Justin Keverne
LightNews LightNews
gtelephant.bsky.social
Justin Keverne
@gtelephant.bsky.social
240 followers 160 following 1.2K posts
Senior Game Designer, former indie turned professional, Cat Parent (of 3), Progressive, Tired. (He/Him)
Posts Replies Media Videos
gtelephant.bsky.social
Oh no, my room has been invaded by Mimics… #Prey
(Made by @cmanticore.bsky.social 🥰)
A photograph of a desk with two small black pipe-cleaner creations on it, one is on the desk surface itself and another is on top of a stack of Blu-Ray boxes. They have been made to resemble the Mimic enemies from Prey (2017).
December 3, 2025 at 3:33 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Apologies number 2, with Soda Pop at number 6.
August 11, 2025 at 7:40 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Why are discussions of Flow only concerned with the challenge/skill aspect? Why is this aspect of Flow never discussed in the context of games?
An image from the book Emotional Design by Don Norman. A portion of the text has been highlighted: Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" provides a good example. In the flow state, you become so engrossed and captured by the activity being performed that it is as if you and the activity were one: You are in a trance where the world disappears from consciousness. Time stops. You are only aware of the activity itself. Flow is a motivating, captivating, addictive state. It can arise from transactions with valued things. "Household objects," say Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, "facilitate flow experiences in two different ways. On the one hand, by providing a familiar symbolic context they reaffirm the identity of the owner. On the other hand, objects in the household might provide opportunities for flow directly, by engaging the attention of people."
August 10, 2025 at 12:11 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Screenshot of the title screen for Thief: The Dark Project.
August 6, 2025 at 11:10 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Sorkin has issues but having this exchange in the first episode of The West Wing was a hell of a mission statement.
John Van Dyke: If our children can buy pornography on any street corner for five dollars, isn't that too high a price to pay for free speech? President Josiah Bartlet: No. John Van Dyke: Really? President Josiah Bartlet: On the other hand, I think that five dollars is too high a price to pay for pornography.
July 29, 2025 at 6:56 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
June 27, 2025 at 11:53 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Honestly, the more I look at Magpie’s design the more I like it. There’s wear and dirty on the clothing, it’s actually ripped in spots; they look like they’ve been heavily used. Grey is a solid base colour, complimentary accents in purple and green stand out but don’t feel excessively.
Key art for Thief VR: Legacy of Shadows showing the female protagonist Magpie against a city backdrop. The character has a simple grey lace up tunic and leather bracers. A scarf of the same material as the tunic is pulled up over her lower face while a red/purple fabric cloak is wrapped around her head and shoulders and flows out behind her. Her right eye is glowing green.
June 5, 2025 at 3:39 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
I’m being super petty but I like that the character in Thief VR doesn’t share the same massively over-designed style of the protagonist of Thief (2014). She’s wearing a tunic and a cloak, no weird extra buckles or fasteners.
Key art for Thief VR: Legacy of Shadows showing the female protagonist Magpie against a city backdrop. The character has a simple grey lace up tunic and leather bracers. A scarf of the same material as the tunic is pulled up over her lower face while a red fabric cloak is wrapped around her head and shoulders and flows out behind her. Her right eye is glowing green. Key art image of Garrett the protagonist of Thief (2014). He is standing against a grey smoky background. He is wearing a tight soft leather shirt with visible stitching at the seems, a harder leather harness over this with various visible metal buckles, belts, and lacing. His bracers are a different colour of leather and also have visible lacing. There is a patterned black scarf pulled up over his lower face and a plain black cloak over his head which falls down over his left shoulder.
June 5, 2025 at 12:14 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
😐
What Early Access Is Not Early Access is not a way to crowdfund development of your product. You should not use Early Access solely to fund development. If you are counting on selling a specific number of units to complete your game, then you need to think carefully about what it would mean for you or your team if you don't sell that many units. Are you willing to continue developing the game without any sales? Are you willing to seek other forms of investment?
May 24, 2025 at 8:44 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
I was quite fond of Mouse myself.
May 19, 2025 at 7:38 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
I mean…
May 19, 2025 at 6:34 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Ah yes, abstinence but for sugar, let’s see how well this goes…
Screenshot of an NBC News article: FDA moves to take prescription fluoride drops and tablets for kids off the market Despite decades of evidence that fluoride prevents cavities, the agency said the best way to keep kids' teeth strong is to stop eating so much sugar.
May 13, 2025 at 4:28 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
“This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...” ― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
May 12, 2025 at 6:28 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Interestingly “core creative team and hundreds of contractors” is how a lot of AAA games are made, I believe it was the original plan for The Initiative (new Perfect Dark). www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
Screenshot of an Washington Post article: “That’s three people out of 33, exactly 10 percent, so, no, we are not all veterans of the industry, and most of the team are junior people. It’s a very, very young team,” Broche said. (It’s also worth noting that the studio received support from hundreds of outsourced developers and artists, including the ones performing Testard’s exquisite score.)
