Steam is a weird one. It has come to functionally dominate a market segment associated with a more "open" form of digital distribution in contrast to the mobile ecosystems, where platform holders locked them down and set up mandatory rentier operations.

Really happy to announce that I've signed my contract with @brisunipress.bsky.social for my forthcoming (2027) book 'Levelling Out: The Crash of the Video Games Industry'.

My trade union work is what keeps me grounded. I do what little I can and because everyone is coming together we actually achieve quite a lot.

Really happy to announce that I've signed my contract with @brisunipress.bsky.social for my forthcoming (2027) book 'Levelling Out: The Crash of the Video Games Industry'.

Yes AI is a bubble but I _think_ a key dimension to it is that the physical infrastructure investment is made possible by the massive cash reserves that the tech monopolies had just sitting around. The stock market valuation is one thing - but the physical investment is another.

Which of you put me on a list

quickly shit looking AI videos are, sadly, where the humour that defined twitter is likely to go. Sorry! Some will be funny, a lot will be boring. But, honestly, what it does is mean that lots of people can produce a short form comedy where the punchline is a visual.

I'll be going as a delegate for MMU UCU this Friday and Saturday to The World Transformed in Manchester - if you are planning to go please let me know!

Frankly absurd that Bratton somehow woke up one morning and thought the problem slowing down the sovereigntist European AI industry was media studies.

So my more measured take is that this is a clear reflection of the geopolitical-economic priorities of the Saudi Public Investment Fund & Jared Kusher's investment fund. We wrote about this broader dynamic over here in relation to the PIF investment in esports www.emerald.com/tpm/article/...

So my more measured take is that this is a clear reflection of the geopolitical-economic priorities of the Saudi Public Investment Fund & Jared Kusher's investment fund. We wrote about this broader dynamic over here in relation to the PIF investment in esports www.emerald.com/tpm/article/...

Jared Kushner and the Saudi PIF buying EA wasn’t on my bingo card

Some crack reporting from the Financial Times on the current real world impact of AI tools on contemporary businesses. It's funny to see businesses admit the very limited impact, and very high risks, of AI deployment on.ft.com/3IEuXJr

Really excited to announce that Chris Young, David Nieborg and I just published a new OA paper in Platforms & Society developing the concept of the "workflow monopoly". To do this we conducted a platform historiography of the Unity game engine / workflow suite journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Really excited to announce that Chris Young, David Nieborg and I just published a new OA paper in Platforms & Society developing the concept of the "workflow monopoly". To do this we conducted a platform historiography of the Unity game engine / workflow suite journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

My book, Influencer Creep, is a Publishers Weekly (@publisherswkly.bsky.social) Pick! Thank you for engaging so deeply with the themes of the book. The verdict? “those in the art world will find plenty to chew on”. Read here: www.publishersweekly.com/9780520402706

really important aspect of the piles of money that tech have is that they are currently burning piles of it to build AI infrastructure. pretty much every major infrastructure investment like this is one day written down - but it's important that this gets built if capitalism is to keep "working"

Game File reporting how Krafton wants PUBG to become a "gamplay platform" www.gamefile.news/p/krafton-pu...

did some peer reviewin'

Just reposting a few weeks out now - but hey if you’re interested in how and why a state inserts itself into sports and video games our article is just the ticket. Importantly, we call for a refocus on the nation state as a key player in digital capitalism.

Am helping out with this! Should be a very cool special issue.

Insulting to hear that UCEA has refused to budge on our pay negotiations and continue to only offer a pay rise of 1.4%. UCEA constantly complaining about the financial woes across the sector isn’t an excuse to drive our wages into the ground.

Really interesting write up of Valve by @alphaville.ft.com on.ft.com/4nC87SA

I'm in Montreal on annual leave right now but really happy to share Tom Brock, Will Partin, & I's new article out in Team Performance Management: 'Towards a geopolitical economy of esports: making sense of Saudi Arabia’s investments' www.emerald.com/insight/cont...

