Westin Lee
@westinlee
Writer of games shows movies books websites. Nothing is inevitable. linktr.ee/westinlee
You know, I make all this stuff and then forget about it and then I find it later and it’s a treat
welcome to your Lifelike Child gets an update today, with a bunch of very neat audio revisions and a couple of bug fixes. Check it out if you haven't yet! The vibes are immaculate (deeply unsettling)! westinlee.itch.io/lifelike-child
The Lost in Cult IMMORTALITY Design Works is…enormous. Pikachu amiibo for scale. So much stuff! And this was only like £60. How. That’s a cassette tape
I wasn’t kidding about Honest Ed’s being a traumatic backrooms experience. That place was as creepy as its depiction in Scott Pilgrim
Launch announcement! I love when a game hands you an in-world guide that looks real, so I made one. welcome to your Lifelike Child is a puzzle game designed around a 10,000 word user guide packed with disturbing, Robocop-tier satire. Enjoy! westinlee.itch.io/lifelike-child
I am making a game. The game is almost done. I am particularly proud of the unsettling, minimalist art style. I used to do many arts, but now I am rusty. Limitations!
My favorite tiny worldbuilding detail in Welcome to Your Lifelike Child is the “download on the App Store” button in the user guide. It has its own 90s lofi internet banner visual language that looks nothing like anything else in the game.
If you are tempted to read it, take as a warning this excerpt, which contains three deliciously wrong or stupid statements, the most glaring of which I have marked. Unrelated: I put chalk into Stephen's milk last week. Should I tell him? He didn't notice, so he must be cool with it.
Update: I think I figured out why I am where I am (that is, in good company)
Lastly, Future Fiction has crossed my desk before and I look forward to giving them the scrutiny they deserve. 12/12
The concern about impact to the market is founded. Indies have long struggled with perceptions of quality. The publishers were awful, but the gatekeeping did push for a certain quality floor. Do romance readers leave for verticals if they can’t find good books? I don't know. 8/?
It's clear here she isn't disclosing AI use because she's worried people will feel cheated or that the work is low quality. "Readers won't feel cheated about me in the future though! Take my class!" Right. 6/?
This is just a line. No detail, no proof. Y'all need to stop being so credulous when people say things like this. Oh, Tilly Norwood is "taking meetings" with CAA? AI marketers got huge boosts to ROAS by using AI? No they fucking didn't. Prove it. 5/?
Around those numbers, we learn about the author's classes and LLM wrapper writing software. We see hints that she's still cranking out slop books, but this reads an awful lot like she did just enough to hit the numbers, in order to sell courses. If she really hit the numbers. 4/?
Here's the first thing that caught my eye: Selling 50,000 ebooks (and making >100k) annually is the core idea behind the (extremely cool and free) indie author marketing group 20booksto50k. It’s strange she references exactly the target numbers indies use as a marker for "going pro." 3/?
Can product manuals be liminal? Trying out a Mystery House inspired art style for my game and…
Turns out the LLMs all have "hey please use me" email automations now if you haven't logged in. Let's see what the best minds in marketing at OpenAI think you should do with their revolutionary product...
...the actual poll responses paint a far more mixed picture than the summary? In political polling, could I than take my candidate's polling, combine with "unsure" and say that "52% of the country is excited about (or unsure) about my guy!"