Flipping through photos from a magic school larp for an interview/video I'm working on, and I'm legitimately tearing up seeing these kids get to play and *co-create* something really meaningful and important and special!

I said it last year and I'll say it again: if you're at all interested in interactive theatre or playable art or larp, you owe it to yourself to visit Voidspace Live next month! Just £15/day for the Art Pass and £65/day to get into 3 shows – you won't find a friendlier or more accessible festival!

We demoed Strandfall's tech to the public for the very first time! Here's the lowdown from @x13n.com on what he learned, including: - Designing UI for ePaper displays is hard! - We should add a buzzer - Our receipt printer mostly worked - If our text is small, we need good access provision

I haven't actually read Yesteryear yet (101th in line at my library!) but I have to assume larp designers are on the case. And I don't mean "let's role play in as women in the gritty past" but "let's role play as tradwife influencers going back to the gritty past".

In fairness, King Ludwig II paid a huge amount of money to Richard Wagner and funded the unusually immersive Bayreuth Festspielhaus opera house, so there is precedent. Then again, Ludwig spent *even more* on Neuschwanstein Castle and other private immersive experiences...

"How do we get billionaires to donate to the opera? Make more immersive performances!" Cringeworthy stuff from the former artistic director of the English National Opera. I am yet to see billionaires supporting really good immersive art, though they will buy tickets! www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/o...

My book* on immersive experience touches upon the New Games movement of the 1970s. Proponents like to put a brave face on it, but the fact that people are still suggesting athletics like Parkrun for kids shows its legacy is limited, at best. *Actual news coming on this soon, I promise!

Watching The Truman Show after making ARGs and pervasive games hits real hard… Mostly because I’m like “well they could have flown him to ‘Fiji’ if they went to some empty island” etc

So it's a hype-fuelled, US-funded hotbed of businesses most of which will collapse in a few year's time?

Demoing Strandfall with @x13n.com at Creative Tech Scotland Gathering today! No better way to refine your pitch than trying it out on dozens of people. "Orienteering" turns out to be a great way in, along with "post-apocalyptic". Then, when people are intrigued, add the role playing dimension...

Just heard a keynote speaker say ABBA Voyage was done with Pepper's Ghost holograms. No! No!! It's "just" really big LED screens!

Do I know anyone in or near Edinburgh with First Aid training who could help with Strandfall in early Sept? You'd get to see how we make our solarpunk orienteering larp behind the scenes and have our eternal thanks!

Great piece by @yilingliu95.bsky.social about Chinese netizens despairing over their future in the face of AI. (Liu wrote one of my favorite books of the year, The Wall Dancers)

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!

This is crucial. There are some really interesting hybrid video game live events out there, but they need more support. I also think of MOMI's exhibition of Auriea Harvey's digital art and games, which was incredible and got a rave NYT review.

Yes yes yessss

It’s going well!!!

Binged The Rehearsal S1 on the train down to London for a new video I'm researching. Interesting! Looking forward to S2 on the return journey (yes, I know what it's about).

We're doing it again, only this time in German! The Car Boot Casino will be passing through Google Translate to open its doors 3:30pm Sat 16 May at @amazefest.bsky.social as the Krimskramskasino. As always we've got a hecking great line up of croupiers + maybe some piano + maybe some horses.

The world's first English-language Jubensha Convention is starting in two days! We have speakers from around the world presenting new talks and research, workshops for budding designers, free games to play, and more. We sold out weeks ago and could've easily doubled our attendees – incredible!

Starting the week off with some good news for once. Mini exclusive but Zombies, Run! Is officially back with new episodes starting tomorrow. www.theverge.com/report/92340...

The teaser site for next years Nordic Larp conference is up! It’s on March 4-7 in Denmark, and will be the 30th anniversary of the conferences - I’ll be there!

Fun post on all the tech I *didn't* buy for making my first video essay, and the one thing I did. Also: why I ended up using Final Cut Pro, my production process, and how much I enjoyed editing!

Enjoyed this NYer piece about what tweens think of The Devil Wears Prada: “Clock the tea, girl!” Mira cried, when Andy criticized Nate for being unsupportive. “He is just, like, not giving. I feel like he wants to be first, but she likes her job.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Reupping for the Euro/Asia crowd: Last month I looked at the 2013 movie Austenland through a larp design lens, which people seemed to enjoy! This weekend I expanded it into a YouTube essay with clips from the movie, hope you like it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Lp...

