Nice of them to do it before I finish the final version of the book

wonder why Donald Trump would want the US justice department to prosecute the former FBI director who investigated contacts between the president’s 2016 campaign and Russia? www.ft.com/content/dded...

A voluntary digital ID programme that’d help you speed your way through annoying bureaucratic hoops? Neat! A potentially mandatory digital ID system rolled out to support law enforcement at the same time democracy is at real threat of being eaten alive by autocracy? 😬

Who do we think it is? Margot Robbie? Eddie Redmayne? Character actor Kevin Eldon?

This is a great piece. It also reinforces my belief that if we want to maintain democracy across the world then we, people who believe in that stuff, need to be ready for a proper fight for the future.

What's driving the rise in retro game handhelds? For this week's @vgim.bsky.social I speak to Evercade's @cleaverslips.bsky.social, @apzonerunner.com and GamerCard's Grant Sinclair about the legality and longevity of gaming's newest booming industry. www.videogamesindustrymemo.com/p/the-retro-...

Broke: Forcing loot boxes to declare the probabilities of winning certain items. Woke: Forcing Octopus Energy to declare the probabilities of winning on its post meter reading Wheel of Fortune.

I'd be very wary about sharing anything about the shooter, an X user has been identified as the shooter by the usual right wing idiots and he's replying to their posts, which is quite a thing considering the shooter is dead.

Me: You can choose happiness, it is something that we’re all free to do. Also me: *chooses to fight optional Silksong bosses that are a million miles away from the nearest bench*

In a sane media culture, this would be the end of him.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Ignore the haters, London is the 🐐

Greece, you have been wonderful. But it is time to return to a life where chips are not served with literally every meal 😢

Disinformation is a perfectly fine term that is falling out of use in the US because the country is becoming an autocracy, which means it constantly wraps itself in it to maintain legitimacy

Flying to Riga for work in two weeks time, best check the news to see whether or not there is any sabre rattling by Russia going on. *looks at headlines over the past week* …ah.

I’ve been reading Dracula on holiday and I can’t believe I hadn’t read it until now. It’s a B movie romp, filled with some properly pulpy horror, and top “guys being positive male role models” with each other you’ll see (Dracula aside, naturally).

Dear Team Cherry, The Widow boss fight in Silksong is too hard because I can’t see my screen properly while playing outside in Greece. Please patch the sun when you get a moment. Yours, Osborn

I’ve been doing a lot of work on the concept of self-appreciation in therapy lately. This is such a good encapsulation of the work I’m doing that I’m showing it to my therapist next Monday.

On a solo holiday and have once again been given dating advice from the person running the accomodation. Ouroboros, you’ve done it again.

From the man who brought you cats in Athens comes the next in the long awaited series: cats in Rhodes

A perfectly preserved medieval city that’s also a UNESCO World Heritage site? *judders with excitement*

You mean to tell me that my crisp holiday lager makes Silksong even harder? oh boy

Well, it’s as good a place as any to get a proof read going

Cleansing your timeline with calm cat, please close your eyes for ten seconds and embrace your inner resting feline (thank you in advance)

Abroad update. There are many cats in Athens. They are all lovely.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: the niceness of being abroad continues, unabated

Abroad continues to be nice.

at the center of the efforts to destroy civil society in russia, hungary, georgia and elsewhere is the stigmatization, harassment, & criminalization of NGOs. that's what this is about, a full-on assault on democratic debate & freedoms. this is not hyperbole. it's right here.

Am abroad. It is nice.

This nails one of the other frustrations. Oh, really tough boss battle is it? Let’s just have you travel for seven minutes through tricky platforming bits with enemies who can clobber you to bits before you get your next go, shall we? *silently vibrates with annoyance*

I am enjoying Silksong’s boss fights. I am not enjoying traversing the map. This is not ideal for a Metroidvania.

Burnley vs Liverpool ending in the worst way possible

Not only has Starmer said nothing about yesterday’s march, his official account has put out a statement *on X* this morning about financial investment in Britain. Dismal.

Last call for game and fiction recommendations for my holiday. Game wise, I’ve got Silksong but looking for something chill but brainy (thinking turn based tactics stuff, deck builders etc). Fiction wise, fun murder novels, sci-fi, or American witticism (think Less, but not that).

This is a fabulous review, which captures my fear about Silksong is its overreach into Soulslike territory. Hollow Knight definitely had those elements too, but the Metroidvania side was much more prominent until you really hit the late game - letting bozos like me get into it.

23/24 the European football market incl UK was worth ~€38b. The European gaming market is worth ~€22b. I doubt it’s an exaggeration to say that the staff of the English football press dwarf those being paid to write about gaming across Europe as a whole

That three major British newspapers jumped on the poorly sourced (ATF to Steven Crowder to WSJ) line about the bullets having ‘trans’ symbols (actually a, wait for it, Helldivers 2 code) is such a tell on what they really care about. They really need to apologise (they won’t)

It’s also really important to remember that it is essential that it is a joke, as Alice has pointed out. The Christchurch shooter said Spyro the Dragon taught him ethnonationalism in his manifesto because his community would find it funny AND he knew instinctively it’d get picked up widely.

I’ve read The Verge’s story about the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk scratching Helldivers 2 references onto bullets. And I think it is worth taking a moment here to explain why video games don’t cause violence, but they keep appearing with alarming regularity in killings/mass shootings 🧵

A major thread throughout my book is that authoritarians, populists, and violent extremists have been able to amplify their influence by controlling, co-opting, or collaborating with games communities to project influence online. We need liberal institutions to get this quickly & adjust accordingly

Truly, a President capable of meeting the moment

Posted this, walked home, opened my letter box and found out I’d been summonsed for jury duty. FFS LIFE

I'm off on holiday for two weeks. - VGIM stuff? Contact @grapedosmil.bsky.social and @vitageorge.bsky.social. - Work stuff: I'll be back online Monday 29th September, please hold until then. - Book: Out next year, give it a pre-order so I can buy a beer in Greece. linktr.ee/Power_play_b...

New from VGIM: say hello to Playing Politics, a monthly newsletter looking solely at the politics shaping games. In this first edition, I look at a new EU paper which found that more Europeans think the negatives of games outweigh the positives. www.videogamesindustrymemo.com/p/more-europ...

Just discovered that there is a direct walking route from Liverpool Street’s Elizabeth Line station to Moorgate and I genuinely feel like I unlocked fast travel in a video game

George’s newsletter is always a fascinating read, but this week’s guest issue is particularly gripping – a deep-dive on a video game used in real-world propaganda battles, as an ISIS recruitment tool, and on licence to real-world militaries.

Actually chuckled at this statement from Ubisoft, which ignores the fact that the PIF’s ties to MbS are so undisputed that even Wikipedia outright says he has controlled it for the past ten years

What happens when video games and warfare blur together? @grapedosmil.bsky.social explores how ultra-realistic military shooter ARMA has found itself both willingly and unwillingly on the new digital frontlines in this week's @vgim.bsky.social www.videogamesindustrymemo.com/p/arma-at-wa...

Watching the absolute chaos that is the news agenda today and not-very-secretly wishing to be a peasant in The Dark Ages completely oblivious to the wider world unless someone literally stands in my field and tells me about it

*whispers quietly* silksong sold well but launched badly, damaging both the game and lots of devs who risk learning the wrong lessons from it *flees from the scene*