I'm leaving @utah.edu for @rittigers.bsky.social. As I take down the signed game collection, I've reflected on how lucky I've been to have met and taught so many great students. Thx alumni! Hearing from you always makes my day. Plz let me continue to celebrate you even if I'm not at the UoU. 😀

Hey folks! If you’re an experienced game designer who enjoys working with people, check out our new role at 20th Century Games! Come work with me!

Claw machine with grenades feels very much like a gag in a Cyberpunk game (as seen in Night City! but this one’s real (grenades are toys though) as seen in Tokyo.

Peter's the best collaborator a Narrative Designer could want, and was a blast to work with in crafting the main story campaign. Check out his interview here if you want to know what makes #ChaosGateDeathwatch unique from its predecessor. www.ign.com/articles/war...

Greg fails to mention that his Manifesto Games shop was the first online distributor to take a chance on my work. Back in 2006, absolutely NOBODY took me seriously, but he did. I’ve always been grateful for that.

I commented the other day on @daddyrolleda1.bsky.social's video about starter adventures, noting that I was going to do some writing about L1: "The Secret of Bone Hill," and it's time for me to stop putting it off and do the aforementioned writing! 🧵 1/

You can always trust Superpotato (Osaka!) to stock the important stuff..

I have 11 books about games out as author or editor. Ten of them are available as free pdfs. Check out the full list here: jaakkostenros.wordpress.com/books/

❌ answering emails (boring, hustle-culture, screen time) ✔️ taking my correspondence (vintage, mysterious, vaguely threatening)

Jubensha Con wrapped up last week! Here's how it came about, what I learned organising it, and what we might do different next time. We need more live events, so hopefully this will inspire others!

Tomorrow is the 96th birthday of René Soriano, the designer of Kerplunk & ~60 other board games he had never been credited for. I found him, & in this video he tells the story of a remarkable career ranging from dexterity games to some of the earliest Star Wars licensed games. youtu.be/dTepZ7qM24Q

Folks, Next Level is out now in bookshops and online and many of you already have copies and I'm so grateful! Just a few last things before I stop talking about it quite as much as I was this week... first, I have an auxiliary site for the book here: www.possibilityspace.org/nextlevel/

I had the great pleasure to talk to Victor Navarro-Remesal about his new book "Zen and Slow Games" on my podcast show #Gamestudies (powered by @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social ) Please tune it, enjoy and share our conversation. It helps others finding us! newbooksnetwork.com/zen-and-slow...

My article on Playdate (the handheld console) is out in the Game Studies journal, to my knowledge the first academic article on the platform. gamestudies.org/2602/article... It's already slightly outdated but nicely sums up my thoughts after around 2 years with the platform and its games.1/3

This is the closest I've ever been to an IGF award! But also, Crayon Physics Deluxe is HOW OLD NOW?!? (@ Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere - banger of a museum!)

Next Level is out in less than a week! I wanted to do a few threads in the run-up to launch about some of the things I cover in the book. The core of the book is paired chapters that introduce techniques or ideas and then study games that used it, like grammars and Spelunky's level generation.

Sometimes the “game schools are bad b/c they aren’t trade schools where grads walk out with the exact portfolio our studio wants” discourse bubbles up. Here are thoughts from an educator with industry chops: 1) hiring in the industry has never been reliable for even people with banging portfolios

here it is if u need an excuse to not come into work:

Chinese DiGRA 2026 Call for Papers: Chinese Game Studies: Publishing, Platforms, and Player Cultures: 19–20 September, Wuhan; 15 May deadline A wide range of game studies topics relating to China are welcome! chinesedigra.org/call-for-pap...

Actually it is, of course, Next Level which is coming out in just a few weeks on May 7th! It’s a friendly exploration of the world of procedural generation, games and game designers, and you can preorder it here: linktr.ee/next_level (Thanks Kayn!)

I'm hosting a podcast! This is a miniseries published under my university's feed. There will be 5-6 short episodes about teaching game design using board games. www.iheart.com/podcast/269-... Special shout out to @am0.bsky.social, who bugged me to get on the mic and who produces the show

god i wish an astronaut would come out of the capsule holding a cerveza cristal

Wanna play a shrimp pet game I had absolutely nothing to do with (though it cracked me up)? tannerholladay.itch.io/luci-the-shr...

