honestly the only piece worth reading on the platner situation. @tressiemcphd.bsky.social is absolutely cooking here. (gift link)

We're happy to announce the call for contributions for our new HGN theme: Fictions! Following a successful event last month, this theme explores the relationship between history and fiction in games, and how they shape each other. www.historicalgames.net/call-for-con... #gamestudies #gamingthepast

UVA school of data science is hiring this year—searches are open to folks from all disciplines. We need humanists & social scientists to teach ethics/data & society courses + do research that supports school’s mission to be holistic in the study of data science: datascience.virginia.edu/faculty-jobs

And a huge thanks to the team at Studies in the Fantastic! It was an honor working with them, and their efforts really brought out the best in our piece!

Is Bloodborne's Gothic horror just aesthetics, or a critique of Victorian gender roles? 🤔🩸 Mark Hines and Riley Wilkins in "Isn't that how you've made me?" analyze Bloodborne's feminine dualities, arguing the game constructs and critiques the impossible standard of "good" and "bad" femininity.

"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gondor," i holler as i overturn my uncle's funeral pyre and turn the 4th Age of Man into the 4th Age of Shit

it's weird how several decades of organized assault on higher education has led to a cratering of American public opinion on higher education news.gallup.com/poll/695003/...

We’re thrilled to announce that Issue 19, a special issue on Gendered Violence and Video Games, is now live on Project Muse (muse.jhu.edu/issue/55643) and the UTampa Press website (utampapress.org/product/stud... Thank you to all our contributors. Go check it out! #SFF #VideoGames #SpecFic #Read

EA's bombshell deal to go private could be good for investors, but bad for employees. Leveraged buyouts almost always lead to immediate mass layoffs, and more than half of EA's current cash flow will likely go toward servicing the debt. This week's column: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

It is (almost) funny to me how, for decades, we've seen the decline of appreciation and funding for liberal arts (and subsequently enrollments), and for 10 to 15 years, we've also seen the rise of (technocratic) authoritarianism, but people won't connect the dots. www.startribune.com/liberal-arts...

Some might even say it’s *designed* to be that way!

COVER REVEAL! ‼️ We are SO excited to announce our newest issue to our collection of Studies in the Fantastic! This is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of gaming, gender, and violence. Coming this fall!🍁🎃🍂 Stay tuned! #Gaming #Gender #Violence #SFF #SFFCommunity

Give folks their flowers No, I mean right now. Go tell someone you loved their work right now. They're on social media just say it, it has never been easier "They know how much people love--" no they don't go say it right now to a composer or artist or game dev or writer or anyone AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Why is this horrible for Universities? Just about everyone who isn't a citizen or green card holder already who's hired for a tenure track faculty position is hired through an H1B and then, after 3-5 years, applies for a green card. This is literally "No more foreign professors can be hired"

One of my students pointed out yesterday that jstor now has AI summaries of articles turned on by default & I didn't think it was possible to hate this tech more than I already did but here we are.

Despite decades of talking about agency in gaming, our discussions remain in their infancy *precisely* because no off-the-shelf taxonomy can capture the liberation some players feel while being directed down a narrow lane with a forced decision, or the andiety some feel when co-creating.

I invented a new phone to help save time in the morning

I once read a source in which a British captain, after the anguish cries of a FOUR YEAR OLD enslaved girl bothered him so much on the voyage, went below deck and stabbed her to death just for quiet. If you’re not familiar with the primary sources, it’s difficult to comprehend how bad it was.

📢Press Start is delighted to welcome our newest board members! We'll be introducing one member every day in this thread, so please give them all a warm welcome♥️

Mark Hines is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Kentucky. He is interested in representations of race and gender in virtual and fantastic worlds. His dissertation explores fantasy games and their racial groups since 2020.

Sam Altman: I see humans achieving omnipotence using dark matter by… 2030 maybe? That’s if OpenAI is given a quadrillion dollars Theo Von: Yeah Altman: Or, we may become a race of slaves, genetically modified to be harvested by robot spiders. That’s if OpenAI doesn’t get the money Von: Right

2 bits of data from new Economist/YouGov poll..... 13% support for cutting research funding to universities. 24% among Republicans. Polling on this continues to be catastrophic for the Rs, suggests Dems should be learning far harder into standing up for science and our universities. 1/

I considered the Department of Homeland Security’s new white nationalist recruitment memes, in the context of the well-documented history of DHS downplaying and disregarding white nationalism and “domestic extremism.” As upsetting as these posts are, it also tracks.

As Terry Eagleton pointed out, a statement can be ideological even if it’s true. When people point out that slavery has been practiced by many societies, they’re using a factually correct statement to conceal a morally repugnant idea: that transatlantic slavery was therefore normal and forgivable.

