Nick

@nickcummings.com

I created some games and made a few billionaires much richer and now I’m trying to do better 🧑‍💻 whymog.net 🦝 thisgameishaunted.itch.io/trash-the-planet 🎮 whymog.itch.io 📝 @siliconsasquatch.com 🐘 xoxo.zone/@whymog 🌲 Portland, Oregon Ovinnorr nevarei

My Outlier game score for day 60. I got 851 points

Photo showing hundreds of cyclists on ebikes standing in the “Better Naito” bike lane, getting ready to ride out

Screenshot of Deltarune chapter 3 where the party and Tenna are playing a retro video game. An NPC’s dialogue box says “a flower torn in half!”

A screenshot from GoFundMe's donation page. It says:

You donated $290
Nicholas, you're joining 78 donors making an impact

And it has information about reaching more donors, etc. below that.

Instagram post from @debsmuseum depicting Eugene Devs speaking forcefully on stage in front of American flags and a small gathering of people. There is a long quote from Debs that begins here; I will transcribe the first paragraph here and the rest in full in the next photo’s alt text.

It begins:

"I like the 4th of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution. On this day we reaffirm the ultimate triumph of socialism. It is coming as certain as I stand in your presence."

Screenshot from a web game I'm working on that's currently called Cursed Math. A black background with red letters says "Cursed Math". Counters for problems solved and high score are shown. A basic calculator is on the left and a list of line items to math up is on the right. Two candles are burning in the corners because it's gothed out in here

Side-by-side screenshots of a plaintext editor (Cursor, but I have all the AI bullshit turned off) with some React TSX code that renders a calculator. On the right is a Chrome browser window with the dev tools open. In the content area, a basic calculator with rudimentary styling is visible. The only unusual button here is one at the bottom that says "sell soul."

GitHub update feed screenshot showing a blanked-out user who starred a repository called avoid-ai-writing. Its description reads: "Skill that audits and rewrites content to remove AI writing patterns. Use it with your favorite agents including Claude Code, OpenClaw, and Hermes."

Final Fantasy VII dialogue box that says:

Barrett
“The games industry’s dyin’, Cloud!”

Darmok TNG screenshot with meme text:

GIULIANI

WHEN HIS HAIR DYE DRIBBLED DOWN HIS FACE

Meme template with Street Fighter character illustrations:

Picture of Guile: "Who my friends think I am"
Picture of M. Bison/Dictator: "Who I think I am"
Picture of Dan Hibiki: "Who I actually am"

A close-up photo showing a deep-red ladybug with no visible spots crawling on the edge of a pink rose

"It hurts to live" bird meme with a crudely drawn bike helmet positioned atop the white stag on a photo of the iconic "Portland Oregon / Old Town" neon sign at dusk.

Handwritten pencil notes on graph paper, cropped to make it harder to read:

“Trash the Planet talk - ideas and outline

Why did I feel I had any reason to give a talk right now?

“Please hire me I’m very good but also…that secretly I’m awful”

“What the fuck are any of us even doing in this field anymore; shit is so fucke—“

“aaaaah”

Bluesky’s “Add muted words and tags” interface. I have entered “/s” as the mute phrase.

Look it's just a really fucking scary picture book about a "shadow ghost" I'm done we're done here

The same dark room, now inside and looking left. A teddy bear hangs from a rack, missing its right eye. A bed, medical curtains, and more toys are scattered in the dark distance. This sucks, man.

First-person screenshot from Resident Evil Requiem of a woman's hand holding a burning cigarette lighter in front of a dark room. An open white door and green-painted left wall are visible at the periphery, and older furniture can vaguely be made out in the darkness. It is very scary in person; trust me.

A little pixelated dude runs around on a forest-y piece of concept art, occasionally dodge-rolling at accelerated speed. HUD text and meters show the roll duration and cooldown before the next roll as percentages. Movement directions are also displayed as plain text.

Short video of a 2D sprite moving on an isometric plane and occasionally "dodge rolling" (the sprite rotates 360 degrees clockwise very quickly while his speed increases for the duration of the roll). My Godot script editor is open in the background, showing some movement code.

Black-and-white portrait of Anthony Bourdain with the Kissinger quote, except it reads:

"Once you've read Donald Norman, you'll never stop wanting to beat every kitchen appliance to death with your bare hands."

- ANTHONY BOURDAIN -

Screenshot of On-Together, a coworking app where a dozen or so avatars congregate on picnic benches on a dock. The avatars are all working on various tasks.

