I'm glad you asked! docseuss.medium.com/lore-is-a-tr... (also if anyone reads this essay and likes it, I'd like to pay my internet bill and buy some food, so tips would be appreciated)

Merry Christmas y'all - passed midnight doing my annual re-read of Jonathan Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) still one of my favourite pieces of 18th century prose and the best sermon ever written: #c18th #history

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! May this be a time of reflection, consolidation, inspiration, & the start of a year of radical love for your community, class, & the wretched of the Earth!

Who coined "Metroidvania"? It wasn't @jparish.bsky.social, and he'll be the first to tell you. Besides, there are far more interesting questions, like: How did it spread? Evolve? And what's it got to do with rickrolling? Watch til the end for a post-credits sting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8set...

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk (posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

We have two vacancies on the Council of the *British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies*: 1. Postgraduate Representative 2. Communications Officer Happy to answer any questions about @bsecs.bsky.social Council life! More info here: www.bsecs.org.uk/the-society/...

Couldn't sleep so watched a bunch of YouTube video essays - really taken by this reading of LOTR orcs as symbols of what mechanised warfare does to individual soldiers - i could see fascinating dialogue between Tolkien and Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That - youtu.be/2e6M6ed_skg?...

Clowns as horror reflect the mistranslation of critiques of bourgeois straight-laced subjectivity aimed at adults into a form of entertainment aimed at children who have no frame of reference for the trauma of alienated labour to which the clown responds - youtu.be/qJn2PZKzV7g?... - or idk, lore?

I will go to my grave screaming about how Pennywise being a clown hits completely different for anyone under 40 or 50, because the original intent was that Pennywise LOOKED HARMLESS, because “IT” predates scary clowns, & if the story were modern, Pennywise would manifest as a ninja turtle or Luffy

Actual bluesky challenge: post your favourite work of art from fifty years before you were born

Several teams of female gamers have dropped out of the Dead by Daylight Women's World Cup after trans women were banned.

Another December marks another @npr.org best games of the year list. Indies ruled 2025. Our list is the most eclectic you will find on the internet. 🧵 www.npr.org/2025/12/03/n...

I have nintendo thumb :/ how can I have nintendo thumb, I still haven't even finished act 2 of Silksong 🤔

Via infosec.exchange/@catsalad/11...

A good meditation on why just "recreating" an historic structure architecturally without the everyday lived context ends up with a sterile result. Also why thoughtful environmental storytelling is so powerful

Not what you expect to be searching for (and getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of good results), while researching a fun little essay about vampires:

Cluedo inventor's daughter hands over archives to Birmingham museum - BBC News share.google/7Qv94t3X2q9K...

He said "Amen" straight into the drop Lmao Pope Leo threw a rave for an archbishop's 75th birthday this is kind of incredible

Prepping for daughter's party this weekend - this is what sandwich prep for 60 looks like 😲😲

Today I booked a day off to play games - 6 hours, that can make a dent in Silksong, complete an indie like 80 Days front to back, or be a springboard for sth like Legend of Heroes, which I've been wanting to get back into after dropping when my daughter was born in 2022.

Every negative review on Loser Named Hana I'm so glad I added the "I don't want woke content" option that just closes the game at the very beginning of the game to let the real losers know they aren't welcomed

"SLAVES, toil no more! Why delve, and moil, and pine, To glut the tyrant-forgers of your chain?" ---Thomas Cooper the Chartist, The Purgatory of Suicides (1847). #history #poetry #politics #literature #English #Chartism

And one other thing: we’re being told that AI is the only way to make games cheaper and faster, to pull us from this precipice of production nightmares the industry has found itself in. That it’s necessary. We put out roughly 3 motherfucking games a year, not touching the stuff. Skill issue.

We don't use generative AI at either Minor Key Games or Question. Partly on principle, and partly because we're really good at what we do.

I finally figured out what is wrong with our timeline - the dark Lord cthulhu has finally obtained the glowing idol of ultimate power, and is bending reality to his dark will.

