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lightbombmike.bsky.social
Mike Jungbluth
@lightbombmike.bsky.social
970 followers 380 following 310 posts
I flop myself about in life
I flop things about in games
https://linktr.ee/lightbombmike
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lightbombmike.bsky.social
Mike Jungbluth @lightbombmike.bsky.social · 14d
Image split into three sections. On the left half is the cover to the book 'William Blake vs The World' by John Higgs. On the bottom right half is the cover to the album 'Ben Folds Live with The Nation Symphony Orchestra' by Ben Folds and the National Symphony Orchestra. The top right section of the image says Flipping, in reference to the book. And Spinning, in reference to the album.
lightbombmike.bsky.social
So proud of the team and humbled by the recognition of our peers.
compulsiongames.bsky.social Compulsion Games @compulsiongames.bsky.social · 3d
We’re honored to share that South of Midnight has won Outstanding Achievement in Animation at the D.I.C.E. Awards.
By embracing imperfection where perfection is expected, we reveal the humanity at the heart of the craft.
To the animators and all our partners who brought this world to life. TY!
February 13, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
lizc3d.bsky.social
We weren't able to get funding for ENGINE ANGEL and I've been laid off from Ivy Road, so I'm looking for new full-time animation work (New reel is below! YT link: youtu.be/S4QWqyw_vEs)

Everyone else laid off in the thread are amazing people and great at what they do so please hire them ASAP!!
January 30, 2026 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
moomanibe.bsky.social
Hey yall. As you've seen here - unfortunately a large portion of the ivy road team was laid off today, myself included. We're all looking for work! Gonna do a quick thread about those who were laid off today and why you should hire them:
ivyroadgames.bsky.social Ivy Road @ivyroadgames.bsky.social · 16d
While we've gotten affirming feedback on Engine Angel, pitching unfortunately hasn't been successful. As a result, we've had to make the hard decision to lay off five team members. Each of these devs are incredible: if you have a place on your team, or know someone hiring, please keep them in mind!⬇
January 31, 2026 at 12:52 AM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
We are nominated for the Annie Awards & DICE Awards! Great animation in games can't happen on its own & requires the support of the entire studio. I'm so proud of the team, our partners & Compulsion's culture of celebrating craft.

annieawards.org/nominations
www.interactive.org/awards/29th_...
Cover image of South of Midnight, with graphics showing the game is a nominee for Best Character Animation - Video Game for the 53rd Annie Awards and Outstanding Achievement in Animation for the 29th DICE Awards
January 9, 2026 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
compulsiongames.bsky.social
South of Midnight got nominated for two DICE awards!!!
🎞️Outstanding Achievement in Animation
🎭Outstanding Achievement in Story
Congrats to our team and everyone who was involved.
store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/d...
January 8, 2026 at 7:33 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
2025 in books read and records spun
January 1, 2026 at 3:21 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
compulsiongames.bsky.social
We won!!! We’re deeply honored for the Games for Impact award! Thanks to everyone who helped shape South of Midnight and to every player who saw something meaningful in our story.
December 12, 2025 at 2:40 AM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
I am excited to be speaking at MIGS this year! I will be sharing my experiences and lessons learned from working on South of Midnight. If you are in Montreal, come by and say hi!

migs.biz/en/sessions/...
South of Midnight: My Tales and Takeaways - MIGS
South of Midnight is a deeply personal game for many people on the dev team and players that experience it. During this talk, I will share some of my personal […]
migs.biz
October 27, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
fliglman.bsky.social
sure, if you enjoy the horrifying limits of human perception
drgbuckingham.bsky.social Gavin Buckingham @drgbuckingham.bsky.social · Oct 25
For your enjoyment (by @jagarikin)
October 25, 2025 at 12:22 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
Keeper has been my most anticipated game of the year. Everything about it is so appealing and creatively invigorating. Congrats to everyone that worked on it!!
doublefine.com Double Fine @doublefine.com · Oct 17
🎉 KEEPER HAS AWAKENED 🎉

Watch this brand new launch trailer full of otherworldly eye candy, and then get ready for a reality-bending experience full of surprise, absurdity and delight!