Open Call for Papers 2025🥰📢 Press Start is currently seeking full-length game studies papers from current grad students/recent grads. Submit by November 10, 2025, for a potential spot in our 2026 issue! More details below in this thread👇 #CallForPapers #GameStudies

This is a great discussion with @friede.bsky.social and @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social about RPG history, and particularly the online element of it. You need to be supporting @rascal.news with your dollars -- nowhere else on the internet is publishing stuff like this. www.rascal.news/we-cant-let-...

I find the dildo thing pretty appalling so I wrote a bit about why

new piece from on the 60th anniversary of the voting rights act, and what the law has meant for american democracy www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/o...

I really needed this today. Ayanna Thompson sent me a link to this jaw-dropping thing they built with a Mellon grant at @acmrs.bsky.social You can get lost in it. A spectacular reminder that digital resources don't have to be about surveillance, coercion, & disciplining the labor force.

My department @utexasrtf.bsky.social is hiring a TT faculty member in media studies. We are looking for faculty who conduct broad-based research in the following areas: media history and industries associated with film, television, and/or digital media. More here: apply.interfolio.com/171261

If your entire measure of self worth is based on your "masculinity," you will never be masculine enough.

Humanities Graduates Can Find a Great Job. It’s Time to Make This Fact Known. www.mellon.org/voices/human...

📢 Incredibly excited to announce I signed with a publisher! My retro tycoon game 'Car Park Capital' will be published by MicroProse! The one behind classics like Transport Tycoon and Civilization. Thanks everyone for the support so far! 🙏 s.team/a/3031880

I spent seven years writing a book on this and she just… said it in three succinct paragraphs to politico.

Had the best time attending @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social for the Summer Doctoral Program hosted by @berkeleyischool.bsky.social and @oii.ox.ac.uk in collaboration with @bcnm.bsky.social 👩🏽‍💻🌁🇺🇸 Thank you to everyone who made this fantastic experience possible 🥰 #PhD #doctoralresearch #summerschool

Looks like we finally have a cover... (we were limited in what we could select/do in terms of stock image/template...this was a decent option...) #VideoGames, #Literature, and #ClosePlaying is out in November! www.routledge.com/Video-Games-... @routledgebooks.bsky.social

NEW investigation: DOGE-Pilled The full story on the transformation of 23 year-old Luke Farritor and how he ended up at the Department of Government Efficiency--slashing, dismantling, undoing--wielding a résumé that "didn’t pass muster” NO PAYWALL! www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

My article "The Separation of Analog and Digital Game Studies" has now been published as part of this mammoth 781-page edited volume Historiographies of Game Studies. Congrats to the editors and fellow authors for getting this into the world! punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be, Edited by Alisha Karabinus, Carly A. Kocurek, Cody Mejeur, Emma Vossen... punctumbooks.com/titles/histo...

I personally feel like “it’s complicated” is not an excuse for silence. If we want games to be treated as culturally important and an artistic medium then you have to engage with these issues. We can’t just have groups that advocate for games when they make a lot of money (for who, I might add…)

I'm in the back!

always reposting, it's the rules, like the best lipsynch

Millions of us first listened to classical, opera, and other music genres via PBS and NPR. The right yells about the destruction of Western civ and culture, but aren't really interested in cultural preservation. If they were, they'd support funding for public broadcasting, the arts and humanities.

syllabus time, teaming up for the herculean efforts of reinventing writing assignments. here, some prompts for required weekly low stakes 250-500 word reflections/ process pieces that have proven relatively conducive to real writing in lit class. please share any similar suggestions in thread.

Note also that the lawsuit alleges that because race and class are correlated, providing free tuition to lower income students is also racial preference. They just want a pure aristocracy of inherited wealth

Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.

#GenerationAnalog2025 "PUNK" is this week! Thursday, July 17, online! Registration is free & required for online event link: www.eventbrite.com/e/generation...! Session times are all Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)/GMT-4. Brought to you by @analoggamestudies.bsky.social & #GameinLab

Page proooooofs! (And yes, @emnk.bsky.social and I really went hard on the big ol’ footnotes on this one)

🌟New Issue Published!!🌟 We are thrilled to announce the publication of the latest issue of Press Start! Huge thanks to all our authors and reviewers for their hard work and dedication. Please check it out and share widely: press-start.gla.ac.uk/press-start/...

Several authors who have contributed to the newest issue have shared their socials with us: - Chelsea Russel: chelseasbitstream.myportfolio.com - Edward Strazd: x.com/SimplyEdwardGG - Joel White: @joelalwhite.bsky.social - Mark Hines: @markshines.bsky.social