A bit of self-indulgence, but this is a life goal achievement: one of my books in display at Llibreria Finestres in Barcelona.

«I’d rather the full game give the feeling of being “a little too short” than “a little too long”. I hope that when I face death, the same is true of life.»

A few weeks ago we run a new conference, Playing Futures (playingfutures.today). Scholars and creators from 4 continents (!) met in Copenhagen to discuss play and games and climate and energy. I am happy to announce that the proceedings are live: www.youtube.com/channel/UCfH...

Friends! I’m happy to announce that we have two more talks available at the Center for Digital Play YouTube channel! (1/3)

The World Cup starts tomorrow. I love football, and I have a few things to say. (also, we wrote a book: www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...)

Our team recently read a bibliometric analysis of Games & Culture papers (doi.org/10.1177/1555...) – and it's iffy, to say the least. The paper makes all kinds of claims about the journal's influence on game studies – and there's hardly any analysis that would support this ...

So, is done, and I am happy and exhausted and ready to start planning Playing Futures 2027.

So, is done, and I am happy and exhausted and ready to start planning Playing Futures 2027.

to all my friends and enemies and acquaintances at IO Interactive: congrats on launching First Light!

Bo Kampmann Walther and me wrote a book about football, and we're presenting it! Friday the 29th at 16:00 in Auditorium 4 at the IT University, you can learn more about our book, and you can hear two academics' predictions for the Champions League final! en.itu.dk/About-ITU/Pr...

Final day of Playing Futures: a workshop with Patrick Prax on Systemic Sustainability: what is meaningful sustainability in and through games.

Closing keynote: Patrick Chuang on What is and what is not possible in a society without fossil fuels

Seventh talk(!): Bart Simon, Darren Wershler, Rosie MacDonald, Shahrom Ali, and Maia Earl on We have never been ecomodern

Sixth talk: Patrick Smith on Sandcastles

Fifth talk: Cindy Poremba on M*55 (picture by Rune Nielsen)

Expect play in play conferences! (Testing a Mycelium network-creation game)

Fourth talk: Adrián Brito, Debashee Chatterjee, and Ilana Mallak on The Unknown Realms of Mycelium: Mycelial logics and more-than-human in critical board game design

Third talk: Matteo Menapace on Daybreak: a possitopian game to imagine post-capitalist futures

Second talk: Heather Kelley and Marie LeBlanc Flanagan on Grow Still: A Game Poem

Playing Futures continues today! Day 2 starts with Niva Kay and Sustainable Futures in Videogames Toolkit

Seventh talk: Paolo Ruffino on Videogames in the Anthropocene: Rethinking the scalability of play

Sixth talk: Alejandra Rosales-Diaz & Aida Navarro-Redón on Playing Displacement: The Aesthetics of Climate Mobility in Video Game Futures

Fifth talk: Elle Fieggen on Striving for Tomorrow: A Study of Agency in Post-Catastrophic Videogames

Fourth talk: Udbela Escanero Xi on Sentient Others at the Edge: Precautionary Play in Ecocritical Games

Third talk: Violeta Moldes-Rivas from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, on Growing up in the post-apocalypse. Coming-of-age imaginaries of ecology and climate crisis in Horizon Zero Dawn and Caravan Sandwitch.

Second talk: Hajo Backe on The Paradox of Scale: Stellaris and the (Im)Possibility of Transcending Anthropocentrism Let’s read Stellaris from an eco critical perspective!!

First talk, Steffen Dalsgaard on Twin transition and other kinship metaphors (What do we mean about “twin transition” and the intersection of the digital and climate futures)

Gearing up for Playing Futures (https://playingfutures.today)

Do you make games? Do you study or teach games? Do you create videos or blog about games? -- What theories or ideas help make good games? -- Share your opinion in our 10min online survey w @dooleymurphy.bsky.social & @florencesn.bsky.social res58.itu.dk/limesurvey/I...