I've done my first ever YouTube essay! I went easy mode and did an expanded version of my Austenland thing – I'm just trying to learn the ropes at this point, so please be gentle. This was surprisingly fun to put together though! I did it this weekend and only bought one piece of kit (DJI Mic 3).

Couldn’t agree more

While I enjoy visiting Disney's parks, I'm sympathetic to this anti-theme park argument – even if I don't believe the death of playgrounds and the public square is solely on them to solve. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

So I played a couple of hours of Marathon with a friend and, despite my earlier grousing, had a ton of fun! Are all extraction shooters are like this?! The contract system and worldbuilding and combat is really solid when you get into it. Still, it's baffling anyone thought this would be a success!

Nice idea in theory, but part of the Star Wars hotel’s woes stemmed from the need to shoehorn its mobile experience into the extremely crappy Play Disney Parks app. Could it work this time? Only if they completely changed their approach…

Interesting that this FT piece on Chinese youths "lying flat" uses a photo of what seems to be a social deduction game like werewolf (probably not jubensha). The youths yearn for embodied immersive socialisation! Archive: archive.is/g6NCc

I was surprised how much I liked this, shame it’s closing! I wish there were more musical-narrative immersive experiences, there so much potential

Great intro to cybernetics in this week’s In Our Time, with a wonderfully dry @ohalpern.bsky.social - avoids the common IOT pitfall of treating the audience like babies when it comes to scientific topics

Loved this reasoning behind using custom hardware over a phone app

More on Strandfall, the solarpunk orienteering larp I'm making with @x13n.com! Some fun new photos and UI mockups in here, plus I'm trying out a new thing with the "solarpunk" angle, which sounds better and more descriptive than "low tech" or "retro-tech".

Now the dust has settled a bit on my PhD, I'm looking for a studio flat to rent in Copenhagen asap! Bit of a long shot but I figured I should ask if anyone has any leads on here. I can be pretty flexible on location and can move in immediately. Comment or DM if you know of anything!

UK games industry body saying heinous shit? They've got form.

So I just started Marathon and the tutorial made me feel like a complete idiot. How do you actually select a healing item?! It says "R2 to use" but I press R2 and I'm just stabbing my knife everything. Then I press the down button and try to select from there, but that also doesn't work properly.

For All Mankind S1: Competence porn For All Mankind S5: Incompetence porn

As far as I can tell, this is pretty much all down to The Wizard of Oz, which grossed over $260 million in under half a year. Bands can pull in the crowds but it's expensive to create custom visuals, whereas Oz can keep running and running – they expect it to make a billion over time. (Gift link)

I have the softest of spots for the game it's based on, but I was hooting and hollering at Exit 8. This is the most video game-ass video game movie I've ever seen, and even more than that, it's a Twitch-ass movie: you're basically watching someone "play" the game, and you can even play along!

There’s a special kind of infuriating forum/chat poster who’ll drop in after something has gotten everyone up in arms saying “lol look at all you babies being emotional, meanwhile here is my rational (very partial) take”. They will never accuse anyone specifically – they’re too chickenshit!!

I'm not a big comics reader but I just finished the latest volume of @kierongillen.bsky.social's The Power Fantasy, which keeps getting better and better. Thrilling and smart, and every line is so well-crafted!

You just know that a huge pull for aspiring astronauts is getting to wear a cool, custom-made costume. The gap between "going to a blockbuster sci-fi larp" and "going into space" is shrinking every day.

It’s all kicking off at BAFTA Games - and not in a good way. Basically, all games entered for awards consideration are given to Games members in a Steam bundle for free. This is a major perk for paying members, especially those outside London with access to fewer events. Now they’ve gone.

I was in Gothenburg for this year's Nordic Larp conference to give a bunch of talks, but also to get feedback on Strandfall's unusual high-tech design. Here's what I learned! (Spoilers: pervasive games, A Quiet Place, STALKER, and more...)

Just finished @yilingliu95.bsky.social's The Wall Dancers, a tremendously touching and important book. If you want to know about how the Chinese Internet blossomed and then shrank, how it gave room to feminists and then hounded them, how it shaped hip-hop and gay culture, this is for you.

The fact that Trump apparently believed a WWE scene where Vince McMahon's limo exploded was real tells you everything you need to know about him being convinced by random AI-generated videos www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

At Sublime Pretense, a symposium about art and larp, someone asked whether larp designers should pursue funding and prestige from the traditional art/gallery/theatre world, or from the games world. Putting aside the third unspoken possibility (neither), it got me thinking…

Full-res images of these adverts courtesy of designer Sebastian Utbult! (The Solipsist Entertainment one really hits hard...)