Games! Currently directing TRON: Catalyst. Previously on Thomas Was Alone, John Wick Hex, Subsurface Circular, Solitaire Conspiracy etc. He/him
Manchester, at a computer
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* Pokes head in. I live on Bluesky these days, but if you’re interested in hearing about my next game, I have a mailing list now:
mailchi.mp/bithellgames/next…
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Being English is constantly realising that every twee little turn of phrase you picked up as a kid is actually a reference to empire or an outright slur.
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Truly a graphic design golden age we’re in right now
ALT The icons for social media apps, Bluesky and the artist formerly known as twitter.
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In a healthy industry, this game would already have three publishers fighting for it, and an as of yet unannounced all star voice cast.
Update week 3 on Dino-Sword, a personal game project. All Rough animations for now. Music by @nestormronda give him a follow!
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(being an english graphic designer is realising that every graphic design term originates in a victorian understanding of printing presses and/or family units)
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I absolutely hate that being technically competent in 2023 means sounding like a Luddite when it comes to the latest digital snake oil. These things are always cool, fascinating tech, but the are also always massively oversold and dishonestly represented, with roughshod ethics.
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I need someone from the team to DM me if this stuff was all written or if you folks put improv performers in the booth with each other for these moments.
Either is impressive. The latter doubly so from a pipeline and approvals perspective.
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(Alasdair’s cool and this is a joke)
Fun thing: players don’t trust a smooth loading bar. The stutters and pauses show you that the load is ‘biting’. I’ve worked on games where we artificially faked it.
Game design: often starts before the game does.
Game developers need to invent a loading bar that moves at an even speed, reflecting the amount of time a game will take to load. Once that's done, they can start working on graphics, jumping etc.
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Used to quite like the corridor digital videos for their unpacking of complex stuff for punters. This swing to just insulting other artists (and often misrepresenting the processes they're showing) is just massively disappointing. The algo pushing them off course?
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You ever make a game about rectangles so good it changed your life and gave you an odd emotional attachment to the engine that made your career possible, only to see the same idiots you were escaping come along and ruin that too, cutting off that path for the next generation?
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Fill the replies to this tweet with awesome games from trans creators please! For absolutely no reason at all.
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The biggest issue with these timelines continues to be cumulative impact of task estimation. Stuff like crunch comes about because the best project managers in the world cannot possibly be expected to spotlessly plan 5 years. Constantly paying off time debt they can't catch up on
Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty has said that both game players and the industry in general need to realise that most big games now have development cycles of around half a decade.
vgc.news/news/xbox-game-stud…
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Fuck. Just doom scrolling and seeing all of the people out of work is killing me. Our industry normalises this shit, and cycles it. Seeing the ‘come work with us’ tweets from studios who did their own layoffs months ago is certainly a look.
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Well. We just announced our next game, a project many cycles in the making. TRON: Catalyst is an isometric story driven action game, coming to consoles and PC in 2025. This website isn’t generous to links, so I’ll thread them below 🧵. Time to return to the Arq Grid, programs.
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It is genuinely impressive how many smart people have been fooled into thinking current ‘AI’ models are anything more than ‘guess the next word really well’ toys. That’s it.
It cannot give you professional advice. It can’t even tell you a joke with a punchline.
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Honestly ‘game that’s mentioned whenever a cube shows up’ is a hell of a legacy and I have no complaints.
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I'm starting to think there are a lot of not-very-bright executives in this here game industry, to be honest.
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This is the core of it. AI is too stupid to do your job (and LLMs probably always will be), but your boss is very probably too stupid to realize that.
That's the true cost of the automation-unemployment #CritiHype: while we're nowhere near bots stealing your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that *fails* doing your job:
pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/r…
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Weird moment of pride that the audience saw through this nonsense so quickly that it died almost instantly.
Are publishers backing away from NFTs because they don't see value in them, or because they get ruthlessly mocked online every time they talk about them? trib.al/amU7lsI
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It’s the 10 year anniversary of the morning I woke up with enough cash from Thomas Was Alone to quit my day job. For all the ups and downs, I think Mike of then would feel good about how I played the hand he dealt. Some good games, some better collaborations, and more ahead.
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New rule: You only get to talk about the brilliant creativity of your incredible team if you've not laid off a team for, let's be generous, 3 months.
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oooh, does that mean I'm allowed to make a Halo!?
Microsoft AI CEO says the social contract of content on the open web "is fair use", "anyone can copy it", it's "freeware".
This is categorically false. Content released online is still protected by copyright. You can't copy it for any purpose you like simply because it's on the open web.
