: "yes, I really wrote a 10,000 word fictional product manual, and it's packed with jokes, disturbing instructions, and dread."

320

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 23/05/2026

Oh sick a season one episode

“SISKO LETS SOMEONE BORROW A RUNABOUT AND THEY DESTROY IT”

010

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 11/05/2026

I am making a game. The game is almost done. I am particularly proud of the unsettling, minimalist art style. I used to do many arts, but now I am rusty. Limitations!

Mystery House-inspired pixel art of a robot boy refusing to let you dress him while your partner sits at their vanity.

Mystery House-style pixel art of an empty playground lit by eerily bright sunlight.

Mystery House-style pixel art of your partner attempting to power on your new robot child in front of a Christmas tree.

1151

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 13/04/2026

My favorite tiny worldbuilding detail in Welcome to Your Lifelike Child is the “download on the App Store” button in the user guide. It has its own 90s lofi internet banner visual language that looks nothing like anything else in the game.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 13/04/2026

It’s me, I am everyone.

100

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 02/04/2026

If you are tempted to read it, take as a warning this excerpt, which contains three deliciously wrong or stupid statements, the most glaring of which I have marked. Unrelated: I put chalk into Stephen's milk last week. Should I tell him? He didn't notice, so he must be cool with it.

The second paragraph and first sentence of the third from an opinion piece by a guy named Stephen Marche in the Guardian. The starred sentence is emphasis mine:

Artificial intelligence is here to stay, neither as an apocalypse nor as the solution to all life's problems, but as a disruptive tool. The recent scandal over Shy Girl, the novel by Mia Ballard, was doubly revealing. Hachette cancelled its publication amid claims it was reliant on Al generation (Ballard has said that an acquaintance who edited the self-published version used AI, not her). *But the book was originally self-published. Apparently readers and editors didn't mind until the use of Al was pointed out to them.*

The fact that machines can generate meaning in the first place is an existential curiosity. But for writers, and for young writers in particular,

110

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 09/02/2026

Update: I think I figured out why I am where I am (that is, in good company)

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

Lastly, Future Fiction has crossed my desk before and I look forward to giving them the scrutiny they deserve. 12/12

040

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

The concern about impact to the market is founded. Indies have long struggled with perceptions of quality. The publishers were awful, but the gatekeeping did push for a certain quality floor. Do romance readers leave for verticals if they can’t find good books? I don't know. 8/?

120

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

It's clear here she isn't disclosing AI use because she's worried people will feel cheated or that the work is low quality. "Readers won't feel cheated about me in the future though! Take my class!" Right. 6/?

120

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

This is just a line. No detail, no proof. Y'all need to stop being so credulous when people say things like this. Oh, Tilly Norwood is "taking meetings" with CAA? AI marketers got huge boosts to ROAS by using AI? No they fucking didn't. Prove it. 5/?

140

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

Around those numbers, we learn about the author's classes and LLM wrapper writing software. We see hints that she's still cranking out slop books, but this reads an awful lot like she did just enough to hit the numbers, in order to sell courses. If she really hit the numbers. 4/?

130

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 08/02/2026

Here's the first thing that caught my eye: Selling 50,000 ebooks (and making >100k) annually is the core idea behind the (extremely cool and free) indie author marketing group 20booksto50k. It’s strange she references exactly the target numbers indies use as a marker for "going pro." 3/?

130

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 31/01/2026

Can product manuals be liminal? Trying out a Mystery House inspired art style for my game and…

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 29/01/2026

lol 7k views and look at the likes/dislikes

130

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 13/01/2026

Turns out the LLMs all have "hey please use me" email automations now if you haven't logged in. Let's see what the best minds in marketing at OpenAI think you should do with their revolutionary product...

A screenshot of ChatGPT's suggestion for use in an email. The suggestions are to turn a friend's food photo into a recipe (don't do this), drafting a simple text to reschedule a meeting (a beyond simple task), creating a photo tutorial for how to make a cup of coffee (solved problem), and help selecting a pair of headphones (solved problem)

110

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 07/01/2026

I can’t stop laughing.

A painkiller sits on the Vegas strip’s first ever Tiki Bar while Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) litigates the trial of a Black man falsely accused of rape in the legendary film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) on the tv above the bar.

100

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 02/01/2026

...the actual poll responses paint a far more mixed picture than the summary? In political polling, could I than take my candidate's polling, combine with "unsure" and say that "52% of the country is excited about (or unsure) about my guy!"

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 20/11/2025

Alright Demonschool is awesome.

110

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 29/10/2025

It’s good Snake is the world’s most unprepared superspy because otherwise how would we ever learn about anything.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 14/10/2025

One of the greatest poster artists of the last decades. RIP Drew.

The poster art for Big Trouble in Little China by Drew Struzan, featuring Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 29/08/2025

Don't forget to enjoy Swan Boy at swanboy.com

Signore Tomato from the Swan Boy Doncarlo Icognito arc, telling Rona's dad he cannot kweet making giallo movies even though Signore Tomato is...uh...genetically engineering actresses? I don't know.

020

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 19/06/2025

What motivated my take is how much the chart looks like the deeply embarrassing VR headset sales projections from Matthew Ball's state of gaming deck.

A chart from p48 of Matthew Ball's State of Gaming 2025 deck that shows actual and projected AR/VR headset shipments, where the projected numbers are ridiculous lines shooting up and the actual shipments each year are tiny slivers at the bottom of the graph.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 25/05/2025

A year-ish ago I guessed that there were four existential threats to the AI boom. Audience backlash was the one I had the least information to work with. Not anymore. It’s profoundly risky to tie your brand to AI.

010

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 18/05/2025

Take the fictional characters quiz and post the first four you know: openpsychometrics.org/tests/charac I like this test, it makes me seem incredibly cool.

120

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 17/05/2025

I was nearby the explosion in Palm Springs. Huge boom and smoke cloud. I walked up Palm Desert and tons of storefront windows were blown out. I saw one minor injury in a hotel. Appeared to be a burning car in the parking lot of the medical center.

382

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 01/05/2025

The Helldivers Reddit is such a joy, the community gets to be in on the joke alongside the devs. I can’t wait to talk about this at [redacted] with [redacted]

A Helldivers 2 Reddit thread where someone asks what the circular port on the back of the helmets is, and the game director confirms in the thread that the plan was to show a hose disconnecting after a helldive but they had to cut the animation. The next comments celebrate “lore straight from the tap” and theorize that it’s canon that Helldivers hold their breath during planet fall, which is both funny and believable.

000

Westin Lee @westinlee.itch.io · 09/04/2025

WHY IS THE AI BUTTON EVEN THERE GOOGLE

000