Screenshot from Titanium Court. A salesperson in a suit and tie is explaining a potion for sale: "The effects are really mild. Drink it and you'll end up liking this 'baseball' just a bit more than you already do. That's it!"

Screenshot of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. We look over the shoulder of a white-haired character in a black suit as they stare at a garden pathway in front of them. In the far distance, enshrouded in fog, is the Eiffel Tower, broken and bent to the right at the top.

Screenshot from Blue Prince in Her Ladyship's Chambers, a purple bedroom. A scrap of torn paper is held up in the center that contains a spiral illustration and the words "does it never end?" written below.

Screenshot from Desperate showing a black-and-white living room scene. Two hand-drawn characters sit on either side of a TV broadcasting a soccer match. The left character, a man with glasses and a beard, says "Why don't Peruvians host their games in a high altitude city?" The right character, a child, says "The ball got past him!"

Screenshot of Baby Steps showing the protagonist, Nate, a caked-up, onesie-wearing man in his mid-thirties, wearing a hard hat and staring up at a seemingly endless spiral staircase before a sheer cliff face.

Screenshot from Deltarune Chapter 4 showing Kris in a church in the overworld. Dialog choices include:

Enter the shelter
Asgore
Bangin' sermon my man

Silksong screenshot showing Hornet talking to Sherma, who is bathing in a hot spring and singing:

Holy water, nice and hot
Makes a perfect swimming spot,
Heals your worries in a flash,
So jump on in...splash splash splash! Ha ha ha!

Screenshot of Promise Mascot Agency showing Michi and Pinky in conversation with Mr. Mori and Tora, the station manager and station cat. The latter are saying: "This town deserves better. Infrastructure gives people opportunities and allows places to thrive."

Twin Peaks screenshots of Dale Cooper speaking to Sheriff Truman: "Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen."

The blu-ray menu for Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. “Play Film” is highlighted

A handwritten bookmark is tucked into a hardcover book: This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. The bookmark says: “I am gonna make it through This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days if it kills me”

Blue sticker with black text on a blue bike rack that reads:

I find it kinda bussin’
I find it kinda cap
That the dreams in which I’m dying
Are the ones that kinda slap

A four-foot Christmas tree stands on a wooden table against a beige wall, with a strand of multicolored lights woven around it. A blue and white faux carton made of felt crowns the tree, with the words "oat milk" on it.

Sad Pablo Escobar meme: a man sits on a bench, at an empty kitchen table, and stands outside on some concrete against a green backdrop, all alone

A character from Frisky Dingo saying "I like to call it 'Lost Wages,'" which I'm posting in reference to the Steely Dan song "Show Biz Kids" from their sophomore album, Countdown to Ecstasy

The screaming cowboy from that one song except it’s set to the really over-the-top part from “Une Vie à T’aimer” from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which plays during the penultimate boss fight of Act 2. Very much an IYKYK thing.

Report card for a final exam from Mount Holly Elementary in Blue Prince. I got an A- grade.

The world

is as big as you
want it to be.

Where will you go next?

YouTube thumbnail of an Apple promotional video titled “Introducing Liquid Glass.” The YouTube red play button appears over the title, so it reads “Introducing Liquid ass”

The battle victory screen in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, showing me having beaten the hardest optional challenge in the game, which I am — now that I stop to think about it — most likely sharing in order to process that distinct blend of accomplishment and emptiness that comes after finishing a really meaningful game

$Is this AI? Sorta, it’s all Artisanal Brooklyn ML made with love and care. Wait, so how does it work? It’s a fractal combinatorial trope engine. Our narrative team of real humans write flexible, structured plot beats, and we then use a variety of ML tools to combine those beats with the rules of the world, the player’s choices, the characters in a given scenario, generic plot beats, and our trope soup into a delicious story meal. We update our game engine layer with a structured representation of everything in your world, from story events to character stats and conditions. This, along with the narrative beats and the tropes and rules of a specific world, is what we use to make the actual text and assemble the bits of art that you see. In each turn of the game we run a bunch of different tasks, some of them purely programmatic, some using what’s now called “classic” machine learning, a few using LLMs. We have a game engine layer that stores each character, item, or location in the world, and its state. We use that engine to generate the story that you see as you play. Do you train AI models on authors’ books or movie scripts to make this work? Fuck no. We read the books or watch the movies and then write an opinionated take on the world as editorial guidance for our system. What about the art? All of our art is hand-drawn by our team of artists, led by our amazing Art Director, Megan Carlsen, and including Harrison and Aurora. We find a sparing use of high-quality art creates the experience we’re looking for much more than a ton of mediocre and uncontrolled generated assets.$