Creators who have been told for years to publish online, often for free, for exposure, may object to being retroactively told they were entering a social contract that let anyone copy their work.
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*stretches, prepares to ruin a perfectly good joke*
There's actually a game design in this. Ask a player to roll their own dice and input them, but then track the history of their inputs and futz with stuff based on their statistical likelihood of having been honest over time.
a good solution to the "dice aren't tactile in video games" issue is simply to require that the player roll the dice IRL and input the result
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Having now seen Oppenheimer I am filled with absolute admiration for anyone who came out of that and then immediately walked into a screening of Barbie. I want to walk in the rain for 3 hours.
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I think there are still a lot of people at Unity who think that this is a comms issue, rather than a ‘breaking the TOS in a way that utterly dismantles trust and also demonstrates a total misunderstanding of the games industry, again’ issue.
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When creating keyart, it is vital to choose imagery that reflects the tone and content of the product.
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Lol, I hadn’t even thought about the game pass implications until moments ago. Oh unity, you strange jumble of people just discovering the videogame industry for the first time.
(Real talk, sincere sympathy for massive number of people who tried to explain this to the suits)
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I would like to acknowledge any confusion and frustration anybody has felt as a direct result of reading and understanding my publicly stated, ill constructed and somewhat legally and technically unenforceable positions.
I will be providing no further information at this time.
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I swear to god, Unity, I have managed 15 years on here without having to do a jpeg announcement… please don’t break my streak with this nonsense.
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*imagine* letting folks like Kenney go and start making stuff for your competitors. Imagine making a series of choices that set things like that in motion.
The @godotengine Splash Screen repository has been updated based on your feedback! Now neatly organized in folders, 7 new screens (including horror themed) and 18 vector logos.
github.com/KenneyNL/Godot-Sp…
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On our twentieth anniversary, made it official.
ALT Mine and my wife’s hands, incl. rings
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The thread about 'with AI you could make a game the size of cyberpunk' is too stupid. It crashed my computer. It somehow manages to be ignorant of AI, games, the concept of scale, cyber, and even punk.
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I keep cycling back to this tweet and how hilariously exposing it is. Given that their model legally cannot be collecting real user data, it amounts to a guess. A guess they are refusing to break down to those they’re hoping to bill.
Walk back imminent, but it reveals a lot.
We leverage our own proprietary data model, so you can appreciate that we won’t go into a lot of detail, but we believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project.
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Literally never put a line on a map of the world in your game, folks. World map is possibly the most political image you can put in a thing yet nobody thinks of it that way until… well… this happens.
🧵THREAD: MrBeast just released a video titled "Every Country On Earth Fights for $250.000". MrBeast has chosen to wade into every single geopolitical conflict at once. What counts as a county to MrBeast? He makes a LOT of strange choices and mistakes:
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Really simple folks: share information revealed in a leak which exposed and endangered a lot of industry professionals, immediately lose credibility and participation from the rest of us.
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Today's a special day, it's a decade since I incorporated a company for £30 so Valve would pay me TWA royalties :)
Since then it's outgrown me, into a fantastic team of 20 making stuff I wouldn't have dared to dream of, doing so compassionately and at a world class standard.
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I wasn’t allowed a console at home until the ps2 (I was 15)…
‘I don’t want you wasting your life on videogames’
This comes up Every. Single. Christmas.
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I’d really like it if they stopped telling us we’re confused. If anything, the issue is an over abundance of clarity.
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Becoming a little too fascinated by the crop of grifter former game devs. It's a thrilling villain arc I'm hoping I have the grace to avoid down the road. Mostly it's just a bit embarrassing.
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It’s wild how many 30 something men have created a successful racket for themselves by exploiting and reinforcing the insecurities of teenage boys via embarrassing YouTube thumbnails.
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Jessie is pointing out the specific challenge of AI implementation in games. We've been doing proc gen and emergent behaviour for decades without trouble and with amazing outcomes.
The LLM bubble, and the money attached, is something else, and shouldn't be confused.
AI (or what it actually is - machine learning) is not inherently bad. It's a tool, and tools can be used ethically, as they generally have been in games for years. However, much recent AI use has been unethical (stealing art, replacing jobs, deepfakes). That needs legislation.
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So excited to get the design, writing, art, code, animation, music and sound offloaded to AI so we can focus on the creative side of game development.
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The most interesting thing about where AI is at right now, is it’s demonstrating how much believability relies on the beholder’s own skill set. I can’t code python, so those code snippets look mind blowing. I can write, so the poetry is laughably shit.