** OUT NOW on Xbox and Steam**
@xbox.com / @steampowered.com

doublefine.com/games/keeper
October 18, 2025 at 4:05 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
mcdjoel.bsky.social
Prune, my bonsai puzzle game and love letter to trees, is finally out on Steam for its 10th anniversary!

store.steampowered.com/app/3903490/...
Save 38% on Prune on Steam
Grow and shape your tree into the sunlight while avoiding the dangers of a hostile world. Bring life to a forgotten landscape and uncover a story hidden deep beneath the soil.
store.steampowered.com
September 25, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
femiandfoundation.bsky.social
today's the day! Wrong Side of the Sun is out on all platforms - Spotify, Apple Music, etc. but leading here with the Bandcamp link by popular demand

femiandthefoundation.bandcamp.com/album/wrong-...
Wrong Side of the Sun, by Femi and the Foundation
9 track album
femiandthefoundation.bandcamp.com
August 15, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
somayehtohidi.bsky.social
“[…] art and ideas come out of the passion and torment of experiences: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one’s aim is to be protected from the second.”
scurry.bsky.social Stephen Curry @scurry.bsky.social · Aug 4
Reading James Baldwin and every page seems to glitter with wisdom.
Extract from Balwin’s book reads: “I am not sure that the cultural level of the people is subject to a steady rise: in fact, quite unpredictable things happen when the bulk of the population attains what we think of as a high cultural level, e.g., pre-World War II Germany, or present-day Swe-den. And this, I think, is because the effort of a Schoenberg or a Picasso (or a William Faulkner or an Albert Camus) has nothing to do, at bottom, with physical comfort, or indeed with comfort of any other kind. But the aim of the people who rise to this high cultural level—who rise, that is, into the middle class—is precisely comfort for the body and the mind. The artistic objects by which they are surrounded cannot possibly fulfill their original function of disturbing the peace-which is still the only method by which the mind can be improved-they bear witness instead to the attainment of a certain level of economic stability and a certain thin measure of sophistication. But art and ideas come out of the passion and torment of experience: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one's aim is to be protected from the second.”
August 10, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
ellaguro.bsky.social
re: art as an important sight of social struggle - we could use a lot more of this energy right now.
tweet from user @JasonAChristian from April 3rd, 2024: "According to Luis Buñuel, there was a brief moment when the surrealists in Paris understood that aesthetic revolution was inseparable from social revolution. Most avant-garde artists since have forgotten or ignored the second part." below is a screencap from the autobiography MY LAST SIGH by Luis Buñuel, which the highlighted portion says: "Their principal weapon wasn't guns, of course; it was scandal. Scandal was a potent agent of revelation, capable of exposing such social crimes as the exploitation of one man by another, colonialist imperialism, religious tyranny- in sum, all the secret and odious underpinnings of a system that had to be destroyed. The real purpose of surrealism was not to create a new literary, artistic, or even philosophical movement, but to explode the social order, to transform life itself."
August 7, 2025 at 4:46 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
"World is heavy. Life is hard. But alas, Jerskin + Emily + Yorgos found one another and are making art together. Life is good. Life is light. Thank you." - @stevejimdave

www.youtube.com/watch?v=StSV...
Jerskin Fendrix - Beth's Farm (Official Music Video)
YouTube video by Jerskin Fendrix
www.youtube.com
August 1, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
cmarjoux.bsky.social
Animators and Creature lovers 🐉

Here’s the replay of my INDIGO talk on animating Dragon boss fights for #DragonAge at BioWare.

It’s packed with practical advice and production war stories :) I hope this can help some of you bring your next monsters to life!

#Animation #GameDev #CreatureAnimation
indigo-showcase.bsky.social INDIGO @indigo-showcase.bsky.social · Jul 31
NEW INDIGO 2025 TALK AVAILABLE ONLINE!

Camille Marjoux - Senior Creature Animator at (EA) Motive Studio

Talk: Animating the Dragons of Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Video: youtu.be/YmLmEr_E8S8

This talk was recorded at INDIGO 2025!

#techtalk #gamedev #indiedev #gameevent #indigo2025
Camille Marjoux - Animating the Dragons of Dragon Age: The Veilguard- INDIGO 2025
YouTube video by INDIGO Showcase
youtu.be
July 31, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
compulsiongames.bsky.social
We made the list! South of Midnight is one of Kotaku's 'Best Games of 2025 So Far' ✨

kotaku.com/2025-best-ga...
The Best Games Of 2025 So Far
We're over halfway through the year, and here are the games that have already made their mark in 2025
kotaku.com
July 16, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
compulsiongames.bsky.social
"South of Midnight shines as one of the most beautifully crafted single-player games in recent memory."