Hey this is on Monday and I think you should sign up and watch online. I'm going to talk about RuneScape for a while.

Just a reminder this Oxford-based roundtable on games preservation, archiving & exhibition is next week, and also is a hybrid event 🎮🌏👇

just....enjoy this

Trash Goblin won TIGA's Diversity In Games award last night! For "Shining a light on inclusion, creativity, and community"! Woo!

Finally got a phone with some decent memory, and responding in a perfectly restrained way 🤣

The next Bodleian Student Editions session will run on 11th November – it’s a great opportunity for students to learn about editing and transcribing early modern letters. Spaces are still available - find out more & sign up: digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/event/bodlei...

Just rewatching an old GMTK video about genre mash-ups, what is the strangest genre mash-up y'all are aware of? And are there any genres that are fundamentally irreconcilable? Curious to hear your thoughts #gamestudies

This is in a couple of weeks and I'm still building my talk for it, are there any specific topics or issues people are interested in - Specifically in and around videogames in museums and videogame preservation? 🤔🎮

You may know Eizin Suzuki for being one of the big City Pop illustrators. If you've never seen his work directly, you have seen it referenced in anime. Cars and surf boards, lush love letters to a surreal, hyper saturated America..

The first LaserDisc upload today: a video art City Pop love letter to the American Southwest. A collaboration between two Japanese pop artists in the 1980s. Tatsuro Yamashita & Eizin Suzuki: Southward Bound, translated and captured on a Domesday Duplicator. archive.org/details/tats...

Where do game developers get their ideas? Like any good answer to a complicated question, it depends! @victoriatran.bsky.social asks eight indie devs (and herself, twice) about where the idea for their games came from -- featuring Inscryption, 1000xRESIST, Venba, Mars First Logistics, and more!

Really looking forward to this!

We're back on Monday! Join us for a discussion of 'play' with papers from Fiona Maxwell, Holly Nielsen @hollynielsen.bsky.social & Caitlin Hendrie. 20 October 11am at Magdalen College Sophia Sheppard Room or online via Teams. More info including how to join us online ⬇️ talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/series...

Very excited to share that on November 10 @discoxford.bsky.social are hosting a hybrid roundtable on Videogame preservation practices with @carrythezero.bsky.social, Alex Habgood, digital archivist at Rebellion studios, and @emarlow.bsky.social: digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/event/video-...

The next Bodleian Student Editions session will run on 23rd October – it’s a great opportunity for students to learn about editing and transcribing early modern letters. Spaces are still available - find out more & sign up: digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/event/bodlei...

Managed to get to the cinema to watch the 4K restoration of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, for the first time in about 10 years - I don't know if I've just got more pretentious in the last decade, but I'm really interested in whether there's a Baudrillardian reading of the film out there?

I'll be taking my nonsense to #BSECS again :) delighted that my paper on 'Big Feelings: Small Stories, Archival Encounters in the Ludic Eighteenth-Century' has been accepted - expect queer historiography, critical fabulation, autoethnography, and Ambition: A Minuet in Power 🇫🇷🪓👑

Our next Digital Scholarship coffee morning will be on Tues 21st October: Jack Orchard @jarona7.bsky.social will talk about games & historical emotional states, Gothic literature & horror games, & French Revolutionary paranoia in games. Find out more: digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/event/digita...

Second session of the day begins with Jakub Sindelár talking about the polyvalence of historical empathy!

Hey! Did you get an NES Classic mini console but you don't care about the manual/poster it came with? Put it to use supporting @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social! I'm seeking these out for fundraiser autograph opportunities, but need them ASAP. Let me know! Can pay!

c.f. @ckunzelman.bsky.social

The Japanese Mario 64 official strategy guide is an incredible thing. "Can we make little hand-made dioramas of all the levels?" "Sure, why the hell not."

Just defeated the Cogwork Dancers in Hollow Knight: Silksong