Yeah I agree with takes that it's too simplistic to say that Gamergate led to resurgent fascism but a lot of those chuds do occupy senior positions in the US government now...

“The Game Needs to Change - Towards Sustainable Game Design” is now available for pre-order (official release 17th of November)!: www.routledge.com/The-Game-Nee... This book shows how games can play their part in addressing climate change and how we can sustainably make games for sustainability.

A reminder of our open call for postdoctoral researchers focusing on cultural game studies, closing on Friday this week, 31 October at 23.59.00 EET / UTC+2 (Finland time): tuni.rekrytointi.com/paikat/index...

Barger!!!

Now it is official! The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Games is now, like, actually, surely, coming out! (This has been in the pipeline since 2018.) I have a piece here on this brand new thing called 'magic circle'. Everyone will be talking about it.

SCOOP: For the last two years, Microsoft has pushed Xbox to hit profit margins of 30%, an ambitious target that's far higher than the industry average. This chase for profit has led Xbox to raise prices, cut thousands of jobs, and rethink everything. Story: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In This article “Weak Men and Strong Women,” Kenzie Gordon and Sarah Stang critically examine how two major franchises, Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3, handle gender-based violence, arguing that their portrayals reinforce harmful stereotypes ⚔️ Studies in the Fantastic: muse.jhu.edu/article/970184

Holy shit!

Not feeling good about this game. The Jays bats are either on or they aren't. They don't usually come alive late after struggling like this #BlueJays

The entire "free speech on campus" moral panic was manufactured to blackmail us into making space in intellectual life for bigots and charlatans who couldn't get there on their own merits. Its a DEI scheme for fascism. Congratulations to everyone who took it at face value.

Noah Smith seems to now believe that accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, something which is now the consensus of all major human rights organizations on the planet as well as the International Association of Genocide Scholars, is comparable to the 2020 election denialism of the GOP.

Canadian friends, your government is seeking commentary on GenAi strategies and policies. Please let them know exactly how you feel about GenAi, it’s impacts, and what next steps should be! Perhaps it’s respecting artists works, environmental considerations and so on! Share your thoughts here 👇

A great write-up on one of our recent MA in Game Studies grads!

Always look forward to CGSA every year. Great games scholarship and good vibes gamestudies.ca/conference-c...

israel has already broken the ceasefire

seems like a non-insignificant percentage of rage against the machine's fanbase are young republican men driving SUVs bopping their head to anti-oil, pro-immigrant songs thinking the lyrics are about how they wish their suburban parents would get off their back

To be clear, it's not that bitter online dorks assumed it was about them. It -is- about them. They just don't like that it is calling them out for what they are.

'Gaming is the new oil:' How the EA buyout 'diverges from the traditional playbook'

You would not believe how many stories like this have been popping up over the last ~5 years Not just full games cancelled—entire characters and plot lines removed or changed, leaving less time for making the *rest of the game better*, to try avoiding a small and malicious contingent of voices.

The most important political thread of our time.

Still thinking about this glorious grand slam yesterday. Being a Toronto sports fan is mostly pain so have to savor these moments

Hopefully the whole Bari Weiss thing and Ezra Klein thing starts waking people up to the fact that corporate media is mostly populated with mediocre people who have made millions and gained unbelievable influence because they threaten nothing and tell wealthy people exactly what they want to hear.

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...

Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons (Play Story Press 2025) edited by Suzanne Richardson & Edmond Y. Chang: playstorypress.org/books/roll-w... - in print or open access PDF! #analoggamestudies #creativewriting #dungeonsanddragons #dnd

My book is out! 💗 Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity and Coming of Age in Videogames is a 6-year-long labour of love for young adult stories, teen heroines in videogames and unnoticed girly game histories. Thank you @livvy.itch.io for the beautiful cover! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Kind of want to put this bit on a billboard somewhere (or, idk, replace every web ad everywhere with this text) bsky.app/profile/edzi...

And when the magical GenAI savings don't materialize it'll be the remaining workers who lose their jobs while the c-suite further engorges itself. Not a great system!

A disaster that Starmer insists on ignoring the mountain of empirical evidence from across "Western" democracies that adopting rightwing positions and frameworks only ever helps the Right win legitimacy and votes. An utter disaster that so many Democrats in the U.S. insist on doing Starmerism.

:) aftermath.site/palestinian-...

Our latest issue of Analog Game Studies is now available! Daniel Lawson on transmediation and the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, Hugh O’Donnell on tabletop simulations, Brian Jason Thomas on Taskmaster & mental health, and Keith Jones on Around the World in 80 Games. #StayAnalog analoggamestudies.org

#Cfp: Call for Book Chapters - #videogames, #gamedesign, game communities, & playthings that trouble what we mean by #nostalgia “ #Games and its Nostalgia for the Future” is edited by yours truly and likely published with Play Story Press. Abstracts due Nov 3, 2025 Full CfP: shorturl.at/NCkzU

If you have been thinking about structures of safety in TTRPGs, this issue is for you, including pieces that touch on games in the classroom, philosophies of safety, care ethics, and even rules lawyering.

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

If your stated positions reflexively shift contrariwise to the source of criticism against them, there was really never anything principled about those positions.

the person behind this unhinged, anti-factual editorial is set to decide coverage at one of the nation’s major news networks

New from @tinanguyen.bsky.social and me: Charlie Kirk's shooter left behind bullet casings with a furry sex meme and a bunch of Helldivers video game references. Subreddits for Helldivers immediately picked up on it. www.theverge.com/politics/777...

This is such a funny element to the Kirk eulogizing: they can’t describe him the way they’re describing him *and* show clips of anything he actually said or did

This is class solidarity. In case you’re at all confused.

Ezra Klein is trying in this column to argue that Kirk was doing politics correctly if you just ignore the content of what he was advocating. That he was contributing to American democracy by arguing civilly for the subjugation of women, gay people, trans people. It simply doesn’t work.

I have no idea what white people are talking about right now. The warnings that the fascists will "use this" to do more violence. WHAT WON'T THEY USE? You've watched them deploy the US military on US soil using bullshit pretexts. What even are you talking about?

Genuinely one of the most evil things I’ve ever read, and these dudes are American citizens who went to Gaza for the chance and joy of killing www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

perfect encapsulation of a strategy that *Harry Truman* thought was stupid -- make immigration and right wing ideas a more important and salient issue, get more people to support it, then watch as they defect to the party that's better at it.

I've been waiting to see anti-hate take this on!! This is super important:

Genre is inherently political. It captures the sensibilities of contemporary life and strategies for responding to the present that cultivate different futures Updated/Final covers for a passion-project w/ @joshcall.bsky.social, @profmatthew.bsky.social, and @betsybrey.bsky.social Out Jan 2026!

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT! @mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and myself have combined our collective brains and written a wide-reaching introduction to the complex and interdisciplinary field of Game Studies in this forthcoming book for Polity. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

The Carney government continues to tip-toe around Trump, the exact opposite of their promises during the campaign. The failure to explicitly condemn Trump's actions here is disgraceful. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

OutRun GB is OUT NOW for your Game Boy Color.🌴 - All the tracks, all the music, all the wind in your hair! (link in reply) #pixelart #indiedev #gameboy #retrogaming

one of the things i hate most about gen ai is its total disdain for process – the part of creation where you make mistakes, hit on new ideas, get better. if you're a creative writer curious about game design (or vice versa!), consider signing up for my upcoming interactive fiction workshop!