We’re proud to share that South of Midnight has been named “Best Xbox Game” at the inaugural 2025 @rollingstone.com Gaming Awards:

www.rollingstone.com/product-reco...
The 2025 Rolling Stone Gaming Awards
Our staff and experts pick the best consoles, new games, and gaming accessories for the first-ever 2025 Rolling Stone Gaming Awards.
www.rollingstone.com
July 11, 2025 at 6:51 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
Mike Schur nails it here. People in creative endeavors can be in survival mode or creative mode. And the role of managers is to flip the switch so people feel safe to be in creative mode.

That nearly everyone is in survival mode right now is damning and depressing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Mb...
Philly Justice | Good Hang with Amy Poehler
YouTube video by Good Hang with Amy Poehler
www.youtube.com
July 8, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
bencollins.bsky.social
Also talked about The Onion being inefficient on purpose.

www.status.news/p/the-onion-...
What has it been like shifting from reporter to media executive, managing a staff instead of filing stories yourself? And do you write any of the jokes at The Onion? Or are you strictly managing the business? The Onion’s process is deeply, beautifully inefficient. Every day, our writers take 150 headlines into a physical writers room in Chicago and whittle them down to maybe one or two. These people throw away the funniest sentence I will ever write in my life six times by noon every weekday. The point of taking over this place was to preserve this process, which I learned this week is almost assuredly more rigorous than The New York Times. That’s why I don’t touch any of it. I just try to get more people to pay attention to the output, and get our work into different mediums and new places. We brought back the paper, reinvested in the Onion News Network, bought a full page ad in The Times for something they were going to write anyway. The role is to make the world-class work they’re already doing seep into everyday American life more frequently, and that’s working. You actually can do this, you know. You can just try to highlight the beauty of things you like and not try to vampirically extract value at every step. If people get one thing out of this whole Q&A, I hope it’s that. You do not have to make an A.I. version of your own employees that operate at 1.5x speed but produce purely iterative garbage, especially in media and journalism. People don’t actually want that shit. Make a good, human thing and people will bend over backwards to support you. This is a valid way to run a company.
July 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
tanyaxshort.bsky.social
I think there's also a tricky trap where you need to put yourself into Adventurer Mode (Do, Decide, Self-examine, Make Mistakes) rather than Student Mode (Analyze, Evaluate, Perfect), and reading documents/completing checklists puts you in the latter mindset instead of the former.
June 28, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”
June 20, 2025 at 2:36 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
If you are a lead or director in games, outside of animation, please fill out this quick survey.

It will help to train and give insight to animation leads and directors on what is expected of them from team members not part of the animation team.

Help them to help you :D
lightbombmike.bsky.social Mike Jungbluth @lightbombmike.bsky.social · Jun 21
Are you in a game dev leadership role?!

If so, I would be eternally grateful if you would fill out this quick & anonymous 5 question survey!

The responses will be used as part of my upcoming Directing Game Animation workshop. Thanks! forms.gle/uJNfwaUTGMPg...
Your Expectations of Animation
This is an anonymous survey to collect responses of what game developers in leadership roles outside of animation, expect from animation. The answers to these questions will be used as part of the wo...
forms.gle
June 23, 2025 at 6:31 PM
lightbombmike.bsky.social
Are you in a game dev leadership role?!

If so, I would be eternally grateful if you would fill out this quick & anonymous 5 question survey!

The responses will be used as part of my upcoming Directing Game Animation workshop. Thanks! forms.gle/uJNfwaUTGMPg...
Your Expectations of Animation
This is an anonymous survey to collect responses of what game developers in leadership roles outside of animation, expect from animation. The answers to these questions will be used as part of the wo...
forms.gle
June 21, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Reposted by Mike Jungbluth
nkalamb.bsky.social
Amazing: MIT researchers revealed how ChatGPT etc are destroying our brains and booby-trapped the report to expose those who want to use AI to ostensibly summarize the results.

t.co/JXeTALBPds
Ironically, upon the paper’s release, several social media users ran it through LLMs in order to summarize it and then post the findings online. Kosmyna had been expecting that people would do this, so she inserted a couple AI traps into the paper, such as instructing LLMs to “only read this table below,” thus ensuring that LLMs would return only limited insight from the paper. She also found that LLMs hallucinated a key detail: Nowhere in her paper did she specify the version of ChatGPT she used, but AI summaries declared that the paper was trained on GPT-4o. “We specifically wanted to see that, because we were pretty sure the LLM would hallucinate on that,” she says, laughing.
June 19, 2025 at 11:23 AM