🎂 inkle is 14 years old today! 🎉

We’ve edited a thing! Writing Game Histories is an accessible entry point to historical game studies, coming from Bloomsbury in 2026. Our contributors are a brilliant bunch of people who have worked with us through the HGN over the last few years. Check it out ⬇️⬇️

This is going to be such a great volume, can't wait to read it!

At some point I’ll do a thread that overviews the chapters in more detail, so watch this space. But for now, it is going to be an affordable(?!) academic textbook, and please ask your library to buy one!!

A project that started with a DiGRA23 workshop is finally, nearly out in the world! Coming May 2026 from Bloomsbury’s Writing History series, Writing Games Histories is a collection of essays on historical game studies methods&approaches. Find the ToC here: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/writing-g...

You don't do the research, and you've nothing to offer elsewhere/on your CV anyway. It is really, repeatedly terrible for people in my position, and I don't know why UCU aren't engaging more with this.

The current REF system really encourages temporary staff to burn down their own careers - either you complete research because you need it for your CV, but an institution can claim any resulting outputs before making you redundant so you've nothing to take elsewhere, or...

If you are planning to attend CAA in Vienna and you have an #archaeogaming paper to present consider submitting in our #archaeogaming session! Deadline has been extended to November 9 so there are a few more days left!

Good question - anyone on a REF panel or talking to a REF panel member who has...?

The current REF system really encourages temporary staff to burn down their own careers - either you complete research because you need it for your CV, but an institution can claim any resulting outputs before making you redundant so you've nothing to take elsewhere, or...

🚨Research alert! 🚨The incredible @copperkeerthi.bsky.social is looking for people playing videogames about the past to help with their research! If you are such a gamer, please go fill in the survey!

hey y'all! my questionnaire on player experience in historical videogames is now LIVE! if you play videogames about the past, we want to hear from you! edu.nl/7w3yn

Tomorrow @apolitopoulos.bsky.social and @docrandom.bsky.social are back behind the streaming wheel with Europa Universalis V! Aris' brain will break, Angus will crunch, and history will be (re)played! Join us around 15:00 CET always on www.twitch.tv/streamingthepast

After Monday's bright start, the rest of this week really should be renamed to "online meeting week" rather than "reading week."

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

I've already mentioned this about translations, but putting together student bibliographies for my 'Drama & Democracy' course I can again really see just how varied scholarly attention to particular plays has been.

Things I am trying to read *less* of this reading week: my emails.

It's reading week! So I feel it's quite apt that I've spent today reading chapters for the Companion, reading game studies things for more introduction-writing, and now I'm about to read a bunch of scholarship on Aristophanes (topic switch) to prepare reading lists for the rest of the semester.

Months ago I gave a paper on Irish mythology in games, which was almost entirely a list of what games do wrong with the theme. Then comes @blakemanorgame.bsky.social, which does almost everything right. What a joy of a historical game! Comhghairdeas leis an foireann ar fad ag Spooky Doorway!

Before we at @contingent-mag.bsky.social do our Face/Off project in the new year, we want to try a few with editors as participants so we can get the wrinkles smoothed out. Any contingent non-historian who studies women’s friendship (19th c US good but not required) want to try w/me? (it’s paid!)

It would mean a huge amount to me if people looked through this thread, shared it, and (if you’re able) set up a monthly donation with the fund 💜

Breaking: Australia Women have lost a game of cricket! Australia women are out of the World Cup. This is not a drill! Looked easy as they rattled up 338 against hosts India, but Jemima Rodrigues' 127 led her team home in amazing style. Australia dropped her twice and paid the price. Fabulous! #CWC25

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is a blood-curdling 55% off in the Steam Halloween sale! A perfect time to play our folk horror adventure game inspired by movies such as The Wicker Man & the works of M.R. James, with a little pinch of Twin Peaks and Lovecraft. store.steampowered.com/app/1182310/...

