"Instead of actually playing an MMO, it's more like hanging out in an MMO themed room" youtu.be/Z1IWpQ3Aug4

just in time for that summer sun: VIDEOGAMES v. VIDEO GAMES (even has a romchip logo on the back! get your exclusive journal merch here: romchip-a-journal-of-game-histories-shop.fourthwall.com)

yo what's up, I've got a new lil project out. it's a zine I made in a day, featuring two reviews: one of Marathon (2026) and one of Armored Core VI (2023). it's 2 bucks for 28 pages of extremely crunchy jpegs thresholded to within an inch of their life, and also my writing. enjoy

I'm gonna make a little joke where I roll out the bullet points for what producers do and they just keep going

"As a user, I don't want to" uxdesign.cc/as-a-user-i-...

Nothing "just works." People make things work.

NEW: I've been shocked by some of the numbers I've been seeing on behind-the-meter power plants for data centers, so I did a little math. less than a dozen gas plants being built to power data centers for big tech companies could emit a maximum of nearly 130 million tons of CO2e each year (!)

"a vast industrial machine that exists to produce nothing"

"Your death will move something, even if all it moves is the stock price of a publicly traded corp half a lightyear away"

Also hit level 25 tonight (at last!) and got the Cryo Archive cutscene. Violent little things. This game continued to wow.

Loaded into Perimeter with two friends and free kits, wiped a squad with purple gear off spawn. Next round, took our new purple gear back into Perimeter, and immediately got wiped by a squad with free kits. Marathon is incredible.

I am so impressed with the @marathonteam.bungie.net's attentativeness to feedback, nuanced solutions for hard design problems, and general willingness to experiment with the playspace they've created. Really exemplary stuff!

The Realis actual play on the FatT patreon has been incredible listening. The way this game thinks about character and story is so invigorating and inspiring. Feels both fresh and deeply informed by a legacy of other great storytelling games. Go back this!

"A chatbot did not kill those children. People failed to update a database, and other people built a system fast enough to make that failure lethal"

"Players don't read text." This is not literally true in all cases, but it IS a factual statement in many contexts. An interesting question is "Why?" The same player who reads a text-heavy game like Disco Elysium may not read text popping up in a UI during the action or during a tutorial.

A little encounter on Tau Ceti IV. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqNv...

jessica defino talks about how contemporary beauty culture is skewed towards the algorithmic gaze and rejection of "human" qualities: it's poreless, filtered, digitally and surgically altered, faces made uncanny through use of botox and filler. this kind of tech mirrors that rejection of humanness

even from a pure technical perspective, it's clearly throwing out a bunch of the actual lighting information in the scene to replace it with essentially a pre-baked yassified valley face. it's the Samsung moon thing but for video game characters' faces

Seven-Part Pact, my fantastical and ornate TTRPG about the seven most powerful wizards in a fantasy world, is coming this summer to kickstarter!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjg...

For folks curious, a chunk of my concepting was for Field Maintenance in Dire Marsh and designing the big harvester vehicles. What @ninehydras.dev and the world art/palette team did is so so rad

From the publisher that brings you Sprigs & Kindling (that's me!), in collaboration with @jesseross.com and @pemetawe.bsky.social comes a new anthology of one shot incursions for Trophy! Sign up to be notified of launch 😄 www.kickstarter.com/projects/fir...

Played more of the Marathon Server Slam tonight, but this time with two friends, and I'm sold. Solo is extremely punishing, but the game really isn't balanced for solo (at least right now). As a squad, though, the game shines.

Marathon is so stylish. Aesthetics are really working for me. Environments, lighting, sound... SOUND. Oh man. Just want to listen to this game, wander around and poke at things. Story surprisingly interesting, too. Vibes off the charts.

Wow. I have no idea if it will retain a playerbase, but Marathon is one of the most exciting visual and storytelling statements of intent I've ever played. I'm considering buying an extraction shooter for the narrative; the actions of a madman

GUYS have you seen this. antarctica on google maps. go look at it. this is tech struggling to process the Sublime

I've started a blog writing PbTA moves for games that don't exist. Here's today's entry. https://onamiss.bearblog.dev/3/

the crowd is chanting "machine zone, machine zone, machine zone". there's a biplane flying overhead trailing a banner that says READ NATASHA DOW-SCHULL'S 'ADDICTION BY DESIGN'

free level design advice for creating an FPS arena that people will call the best multiplayer map ever made for generations.

Cool new book alert! With an open access digital edition, too.

extremely wild story from @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social (yes that one): aftermath.site/nicole-carpe...

if you think about it, a megadungeon is the ultimate walkable city

One easy fix would be to eliminate categories based on genre or whatever “indie” means and instead get granular about craft (best level design, best world, best combat, etc) which would probably pose other problems but at least make for more interesting conversations and honor specific people

"video game mechanics?" Actually, they're called developers.

I played Horses this weekend and I wrote down some messy thoughts not only on the game but especially on the specter of formalism that emerged to haunt us all for a moment. transgamerthoughts.com/post/8023277...

I have written a new blog about what an OSR is. I am told there is a lot of discourse about this, but am confident that this should settle the matter once and for all. thegardenbelow.blot.im/what-is-an-osr

Surprise, we're getting pretty close to the final version of REALIS! ICYMI: I've been making a TTRPG about mystical moons and living spaceships and sentences that can kill you. A preview is available now (see my pinned post), but the full version draws near! www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

Ohhh yeaah, narrative RPG + Zola, I'm here for it.

it's on miro. it's literally on figma. you have to log into okta. it's in jira. it's on zoom. it's on pureref. it's on flow. it's on perforce. it's on slack. you can find it on slack. you can go to slack and find it. log onto slack right now. you can slack it. slack has it for you. it's on slack.

The webpage for our upcoming book has the cover on it now which is enough of a milestone for me to write another post about the book we have coming out soon. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Can confirm, this was nice and easy to complete!

Here We GO! Come along, my dearies! www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

i wish people would be substantially more careful with their choice to dismiss art/games they don't like as "not art / not a game"

Check out this nice review of FICTIONAL GAMES that @steinea.bsky.social did for ARB a while back: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2023/05/26/i...

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

Silksong true ending as praxis, in this essay I will

The Mist, Phantom, Cogwork Dancers last night. Unlocked Whiteward before going to sleep. This game, man. Mechanically, aesthetically, just so impressive. And the WRITING! Achingly beautiful. Talking with the Caretaker in Songclave, some real gut-punch lines.

I'm starting to get texts about this now so I guess I need to say something: There is a fundraiser going around about a "preservation disaster" raising money right now that I highly advise you to stay very far away from. A particular British tabloid is running with it unquestioningly. Thread:

Wow, these ToCs are awful. I've made my research available on several platforms for a while for exactly this reason, as well as syndicating on my personal site. This was an easy few clicks to delete my Academia page. The site has rapidly worsened over the last few years, so I'm not sad to leave it.