@cney.stream.bsky.social
I play (and sometimes speedrun) video games, and sometimes cover their music. See links and stream projects at cney.stream! (The site is 100% self-coded; I am a web developer by day.)
they literally said "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"
05.08.2025 13:48 โ ๐ 577 ๐ 217 ๐ฌ 7 ๐ 1If you've seen anything of the fallout so far from the UK's Online Safety Act (including someone being locked out of *checks notes* their nvidia settings), you know this is a shitshow waiting to happen. Time to raise hell.
04.08.2025 23:31 โ ๐ 7 ๐ 5 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
Today, IGN Entertainment announced that it would be laying off eight members of the IGN Creators Guild. This is 12% of our bargaining unit, and comes just days after our sister union, the Ziff Davis Creators Guild, underwent similar layoffs impacting 15% of their members. It also comes just months after our multibillion-dollar parent company, Ziff Davis, instituted a company-wide buyout that shrunk our unit numbers, with the express intent of avoiding future layoffs. And it comes just a little over one year after three of our members were laid off almost immediately after our union went public. The company has told us that the reason for this layoff stems from a Ziff Davis-mandate to cut costs despite several quarters in a row of year-over-year revenue increases, to which IGN Entertainment responded by coming for our members' jobs. This is perplexing to us, as we are told again and again that IGN Entertainment has had a tremendously successful year thus far thanks to their hard work. In just the last few months, our members have been absolutely essential to major events and livestreams, including San Diego ComicCon, Summer of Gaming, and IGN Live. Every single person impacted today was involved in and critical to the success of those events. Meanwhile, IGN Entertainment continues to spend money on costly acquisitions, only to turn around and gut those companies in the same way it is cutting away at IGN itself. For instance, last year, it acquired Gamer Network, and almost immediately laid off a number of staff critical to making those sites successful. The company has not responded to the union's questions about whether its budget for future acquisitions is being reconsidered as a cost-saving measure alongside these other apparently necessary personnel cuts. At a time when it is more necessary than ever to support its creators, IGN Entertainment is choosing to eliminate the individuals who ensure IGN remains competitive as generative AI
threatens our reach. We have been told that expert opinion pieces, original interviews, and work that leverages our staff's deep knowledge of gaming, tech, and entertainment are all essential to combating AI summarization and regurgitation of our work. Management has responded by cutting several individuals who do that exact work, as well as others whose job it is to ensure that these written and video pieces are published in a speedy manner โ another component of combating AI we're told is critical. This continued cycle of repeated, aggressive cuts to our staff and being asked to do more with less, only for management to continue to spend on new business it isn't interested in sustaining cannot continue. We will enforce our interim agreement that guarantees better severance and other protections to laid off members, as well as demand additional support for those impacted. We will continue to bargain over our first contract with the aim of enshrining even better protections against further layoffs, working conditions continuously degraded by understaffing, and the encroachment of generative AI. And we won't stop fighting to ensure IGN remains the best destination for trustworthy, original, exciting, and creative work covering video games, entertainment, and tech. While IGN Entertainment management may not value us, we value one another and the incredible work we can do together. Behind the articles, videos, social posts, playlists, and maps of IGN are human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet to be pushed around when some number at the top isn't big enough. Without us, there is no IGN.
Today, IGN laid off eight extremely valuable members of our union and workforce via directive from our parent company, Ziff Davis. This, after two incredibly successful live events IGN Live and SDCC, and yet another corporate acquisition.
Please take a moment to read and share our full statement:
I'm Back to Kick off the new week
watch.cney.stream
So I'm playing Serious Sam: The First Encounter, again, right after saying I never want to play it again.
I never want to play the HD version again, for sure, but after learning a bit about how much changed in that version, I'm all the more curious about the original.
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Welp. Add the new Shinobi game to the list of things I'm instantly uninterested in because the dev or publisher insist on burying it in Denuvo bullshit.
Lack of screenshake/flash toggles aren't exactly helping it, either.
...I just discovered I actually do own the original TFE (but not TSE).
Honestly kinda tempted to try that before moving onto TSE HD. Given that IIUC HD TFE makes certain parts worse and/or less interesting, I wonder if a second playthrough on the maybe-superior version may go any better.