May 11, 2025 at 12:46 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
For example this is part of a list of things to remember/think about for Combat Design - it’s both general elements to think about an things I need to plan for.
Screenshot of text: Movement - direction, speed, distance, collisions Animations - number, variations, playback speed, starts, stops, transitions Status Effects - keywords, what, when, how VFX - what, when, where, how Controls - analog or digital Audio/Rumble - what, when, where, how, variations Interactions - block, interrupts, cancels, modifiers Camera - where, when, lag, FOV, priorities Enemies - collisions, damage, behaviour Level design - metrics, collisions Performance - memory, GPU, CPU, consistency Networking - replication, reliability, latency Progression - power level, unlocks, modifiers Readability - silhouette, shape, contrast
May 7, 2025 at 3:15 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Playing Blue Prince board game edition…
A photograph of a variety of pieces from the board game Betrayal At House On The Hill laid out on a table. Visible are various room cards arranged to create floor plans, and a selection of items cards next to each player position. The game is in the middle of being played.
May 3, 2025 at 1:13 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Final paragraph of this VideoGamesChronicle article is… yeah… www.videogameschronicle.com/news/future-...
Screenshot of an article, the text reads: “Giant Bomb's entire library of premium content has been archived by fans, who have anticipated the closure of Giant Bomb for some time.”
May 2, 2025 at 7:47 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
A photograph of a stretch of moorland, heather can be seen growing in the near distance.
May 1, 2025 at 4:49 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
On my desk at work… 👀
Photograph of a table with a small brass key of the type used in the game Blue Prince to open the Parlor room puzzle boxes.
April 28, 2025 at 7:27 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Fuck this place...
Screenshot form the video game Thief: Deadly Shadows. Shot is a low angle looking up at an imposing grey building, the door is boarded up and there's a metal balcony above, the wings of the building to either side rise high into the sky and are lost in fog. The location is the Shalebridge Cradle from the mission Robbing the Cradle.
April 16, 2025 at 9:01 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
My first (and only) attempt to play Shadow Of Mordor ended very early because this fella became my Nemesis. In case anybody wonders where my wariness with procgen comes from.
Screenshot of the video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor showing the Nemesis character. They are an orc in rough metal armour with a leather sack over their head tied with rope. A panel on the right side of the screen shows the characters stats: WEAKNESSES Vulnerable to Stealth Finishers Can be killed instantly using Stealth Finishers STRENGTHS Hate of Defeat Becomes enraged if his health is very low Hate of Burns Becomes enraged when he burns Combat Master Invulnerable to Combat attacks and Finishers Invulnerable to Ranged Cannot be damaged by your Ranged attacks Monster Slayer Able to kill monsters quickly, and resistant to their attacks Battle-Hardened Harder to kill, and may require you to finish him Ambusher Launches ambushes against his enemies Fearless Cannot be terrified, never flees Humiliator Refuses the killing blow for unworthy victims
April 12, 2025 at 12:09 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
This isn’t just me moaning this is literally the current policy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp8...
“Verifiers SHALL allow the use of password managers. Verifiers SHOULD permit claimants to use the "paste" functionality when entering a password to facilitate their use. Password managers have been shown to increase the likelihood that users will choose stronger passwords, particularly if the password managers include password generators [Managers].”
April 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
gtelephant.bsky.social
There’s a lot of factors contributing to the states of the games industry right now, a huge one is simply that people aren’t playing new games as much.
Fortnite is ~8 years old and still sees 9.3% of playtime. It’s incredibly hard to compete with that. www.gamesindustry.biz/newzoo-pc-an...
“New releases represented 12% of total playtime in 2024, with Fortnite remaining the most played game carrying 9.3% of total playtime in 2024 (compared to 9.1% in 2023).”
April 8, 2025 at 9:17 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
Written in “Emotional Design” from 2004, I wonder if Don Norman knew his original “The Design of Everyday Things”* was influential in game design circles and made a point to call us out directly?

*It’s the primary source for the term ‘Affordance’.
“But although the design of these machines still seems to be targeted at young males, the actual market for video games is much broader. The average age is now around thirty, roughly as many women as men play, and the appeal is worldwide. In the United States, roughly half the population plays some sort of video game. Many of these games are no longer wild and violent.” “I discuss video games as a new genre of entertainment and literature in chapter 4, but here I want to focus on the fact that, despite the broader audience, the physical design of the game consoles has not been changed to meet the growing popularity. The design focus upon young, excitable males limits the potential sales to a fraction of the possible audience, excluding not only many girls and women but also many men. This rich potential is completely untapped.”
April 7, 2025 at 9:35 PM
gtelephant.bsky.social
@retroblique.bsky.social So I think this map of my revealed areas is telling. I’d not really thought about it but I do tend to keep to roads or paths and explore around them, I’ve not been incentivised to fill in the gaps. But I also don’t feel I’m being short changed on rewarding exploration. 🤔
April 6, 2025 at 12:24 AM