With a bit of delay, I want to highlight a couple of journal issues where I have some texts. The issues are great and you should read them in full!

Off to Oslo to help out with this event. Looking forward to being reborn in XR www.munch.no/hva_skjer/at...

Friends! Registration for our conference Playing Futures (playingfutures.today/conferences/...) will stay open until Wednesday May 13th at 23:00 Copenhagen time: miguelsicart.limesurvey.net/589896?newte... (you don't need to have a paper accepted to attend!)

Hilo larguísimo! (versión en English más abajo) Nuevo libro: acaba de salir publicado Jugar en el fin de un mundo. El libro está publicado en la colección ludografías de Shangrila Ediciones: shangrilaediciones.com/producto/jug...

Novedad: La colección Ludografías llega a su nº 8 con el libro más atrevido y libre que hemos publicado hasta ahora: JUGAR EN EL FIN DE UN MUNDO de @miguelsicart.bsky.social Una alegría enorme tener este texto valiente y provocador con nosotros. shangrilaediciones.com/producto/jug...

Carnage Infernational Featuring: @cybrlich.bsky.social /// Michael Overton Brown /// @strangescaffold.bsky.social /// @direkris.itch.io /// Playables

Friends! You may have heard that Bo Kampmann Walther and me have written a game studies book about football: www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1... 
Well, we’re going to do a book presentation! miguelsicart.net/football_book/

Registration for our conference Playing Futures is now open! Register here: miguelsicart.limesurvey.net/589896 Some notes: entrance is free, there are limited seats, and we will not be livestreaming. Also,we're running this with a skeleton crew, so apologies if things are not smooth and professional

Friends! New book announcement! It’s finally out! Bo Kampmann Walther and me have written The Laws of the Game: A Game Studies Book About Soccer, and now you can buy it: www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

Next Monday I will be presenting our paper "Video Game Archaeology as Hauntological Practice: A Collaborative Autoethnography in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree" at #chi2026! The preprint is available to download here: kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/pu... #archaeogaming #archaeology #hci #gamedev

Klaatu Barada Nikto

The acceptance/rejection emails for Playing Futures have been submitted. We have accepted 13 very interesting works by junior and senior scholars. I look forward to hosting the conference and learning from all this wonderful people!

Join us at the @claptoncfc.co.uk clubhouse on Sunday for the finale of my (exhausting) 2 month Billionaires & Guillotines board game tour (pub by @plutopress.bsky.social). Organized w. @gamestransformed.bsky.social and kicks off the 2026 game jam: SMASH THE FASH www.tickettailor.com/events/rival...

We'll host a conference on the convergence between videogames and gambling in late September 2026 in Hong Kong. 🇭🇰🇨🇳 Call for papers: tinyurl.com/thegamblingcfp Let’s think “outside of the loot box.” Abstract deadline: 26 June 2026 Results notification: 20 July 2026 Conference: 28–29 September 2026

Artist Sam Lavigne created ‘Slow LLM’ to make people question their dependence on tools like Claude and ChatGPT. Or at least, make them super annoying to use.

I have an idea for academic publishers: why not do the "10 Euro each book campaign" that Palgrave did once? Your book prices are ridiculously absurd. #academicchatter

I've written a book! Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves is the story of procedural generation - the tech behind games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. It's about how it works, the games that use it, and the art and magic behind it. Out May 7th, in bookshops: linktr.ee/next_level 🎲🔮

Copenhagen friends, I need a bit of help: I have to find a venue that can host around 80 people in late May, preferably affordable. I just need the space, no need (nor budget) for catering. Suggestions here in the open or in DM. Thanks!

Friends! Game designer and scholar Max Haiven is visiting the ITU on Friday, March 20th, at 15:00: digitalplay.itu.dk/event/max-ha...

all will rise is handing back Microsoft money & pledging @nogamesforgenocide.com — it’s a difficult thing to do when funding and attention are scarce commodities for indies like us, but we hope more of our fellow devs and indie studios will join us in taking a stand 🔥 www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...