Well. Finishing SS HD TFE unexpectedly took the whole stream. And holy crap I did not enjoy the end of the game (including the last secret map).
This game has so many instances of the absolute antithesis of level/combat design.
Back to Serious Sam HD. I reckon we might finish The First Encounter today, in which case I've got The Second Encounter lined up right behind it.
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Kicking Back to start the weekend
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Pulling a late shmup shift alongside whoever else from the Shmup Book Club happens to be available this week
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After ultimately passing on Rhythm Storm yesterday, I turned to Kickback, which has been a good time so far, so let's spend more time with that
watch.cney.stream
The good news is I also picked up Kickback at the same time, and that seems to be pretty promising, so I'll continue playing through that this week.
(How promising? Promising enough that I forgot to do a time check before starting my last run today lol oops)
Moreover, I was getting the impression that there are no loadouts save for one that have any possibility of matching pace with how fast _and_ tanky enemies scale up to quite quickly. Didn't feel like subjecting my eyeballs to a dozen hours of grinding to find out if that improves.
29.07.2025 23:26 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Surprisingly ended up bouncing off of Rhythm Storm. Despite the dev adding various options and improvements related to visual clarity, it still just ends up being too much for my eyeballs by world 3 for sure, and the text especially in upgrade menus is still irritatingly tiny and low-contrast.
29.07.2025 23:25 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
Firing up the full version of Rhythm Storm, which just released last week.
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Sleep was a mess last night, so no stream today. Might try to make it up tomorrow if I feel any better, but otherwise will shoot for Wednesday.
(And I do mean shoot; top-down shooters are still on the agenda.)
I seem to have stumbled into the worst part of Serious Sam: The First Encounter, which might have even been made worse in the HD version on Serious Engine 3.
Hopefully the worst is over and we can get back to some semblance of game design...
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We might finally be out of the desert in Serious Sam HD: TFE, even if only temporarily...
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dont do this on literally any platform ever btw its fucking stupid. humans arent even good at guessing ages by faces, let alone an algorithm running off pictures from either a front-facing phone camera or a shitty webcam. how anyone decided this was a good system for anything is mind-boggling to me
24.07.2025 18:45 โ ๐ 766 ๐ 563 ๐ฌ 12 ๐ 4
Let's see if I can repeat last week's accident of making my ZAKESTA-Z score go up by 15 million points in a single frame
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Starting rather late, but I think we've still got enough time to finish up Minishoot' Adventures today, and we're already on track for 100% completion.
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I mean, if it's really a case where the dev pissed in the cereal and you're just telling people "hey, you might want to know the dev pissed in that cereal", I would personally much rather know that _before_ shelling out money for something. But then I'm a person who already distrusts hype cycles.
23.07.2025 18:54 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
We once again have new places to see in Minishoot' Adventures
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It's become clear that this administration is just a protracted war on anybody who's read a book without pictures in it. It's a miracle we're all still getting up and going to work every morning. The psychological drain is the point, and I'm increasingly grateful to the people who are still decent.
21.07.2025 01:37 โ ๐ 41111 ๐ 7202 ๐ฌ 816 ๐ 332
After managing to completely ignore the franchise for 2 and a half decades (seriously), I'm playing Serious Sam.
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Great take from @tietuesday.bsky.social about AI being used for "Placeholder art" in video games.
19.07.2025 14:05 โ ๐ 1424 ๐ 728 ๐ฌ 29 ๐ 23
Late/short Doom randomizer stream
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A gouache painting featuring a pond in a dark forest, filled with glowing swamp lantern flowers (Lysichiton) and tiny yellow fairies. Stepping stones lead across the pond towards an arched portal in a reddish brick wall overgrown with ivy. Beyond the portal, a hazy forest flooded in glowing blue light is visible.
For the second half of summer sale I am knocking an extra 5% off prints which means theyโre now a whopping 20% off!
AND you now get 5% off originals as well! ๐
Of course, postcards and bookmarks are also still 15% off!
Shop: b17fcc.myshopify.com/collections/...