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I cannot express strongly enough how little relevance your opinion of a studio's output has to stories of layoffs.
Also, if the last couple of weeks have taught us anything, it's that 'demonstrable success of game(s)' and 'number of folks laid off' do not correlate meaningfully.
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I will say this about the last week, then put my phone away. Leaders don’t send out their employees to do damage control through unofficial channels. I really feel for and respect the folks who’ve put themselves out there. I have opposite feelings for the cowards above them.
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Fun game..
- Casually watch an old Conan O'Brien clip, see if he makes a joke about someone on his team.
- Google that person
- Note that they still work together decades later.
Says a lot about the dude and the environment he created.
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Big fan of online criticism, think it’s great for players and game devs alike. Great stuff. But boy do some of you go off the rails when theorising about HOW a project ended up a certain way. Expertise in a field is about knowing what you don’t know, and couldn’t possibly know.
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Me, seeing that photoshop ‘extend image’ ai feature:
Hmm, yeah, I see how that’d save folks some time, neat feature, let’s see
Every AI bro I’m served on here:
Artists are DONE. Composition is history, from now all images are unending. Get a new job, fans of mise en scène […]
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Ok, thread of good Disney design
1. Pedestrian pace control. Benches, planters, trees, objects are placed to slow people approaching gates and avoid stampedes. Also it looks nice
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Really gutted. Was a joy to work with, massively generous as a performer. Thoughts with his family.
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Said it before, will say it again, getting stuff from our games into one of the parks is my new work ambition. This stuff is so cool.
Playful, curious, and cute. BDX droids are exploring Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Guests may encounter them around Black Spire Outpost in @Disneyland Park for a limited time during Season of the Force.
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I promise you that most, if not all, billionaires are exactly this stupid. Most at least have financially incentivised hangers on keeping them from publicly showing their whole arse.
Not only is he stupid, he has nobody in his life stopping him.
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A lot of marketing folks are gonna have to learn to spot AI generated submissions very very quickly, aren't they.
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We exist. Therefore, either:
- No aliens have visited Earth
- Aliens of immense technical superiority have visited, and unlike any time in our own human history, this power disparity has not harmed the weaker party (us)
Either way we’re living the best case scenario, alienwise
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Most troubling thing with Unity’s silence, at this point, is that all the ‘back channel, on the down low’ info I’ve heard from buddies and colleagues about what’s going on in there is contradictory. Which implies either confusion or a war raging. Neither of those things is great.
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It's pretty cool that they keep letting me make TRON games. I think it's because I always remember to capitalize it.
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Hehe, having failed to invent a magical install counting tool, unity are… hoping we will? Or that we’ll guess and they can challenge that? Doesn’t sound super solid, I’ll be honest.
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PC isn’t a platform, it’s millions of slightly different platforms, often built at home from parts. Every major bug free launch is a miracle.
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Just saw a young artist having to upload timelapse of their process to prove that the work in their portfolio isn't AI generated. That feels like a threshold we can't walk back from.
Interesting new thing to check for in hiring process. Gonna need to rethink our art tests.
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Ah, British comedy. Reliably impossible to recommend 10 years after airing because, while progressive in its day, there is that one episode with that one character.
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Idea for a film: musical. Joker from Batman and Lady Gaga. Lipstick on a mirror. I’m in it.
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Hi. Words like ‘cis’ and ‘straight’ just mean a type of person. They only sound odd or aggressive if you consider those types of people ‘default’ or ‘normal’, making the words unnecessary. It’s an interesting bias to explore in yourself but probably best done privately.
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Nah Rami, when you leave the room, the sandwiches are stored in the food buffer of the gpu.
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TRON: Identity is out now! Let's go!
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/2…
Switch: nintendo.com/store/products/…
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Hi, please disclose the datasets used by these tools, otherwise commercial usage remains incredibly dangerous legally for your customers.
Imagine more with Unity AI 🔮 Introducing:
⭐ #UnityMuse, a platform of AI capabilities for content creation, with Muse Chat for AI-based search now in closed beta
⭐ #UnitySentis for AI-powered experiences at Unity runtime, now in closed beta
Learn more: on.unity.com/3NKrhFT
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Loved the bit at the oscars where they wheeled out the cast of a tie in game, miyamoto, and the very confused looking creator of Pong to deliver speeches on why they felt movies were absolutely a valid art form, and in many ways just as important to culture as games.