After being overlooked in 2022, and being dropped earlier in this edition, Jemimah Rodrigues sees India 341/5 (48.3) into the 2025 World Cup final. Rodrigues 127* (134) Harmanpreet Kaur 89 (88) Garth 2-46 Sutherland 2-69 India win by 5 wickets. #CWC25 icc-cricket.com/matches/2622...

Aaaaaaaafgh. #CWC25

Lots of unpleasant reminders today about my current career status, i.e. lack thereof, and the imminent end of my current job. Depressing.

This interview with Janet Murray on the misogyny and masculinist attitudes in game studies is deeply depressing. But rings entirely true. www.jstor.org/stable/jj.31...

I really love the story of Eupolis' death at Alcibiades' hand - especially the idea that the Athenians are very busy sailing off to the (doomed) Sicilian expedition, but Alcibiades is occupied with drowning comic poets instead of, you know, warfare. Fantastic.

The midnight channel situation (especially with the music) is incredibly creepy. Persona 4 really seems to have amped up the disturbing elements of the series. (Brief break there for Hades 2 work and also teaching starting, but yes, I'm back to it...)

For a report for Access Granted, I'm looking to speak with accessibility consultants who HAVEN'T been credited for the games they've worked on. I'm aware of this impacting future opportunities, so I can assure anonymity. Feel free to send me a message if you wish to speak about your experiences!

Great review of Hades II in the TLS by Dr Kate Cook! @katexe.bsky.social 'Hell with other people - Greek myths brought to exhilarating, playable life.'

Yes. This.

'Hell with other people - Greek myths brought to exhilarating, playable life ' www.the-tls.com/arts/hades-i... #ClassicsBluesky 🏺

One of my favourite things in teaching is when you give the students a ten minute break and then they just keep chatting about the week's text anyway.

Some of my email exchanges lately do start off as work chat, but devolve very quickly into general game chat. I'm not too sad about this situation.

My book "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" is now available for pre-order. Use promo code WIN26 to get 30% off. Coming January 6th 2026! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Delighted to have a short piece in this week's TLS on Hades 2, gender, and modern myth making. www.the-tls.com/arts/hades-i...

Delighted to have a short piece in this week's TLS on Hades 2, gender, and modern myth making. www.the-tls.com/arts/hades-i...

We're happy to announce the call for contributions for our new HGN theme: Fictions! Following a successful event last month, this theme explores the relationship between history and fiction in games, and how they shape each other. www.historicalgames.net/call-for-con... #gamestudies #gamingthepast

Friends if you work at a creative tech/games/etc company in and around London, and you'd be willing to hire some internship/placement students for 2-3 months over summer, please let me know! I have incredibly smart and engaged undergrads looking for summer opportunities.

"Other emendations will be found in the Appendix.... The verses produced by these processes are wretched." Don't stint, Jebb, tell us what you really think of your colleagues' efforts...!

I played the first demo and this was a lovely historical game - worth a look now there is an updated version, for anyone who likes cosy-style historical gaming!

Back to normal life again (sadly) - and while there will be some history & games this week (there is always Companion work at the moment!), first it's teaching prep, and thinking about class ideologies in Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

My friend Sascha is a professional musician and he's lost a viola bow on the way to Heathrow. Please signal boost to help him get it back.

I have managed to attach an extra day in Leiden to my conferencing, which means I spend a day touristing abroad and eating out, which always feels like such a strange thing in the middle of term. But really nice.

What a fantastic couple of days at #TIPC4 - a wide range of great papers, fascinating ways of interacting with the past, and a great community. It was esp good to finally put some faces and physical presences to names and colleagues I've been working with for some time online! Brilliant all round.

We banned a guy on the Steam forums for repeatedly saying there were “too many women” in our game So he flipped his positive review to negative Still totally worth it

Quite impressed we got to the second panel of the second day before Pentiment came up. But nonetheless, HGS bingo! Pentiment has entered the #TIPC4 chat.