I'm in Montreal on annual leave right now but really happy to share Tom Brock, Will Partin, & I's new article out in Team Performance Management: 'Towards a geopolitical economy of esports: making sense of Saudi Arabia’s investments' www.emerald.com/insight/cont...

Haha mark carney sucks shout out to everyone who said strategic voting was the only way to stop a right wing turn while this guy co-signs every act of Israeli and American aggression possible!! Evil stuff!!

I'm in Prague today! Tomorrow I'll be keynoting at Labor and Play in the Platform Society at Charles University. Really stoked to be talking about the book I'm writing: Digital Games After Platformization gameproductionstudies.fsv.cuni.cz/2025/06/04/l...

TIL that NVIDIA's H100 GPU costs about £30,000 brand new

Good to see more empirical work on this. My team wrote up similar work using App Store data to look at unequal exchange in digital services (in this, digital games) between the global north and south ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

I'm very lucky to do a lot of cool research and teaching but doing trade union case work is also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in this job.

Am I going to “burrow down” into publicly available corporate data? Yes. Am I going to “listen in” to industry elite conversations that reveal the political economy of communication? Also yes.

I think the question of AI for me isn't if people will or will not want to use it casually - like ask chatgpt or don't! whatever! use it to make silly things or don't. What matters is if you are forced to use it at some point in your workflow or if the supply chain of your life utilizes it.

The Rehearsal season 2: excellent

this is likely one of the biggest changes we have seen in a long time when it comes to the overall shape of platform markets www.theverge.com/news/661290/...

frankly unhinged at how they are daring a massive part of the economy (and the literal middle class) to crumble on their watch.

One thing I would say after five years in a permanent academic job is that I have figured out how to keep about two dozen plates spinning at the same time and not just decompose thinking about it.

after two rounds of productive revisions one of my writing teams got a journal accept today :)

it is hard to explain to people here how utterly unhinged drivers in Toronto are.

Here's @dringo.bsky.social breaking down some recent digital game industry revenue numbers which suggest another year of decline. This stagnation is the reason why I'm writing my book 'Digital Games After Platformization' www.thegamebusiness.com/p/the-answer...

doin' some peer reviewin'

had a really nice time in Glasgow this weekend. Good city! Sad to be a flying visit but we got to eat good Italian food and visit the wonderful and FREE botanical gardens.

it's a relatively small thing but when Microsoft ended up on the BDS list I unsubscribed to game pass. I hope they stop giving material support to the Israeli war machine.

I’ve got a very rough grant idea in the works to research the future of advertising now that AI is seriously uprooting established consumer and SEO approaches on.ft.com/43qDVk3

my landscaper found a bomb shelter in my garden

As Brendan says later down in his thread, the major problem here is the profit motive - there's really nothing you can do about "deprofessionalization" without addressing what it does to corrode creative labour.

Take-Two Interactive CEO making a case that only Take-Two can make about a game with such cultural and economic weight as GTA: that you can confidently amortize the cost of development and justify the most expensive games in history www.thegamebusiness.com/p/take-two-c...

relevant to these thoughts the other day. Again, not sure if AI will outright replace much work, but it will change the structure and flow of it. While now it might save people time, I think we can again look to Harry Braverman's work on the ultimate impact: deskilling archive.ph/jGwYE

Insightful as always. The focus on the macroeconomic flows of capital and the political choices behind them are partly why I've got two pieces in in the works advocating for Radhika Desai's "geopolitical economy" as a key concept to understand what's going on.

on my podcast of choice (@remapradio.bsky.social) there was a discussion on the importance of avoiding thinking too hard about market winners and losers when it comes to enjoying games! And this is very true. And yet here I am writing a book and three papers almost entirely about market dynamics.

Ben has been on a tear recently looking at media effects research - this critique of the so-called "positive" effects of media consumption is really cool.