Phenry Ewing (permanently relocated to bluesky)

The @hoverbird account now exists as an archive of stuff I used to care about back when I helped build this place, and going forward will be used only to throw shade at and undermine the new Twitter regime. For everything else, find me on Mastodon dot social slash hoverbird.

Breaking my twtr boycott of over three and a half years just to share this news. B/c if there ever was a game which is against whatever the fresh hell tech oligarchs did to this site, and to our society at large, it’s Neo Cab.

@unity I've been a professional Unity dev since 2014. As of yesterday, my studio is beginning to port our next game prototype to Godot's C# mode. @unity has too many times proved themselves an unreliable partner, with terrible long-term strategic vision, and no loyalty to smaller devs.

@unity Your math on the # of devs affected is *WILDLY* optimistic, and while the walk-back of SOME of the worst aspects of the initial, carelessly delivered announcement is welcome... it's way too little. There's still so much fuzzy math and "we will decide at our own discretion" crap.

We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard after we announced our new runtime fee policy. We’d like to clarify some of your top questions and concerns: Who is impacted by this price increase: The price increase is very targeted. In fact, more than 90% of our customers will not be affected by this change. Customers who will be impacted are generally those who have found a substantial scale in downloads and revenue and have reached both our install and revenue thresholds. This means a low (or no) fee for creators who have not found scale success yet and a modest one-time fee for those who have. Fee on new installs only: Once you meet the two install and revenue thresholds, you only pay the runtime fee on new installs after Jan 1, 2024. It’s not perpetual: You only pay once for an install, not an ongoing perpetual license royalty like a revenue share model. How we define and count installs: Assuming the install and revenue thresholds are met, we will only count net new installs on any device starting Jan 1, 2024. Additionally, developers are not responsible for paying a runtime fee on: - Re-install charges - we are not going to charge a fee for re-installs. - Fraudulent installs charges - we are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs. We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent. - Trials, partial play demos, and automation installs (devops) charges - we are not going to count these toward your install count. Early access games are not considered demos. - Web and streaming games - we are not going to count web and streaming games toward your install count either. - Charity-related installs - the pricing change and install count will not be applied to your charity bundles/initiatives. For additional questions, we have updated our blog and FAQ resources. ⬇️ Blog: on.unity.com/3ZiIwlB FAQ: on.unity.com/44NMZ0R Forums: on.unity.com/45RgrnV

I deleted this app months ago, but I’m now preparing to fully archive and lock my account. I urge you to do the same: as much as it pains me to say it, liked and faves aren’t worth being complicit in this madness. I’m hoverbird on M4st0 and thr34ds… meet me in Montauk?

@truebe @timhwang we live in a satrapy

want one of those roman statue accounts but it just has this as a profile photo and is obsessed with a retvrn to the achaemenid persian empire

@on_code @MarionNatik For me the Creative Director is ultimately the one who defines the vision, but at least in my case, I need a creative, opinionated and detail-oriented Producer to transform a loose vision into a prototyping plan, a prospective budget / pitch doc, a series of design docs etc

@on_code @MarionNatik That's definitely a valid way to do it! I think every team will be a bit different, and also team size will be a big factor in determining how many roles a single member fills and where there's overlap.

@goldman @ev pausing my Twitter ragequit just to say: it was a joy to see you two riffing on internet culture / product stuff again— felt like I was sitting in on a post-tea-time conversation during the Bryant Street days. we need an @ev/@goldman morning show!

This is a nice little capsule of why I liked working w @ev so much. He’s very optimistic and even keeled, which is good if you’re kinda pessimistic and overly verbose about it. youtu.be/SKia5QUiGkE

@legobutts 💔❤️‍🩹

i am profoundly sad lol

@WillWArmstrong i KNEW there was some way to reach Delilah's tower in the mid-game

@hoverbird I would have, obviously, but we were trying to keep that nice consistent down to earth tone. Can you imagine Henry roaming out in the woods fixing rope bridges like -

The game programming flex of all time.

@timhwang @pt @ZacharyGraves nice! actually that occurs to me— lmk if I can be of any help on the design side. I'm especially interested in setting up Monte Carlo sims as a game design tool, where applicable: youtube.com/watch?v=Nnx33c…

@hoverbird @pt @ZacharyGraves you're on! yeah, was pitching @ZacharyGraves on trying to adopt some COIN mechanics - it's def going to feature some rogue player classes which are just focused on chasing that paper 💸

update: @ZacharyGraves and I are now working on this and it is going to be incredible / terrible

@timhwang @pt @ZacharyGraves sign me up if there's still space! especially if there's a thinktank equivalent to the "opium poppy farmer/warlord" role in A Distant Plain

@pt @ZacharyGraves got you on the list! more as we have it

@timhwang @alexkozak it was a magical day for Infrastructural Observating

@alexkozak ❤️ BAIO’s finest hour

This great article reminded me of the time a decade ago that @timhwang got a bunch of us on a guided boat tour of the new bay bridge construction

@_heidev would love to be on the playtesting list whenever you have a slot open!

For the first time in two years, I have a playable alpha build of my game to send out to people for playtesting. So excited!! #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity

Nothing but respect to the anonymous Twitter engineer who leaked the Twitter source code. You are doing the lord's work. I'd have done the same if I still had access tbqh

Twitter’s “For You” absolutely KILLING IT with state of the art personalization. @elonmusk has done it again.

@v21 frog

#API_RIP to this and so, so many other brilliant, thought provoking and hilarious bots that made this site so fun for so long. But the grand project of destroying speech in order to save it must go on...