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I made the mistake, last time this reactionary nonsense picked up volume, of trying to engage with the substance of the voiced concerns. Not this time I’m afraid. Your fav dweeb online is playing to your anger for ad revenue. Don’t be a mark, and question it critically yourself.
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Hey devs, consider factoring in engine retraining time for your team into your upcoming budgets. I expect indie publishers are already privately discussing their strategy here, but I wouldn’t be shocked if some transparently make space for this when booking next projects.
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Two tweets right next to each other in my timeline, one about the terrifying rate of game media layoffs, the other a streamer complaining that a dev was refusing to pay for coverage.
Oooff.
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not to be all 'please clap' about it, but if y'all could retweet and share this tweet from @BithellGames you'd be doing us a solid.. got properly derezzed by that twitter outage
Prepare to enter a new Grid where an unprecedented crime has been committed and uncover its
dangerous truths.
TRON: Identity launches APRIL 2023 for Nintendo Switch and PC! Wishlist now!➡️nintendo.com/store/products/…
#TRONLives #TRONIdentity
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I feel like a lot of days in game dev are about discovering which long held truths are bollocks.
Turns out folks never really tired of beautiful game manuals, and we found a way to get one made and shared for a digital release.
Expecting a lot of folks to follow this lead.
We’re incredibly happy with the reception of The Banished Vault’s manual -- a 10% attach rate to the game itself!
From day one the manual has been written alongside the game, and we love how many people find it an integral component to the experience.
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Excited to be pitched slightly fewer NFT projects at DICE next year
NFTs are officially dead.
95% of NFTs are estimated to be literally worthless, with pieces from top collections mostly worth $5-$10.
Roughly 25 million people are sat on dead assets, thanks to celebrity endorsements. The speculative bubble has popped:
markets.businessinsider.com/…
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It just occurred to me properly that I'm currently writing and directing the first TRON media in over a decade and that's melted my brain a bit. Hope it's good.
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Artists. Put a portfolio in your profile if you're out here looking for jobs. You have 20 seconds of my attention from seeing 'looking for gigs', to me clicking your profile, to me seeing there's not a portfolio and moving on.
Not saying this to be mean, but yeah, make it easy
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The best thing about working in games is it teaches you to spot fundamental, simple systemic issues in complex interactive settings. The worst thing about working in games is it teaches you to spot fundamental, simple systemic issues in utterly mundane day to day settings.
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Not to be too old man about this, but this worries me too. Even the smarter stuff coming out is often massively, massively out of touch with what shipping a game actually entails.. and don't get me started on that 'I made game x in ONE WEEK' nonsense ;)
I took for granted how many experienced people I worked alongside and consulted at the start of my game career.
So many junior devs I encounter now have a foundation of pseudo knowledge from YouTubers that have never shipped a game. It’s difficult to unpick this.
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Intentionally pretty quiet on the socials for a while now, and a while into the future. Pretty single-mindedly focused on keeping my people safe and things rolling. Pretty reasonable reaction to 2024 in games I reckon.
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Holy shit. Credible sources. Humanity might make it.
FUSION ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH: US scientists have made one of the most significant leaps in decades in the search for the Holy Grail of energy - limitless, carbon free power - by achieving net energy gain in a fusion reaction
ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef…
Huge scoop by @thomas_m_wilson
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yeah, started with excitement about AI stuff, which I get, but increasingly they're content is framing AI as better or an improvement.. while missing the obvious artistic and technological drawbacks. Shame to see.
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We have a simple policy: we pay for art tests. This a) ensures folks are not wasting their time b) incentivises us to only use them if there’s an unanswered q about the candidate’s abilities.
This seems mind numbingly obvious to me as a solution.
Art tests in game dev often harm diversity and fail to reflect real skills.
"It’s time for the game dev industry to evolve and adopt hiring practices that truly reflect the collaborative nature of our work."
gamedeveloper.com/art/why-ar…
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This is the big one. Your peers are gonna have careers alongside you. I cannot express how empowering that will be a decade from now. Meet your hero and have a fun chat, but look for the talented people at the same place in their career as you and share the journey.
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This place is excellent! If you’re here, I’m the dude in the corner playing the excellent new TRON game on my switch ;) #allthedisneythrills
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Every now and again I let myself think that the royals are relatively harmless anachronism, and then I see the police talking about their low tolerance for dissent and the old man hat party stops being so much fun.
Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low.
We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration.
🧵🔽
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I do not use the word ‘things’ in my profile lightly…
More Tron games are coming from Bithell Games, starting with Tron Identity releasing tomorrow d23.com/decoding-the-grid-a-…
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