GDC26 highlight: "Heart of Neon" world premiere: a doc about Jeff Minter: OG of OG indie devs. I'd played his games ( @digitaleclipse.bsky.social) for class recently, student flagged the premiere, many of us attended, and students even scored the poster (signed by @d0kk.bsky.social !)! 😍😍😍

"Every good game I've ever seen has eventually found its audience!"

I'm super proud of M.A. Espinosa's achievements with Guardian of Lore. I'm pretty sure this is the first @utah.edu game's alumni game from Ecuador! I'm looking forward to their next release and may Ecuador's game industry grow and prosper as well! :-)

First look at Wiggle Wigglebottom in ‘THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE’.

I actually think Chapter 3 makes a real provocation for the field: that both the 'games are bad' media panic research and the 'games are great' hype research risk making the same uncritical reduction, and a really critical study of games can instead hold onto both contradictory views at once.

(I particularly really appreciate @jzagal.bsky.social's review that the book "serves as a reminder of how far the study of games has come", which is such a lovely thing to hear.)

New collection announcement: We're live at GDC... 1989! We've digitized 21 hours of talks from the third ever Computer Game Developers' Conference, now available for free in our digital library 🔊 gamehistory.org/cgdc-1989-ta...

Finally, someone made Bugsnax look good

Good morning! I wrote a book! @flantz.bsky.social called it “the definitive history of procedural generation in video games” which is just about the best thing that can happen to a book. Tell your friends, enemies and book-loving acquaintances!

Pretzel is super fast to play, super simple, and also super fun. czmavery.itch.io/pretzel

I would suggest this is a more valuable Steam chart, from SteamDB. Releases dramatically grow each year but the number of new games getting more than 500 user reviews does not. steamdb.info/stats/releas...

Winner for Best Student Game – Poco | Developer – Whalefall | Publisher – Michael Boursier #IGF2026

When people ask me about games that require high-precision, high-skill, and practice from players... I just think of 50/50. :-) theshelfman.itch.io/fiftyfifty

Hey, our panel from Super MAGFest 2026 is up! Hear me, @lainenooney.bsky.social, and @kendraserra.bsky.social talk about the last year of news in the field of game history! Hot opinions, deep cuts, and something Laine calls "Weird Take of the Year"

BREAKING: We've freed Cookie. Following an investigation by VGHF, Ukie and Web Capio have suspended DMCA takedowns for Cookie's Bustle on behalf of Graceware, SL. More info:

Dumb epiphany time! Magic: The Gathering is an analog GaaS. Now I'm unpacking LiveOps for M:tG.

If I post it, it’s true: @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social & I will be recording a conversation next month about his strategies for satisfying roleplaying in just an hour-long session. Taking questions now. I can think of few peers more consistently supportive, thoughtful, rigorous, & truly hospitable.

Hey! Scholars! If you're using someone's work in your class, sometimes it's nice to email them and tell them, because then they might feel good about their research instead of entirely crushed by the academic humanities' ongoing descent into the grave

Just a reminder that we have an @mitpress.bsky.social Platform Studies book on the Nintendo Virtual Boy, by @jzagal.bsky.social and @benjedwards.com!

If you have access to institutional library money, make sure you acquire a copy of our 2nd edition Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Games, the introduction for everyone approaching the topic with fresh eyes. (Some of us will even send y'all our own chapters...) www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

New book now coming out very soon. Next month!

En Chile dirian "este libro la lleva". No se cual seria el equivalente en España. Felicitaciones @vthewanderer.bsky.social ! In the US, is the cool thing to say "this book slaps" or "this book slays" or "this one's a real banger"? Can books have rizz? @mitpress.bsky.social

The 22nd spring seminar of Game Research Lab at Tampere University is on the topic of Events and Communities. We have just published the program. springseminar.org/2026-program/

Irresponsible to do this without releasing the Support, Assault and Recon beavers at the same time.

New release of the Game Feel Simulator - a fantastic tool for playing around with, testing, discussing, game feel in platforming games. Now with a bunch of new profiles for notable platforming games! (I didn't make this) Patch Notes - Game Feel Simulator itch.io/blog/924926/...

My latest co-authored article with Megan Condis was just published in Games: Research and Practice. And it's open access! Check out "Rad Dudes, Rude ‘Tude, and the Family, Too: How Nintendo and Sega Advertisements Shaped the Image of Gaming in the 1990s."

Here is the official fact sheet for the 1996 game that Nintendo is about to release for the first time