My book, "The Middle Ages in Computer Games" is out in paperback tomorrow (2 Jun). If you've been waiting to get hold of it, now could be a good time! boydellandbrewer.com/book/the-mid...

NYC: the city of everything - regardless of price - somehow being $20.

I, for research, was poking my head back into Lisps and am so sad to see what's happened in the Racket community since I was programming in it back in 2017. Really love group of folks that are structurally bound to a really awful central figure/language creator.

This is musicology.

Some notes after spending the week getting back into emacs: - package management has gotten really good. - lisp is still good (though elisp is questionable) - my pinky is already back to being claw-like

Brigador Killers demo is out on Steam (and shortly GoG), please enjoy after a decade of waiting: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0mQ... #BrigadorKillers #Brigador #gamedev

Currently prototyping a Mavis Beacon wizard game.

Between having to mention that students I teach are nostalgic for the xbox360 at a conference and learning that one of my favorite video game reviewers is retiring because of carpal tunnel has made me feel suddenly very old.

I think Titanium Court (by @apthomson.bsky.social) is going to be an example in most game dev classes I teach moving forward. Great example for mechanical design, art, economy of reuse, and what unique writing does for/to a game. Also thank you @plante.bsky.social for putting it on my radar.

The Old Games Zine makes a triumphant return in 2026, thanks to Hannah Chafe and the folks at the Syd Bolton Collection! 🧹This year's zine is 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, and provides a simple step-by-step guide for cleaning your retro videogame cartridges.

Alright, now that we are done with the weekend, I have some reflections on the grad conference. First off: it was amazing and great and I am constantly in awe of all the cool work folks do and grateful that they share it with venues as small as the one I run.

Starting this thread a little late, but coming to you live: The Critical Game Design Graduate Conference 2026!

Look, the NYTs does suck. But the Hanif article is actually good and you should read it before quote-posting it for the headline.

Okay, I have figured out a workflow for Typist that will let me ditch MS word for 95% of my work.

Been playing Marathon a lot...

The algorithms might be done with Chico's Rebound but I'm not ready to shut up about it yet! It's like an action-packed puzzle Arkanoid with a zelda-like dungeon connecting it all! It's unique and I'm really proud of it Thank you for helping me share and boost it ❤️ #indiegames #gamemaker

Between conference prep ending and proposal defense approaching, I am getting some time to work on GPU code again. I finally got to compare the renderer I wrote vs. the one I was using to explore engine dev The performance improved by ~400%? When from 4k sprites @ 60fps to about 18k sprites.

I am always shocked the ImGui is one of those pieces of software that _just works_™.

For a moment I thought this was a Destination: Void post

The lack of tools to debug gpu pipelines on macOS is truly wild. I am starting to wonder if the unpopularity of MacOS in game dev historically has more to do with tooling instead of api performance.

I’ve now had the displeasure of helping someone debug a cmake file that was generated by someone else using Claude. I don’t know what the future holds for programming but I do know that the Cmake folks are safe.

As usual you should both support sex workers' rights and if you consider yourself to be current on either tech or politics and don't follow anyone in that field, you are very likely behind the curve -- the issues they face are the issues the rest of us will have put in front of us in short order.

Some of my favorite illustrations from the safety manual of the plane I am on:

Had an absolutely wonderful time this year at #SCMS26. Grateful to have spent time with so many folks known and new! Also thank you to all the folks who attended my talk; I deeply appreciate the time you gave to hear about my research!

Thanks to everyone who came out! You can read the full paper here: gameartsinternationalnet.itch.io/

Very excited for #SCMS26 this year. I’ll be presenting on retro game development this Sunday and wandering around looking lost the rest of the time. Say hi!

I have finally found a new slideshow style after receiving enough complaints about my old style to change it.

The easiest way to make something longer is to do it twice.

This may single handedly sink the one workflow that redeemed python for me: openai.com/index/openai...

Getting ready for some dice rolls:

Literally it’s just this again:

@prefect.io is everything I wish I had when I was maintaining an app using Airflow

Some thoughts on Marathon: - Bungie still knows how to make good feeling FPS games (no surprise) - the visual language is both super fresh yet deeply nostalgic for the y2k consumer electronics era product design - the loot system feels good but currently pretty shallow

Hard same.

My main issue with the well-meaning “rigorous engineering” AI folks is that I don’t know of an example where the an industry has chosen rigor-on-principle over economic gain.

I have flown out of O’Hare 4 times. My flight has been delayed all 4 of those times.

Whatever happens, it’s the best looking fps in the space and I’m tired of pretending it’s not

Regular reminder that there are no secure hosted services.

New from @midimyers.com, a take we’re quite honestly sick of having to argue. www.mothership.blog/you-know-wha...

CFP: Sounding Things: Props, Material Culture, and Accessories in Popular Music Abstract Deadline: May 1, 2026 Abstract Length: 350–500 words Editors: Kate Galloway, Paxton Haven, and Mike Levine Full call here: drive.google.com/file/d/1mfyd...

The billboards I saw when I lived in Boston felt excessive. But someone in a personal vehicular just hung these in a bag on the door of my house. I live in a village of ~1000 people about 40 miles from where this performance is happening…

What is going on with Apple's UI teams lately?

I am beginning to believe all these c++ replacement languages are what groovy was to java. Except Rust, rust is scala.

A really lovely little game: danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper

Originally my first middle name was going to be Hearty, but a close family friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer so I was named Henry after him. The second name, Gray, is my mother’s maiden name. Coincidentally me and my brother have the same initials despite two different names.