i don't have much to say other than that this article is really, really good and i suggest everyone give it a read in terms of how to view, what to keep in mind when engaging w/ interactive historical fiction, and our participation in a glorified past that exists w/in unique contexts.

just leaving this text from an oooold blog post of mine here re: TGAs ditching the future class

I wrote about historical fiction and romantic visions of the past in this year's videogames. Read it below!

The opening game-within-a-frame-within-a-frame shot of Despelote... WOW. indie games stay showing AAA how you *actually* bring cinematic language into games.

Direct Relief has a perfect score on Charity Navigator. If you can donate to help the hurricane victims, please do.

If Xbox can get away with not answering questions right now, I’d hope most of games media is reevaluating who the quid pro quo of access for coverage really is for

Doing something for free or cheap (and not getting review copies) means the time you spend on it either you have to believe in it creatively so much and make it your Project, or you gotta rush it. And if you choose the first one, so much rides on it being Seen and Discussed

READER BEWARE: FUNLAND NO. 04 IS ALIVE!!! Spill BLOOD with KEVIN KILSTROM ahead of @nightdivestudios.bsky.social's REFRESHED SUPPLY. Go into the BEAK OF MADNESS with @veselekov.bsky.social. Can you SURVIVE @puppetcombo.bsky.social's movie debut? Cover by Plastiboo! funland.itch.io/funland-zine...

I do agree that the market for "professional" game's writing is basically non-existent, but there are plenty of blog posts getting posted every week on sites like @critdistance.bsky.social to basically no attention. social media as a way to discourse and share work has become a dead end, imo.

FUCK SOCIAL MEDIA. MARRY BOOKS. KILL AI.

Picturing a million Rishi's from Industry screaming into their phones about how they're gonna bend that fund over a table and make it beg for daddy.

I reviewed The Outer Worlds 2, a game I did not like much at all.

one of my favorite styles of animation, i love the eerie the way it floats between realism and dream like blurriness. amazing.

GG fest? Really? 🙄

Women don't like the vehicle.

New from me - A review of Battlefield 6 for the Times: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/a...

Now, more than ever, you have to be a weird little pervert who makes art of questionable quality. You need to be driven crazy by the flesh. Because, as we all learned from Cronenberg's The Fly, the computers are not made crazy by the flesh. They can't do it like us.

Pretty hard not to see the validity of @platanoranger.bsky.social's argument:

New blog post up. It's about a few things—chiefly, the impulse to jettison literary criticism as if it were ballast. www.arcadence.com/abundance-re...

@edwardsmithwriter.bsky.social, @youmeyou.bsky.social, and @reidmccarter.bsky.social are finishing up our look at the first Deus Ex by talking about the Hong Kong level, multiple endings, and those accents. www.patreon.com/posts/laputa...

The final article in our Mafia: The Old Country issue, from @strida.bsky.social is up now. bulletpointsmonthly.com/2025/10/10/s...

Continuing to wonder if Mafia 3 is going to be the closest we'll ever get to a AAA game from an unapologetically black perspective.

Pre orders on this close October 18th. My contribution is a 10,000-word essay book on suicide bombers, psychosis and nightmares.

CHICAGO! If you've ever wanted to learn mold making, my partner will be teaching a class THIS WEEKEND at the Insect Asylum! You can learn how to create and cast 3D molds from animal bones, including using neon pigments and glitter! Oct. 11, 1-4pm at the INSECT ASYLUM. Links and info below:

We Here For You

Started watching Broadchurch:

Saw this proposed “bell tower” at an Isamu Noguchi exhibit that he wanted to erect in Hiroshima as a memorial. Bells brought in from all over the world, hung off a seventy foot wooden structure. Might be from playing too much Silksong, but I’m reminded of Silksong!

I am just so fucking proud of her.

This feels new. Normally network heads have to hide their ugly political views. Weiss is getting hired *because* of hers. Feels like an abandonment of the old faux objectivity of major news sites. The fringe has overtaken our institutions.

The past few hours have only reinforced this point, unfortunately. They really are petty, spiteful, childish ideologues who hate their users. And that makes them utterly incompetent in their charge as stewards of anything, let alone a social network in a time of cultural tension and upheaval.

ALERT! ALERT! We're in the last days of being able to preorder my book EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED: ON ASSASSIN'S CREED, which is a book about the Assassin's Creed franchise and how games reflect and impact the real world! Click this link and use the code MN93450 for 30% off! z.umn.edu/14943

Getting AI to do all your work for you so you can... well, not go outside, we're ensuring that that won't be a possibility. Fester in your apocalypse bunker? Swipe right on VR singles from the safety of your capsule apartment strapped to a life raft? Whats the plan here, exactly...

Folks who create videos about games on the internet: I have questions for you if you'd be so kind. I'm trying to determine the relationship between traditional media and those who create videos about games and have never worked for the games press. Sharing is appreciated! forms.gle/cG3BEkGqwuoh...

New episode in our Splinter Cell series, Small Nasty World, is up now. @edwardsmithwriter.bsky.social, @reidmccarter.bsky.social, and @youmeyou.bsky.social on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. www.patreon.com/posts/small-...

tried to dig into OTGW in this messy essay last year. it grasps beneath the contemporary signs for good and bad with a long history of American folklore, drawing on images of colonization, plantation, suburbanization, at a moment when all the rhetorical shorthands for evil have been discarded.

funny that indie games swerved to avoid the silksong apocalypse and now we find ourselves with multiple potential GOTYs coming out within a few weeks from each other that i have zero time to play.

I'm still accepting testimonials from folks canceling Game Pass or trading in their Xbox over the BDS Boycott: [email protected] ethangach on Discord DMs open

I make breakfast. I power up my PC to log on on to write video games. The president says he wants to unleash the military to kill U.S. citizens on American soil. I respond to a few emails. Gotta take inventory of what still needs signoff before script lock on Friday.

Barbara Gomes Marques is documentary filmmaker who risks imminent deportation to Brazil. Loud voices in the film community could be especially helpful right now.

You don’t have to read between the lines. Trump is literally saying, publicly and out loud, that he is at war — actual, military-involved war — with Americans and American cities he personally dislikes. That impeachment is politically off the table is a national scandal.

There's more to narratives about dismantling power structures than cheap #dissent, writes @strangelibrary.com www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/08/29/c...

Here’s some free advice for current and potential democrats: save your rule of law blather. run on impeachment, make it your whole thing. Promise impeachment the moment you have a majority. There really isn’t any other option at this point.

This final post from Kaleb Horton is very beautiful and hits hard. This is just so sad. RIP.

This only happens to you once

Obviously something a free and fair democracy would do

Yes, though to be fair... that's always been the case. They're called the police.

Assata Shakur. Glory for ever.