Hi folks! I’m currently co-editing a special issue for GAME about queer and trans games studies. Find the full cfp here www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey..., deadline for abstract submission is 12 January 2026!

🌟 We have launched a suite of new doctoral studentships through our new Doctoral School 🌟 Over 30 places are now open for applications for the new Doctoral School for Arts & Humanities. More details and how to apply 👇 www.kcl.ac.uk/news/arts-hu... @komldsp.bsky.social @adaptai.bsky.social

Yessssss... sure it's proto-Smash but more delightfully it's the apogee of a certain style of Dorling Kindersley cross-sectional 2D action game a la Elevator Action Returns or Ninja Cop (but even better because you can play as giallo-coded spooky twins or an ape, & inundate a natural history museum)

now that it's mid-December, this is a Mariah cameo in SpikeOut (Nagoshi, 1998) right?

Next week is the @kingscmci.bsky.social Winter festival - a week of free cultural events programmed by our amazing BA students. My insider tip is this exhibition about the environmental impacts of AI, with a talk from QMUL's Cédric John... www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/data-overf...

this year's winter solstice/xmas Field Work NTS show is up - moody/diaphanous/numinous sounds from Arkkon, Mark Hollis, Markus Guentner, Mary Lattimore etc. www.nts.live/shows/fieldw...

CFP for the next issue of G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment, on “Queer and Trans Game Studies in Global and Local Contexts” is out! This issue aims to map current developments in queer and trans game studies. For full details: www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey...

I really think, however narcissistically, that the book I put out last month makes some points that are very germane to this whole contretemps! (& also I'm very glad it's happening _now_ because having to recount the Horses d̶i̶s̶c̶(H)ou̶rse(s) in the conclusion would've been v. wearisome & trying)

Fuck Epic & fuck Valve, obvs - tho at least the latter still deign to let you wrangle Itch games onto a Steam Deck for now... as a Mac user writing a book abt artgames Apple nixing 32-bit support was one thing, but making it impossible to trick yr own laptop into running 'unauthorised' apps another

The Center for Digital Play at the IT University of Copenhagen is organizing a new conference: Playing Futures. The conference will take place from May 20th to 22nd at the IT University of Copenhagen. You can read more about it here: playingfutures.today

🚨🚨 Calling on all KCL UCU members: TODAY is the last ⭐️safe day⭐️ to post your ballots for both national and local disputes! VOTE today, VOTE yes and put them in the POST!! 📦 📦 ➡️ ALSO if your ballot papers arrive later than today please contact us as we can deliver in person on Friday afternoon 💫💫

I'm delighted to announce that my new book, Artgames after Gamergate, is out now with Palgrave: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

fwiw I feel like Ellen Samuels' history of Olympic sex testing regimes in Fantasies of Identification offers one of the starkest demonstrations you could ever hope for of the fundamental incoherence of binary sex/gender systems (& their racist & ableist fx). Got a .pdf if the IOC wants it

Field Work show this month = 120 mins of psychoacoustically suggestive muttering & cooing, fizzy, fuzzy snares & portentous muffled clangour courtesy of Chris & Cosey, Black Faction, Ricardo Villalobos, Ro70 etc. 😌 www.nts.live/shows/fieldw...

In this Lunchtime Talk on Fri 14 Nov we'll be joined by Dr. Rob Gallagher. He'll be discussing his new book Artgames after Gamergate. This is a free event join us online, on YouTube, or in the studio. Book a ticket on our website https://wshd.to/artgamesaftergamergate

I'll be talking about my new book at @wshed.bsky.social's Pervasive Media Studio (& on YouTube Live) next Friday. Come along/tune in to hear how 2010s artgame creators pushed back against the online right via weird, funny, angry reworkings of classic videogames www.watershed.co.uk/studio/event...

Tomorrow!

I'm going to be at a Gaming Social Justice event at King's College London on 14 Nov, running a Molly House demo and then talking with others including @baddeo.bsky.social and @maxhaiven.bsky.social - it's free but tickets are at this link: www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...

Another London-based games event to promote! We're running a Gaming Social Justice workshop on Nov 14th, ft. demos of games like @maxhaiven.bsky.social's Billionaires and Guillotines & @miasmacorp.bsky.social's 1720s masquerade 'em up Molly House www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...

London folks, the brilliant Darshana Jayemanne will be coming to @kingscmci.bsky.social on Nov 5th to discuss the GAME-ER project's ongoing research on game production clusters. Why do certain cities, from Dundee to Brno, become gamedev hubs? Come & find out! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cmci-resea...

Finally got around to watching Penda's Fen. Loose & baggy for sure, but an embarrassment of indelible shots & scenes, & absolutely wild that the Midlands had its reply to Twin Peaks ready 16 years early... archive.org/details/pend...

it brings me great to pleasure to say that there's an hour of early aughts grime white labels tucked inside this month's Field Work show, incl. a bunch of Ruff Sqwad's weirder beats www.nts.live/shows/fieldw...

In game studies we call this 'environmental storytelling'

DiGRA 2026 (Ireland) CfP is now live Full paper and abstracts deadline: 1 December 2025 Workshop proposals deadline: 15 February 2026 www.digraconference2026.com #games #gamestudies

This is this week! Come to Stoke Newington & join us for a chat about videogame cities & a wander round some virtual Hong Kongs

I like this as an explanation of why so much of the Kirk coverage has been so maladroit: that the things pundits struggled to understand about memes a decade ago increasingly apply to acts of political violence

Lovely game this - unabashedly twee & soppy without being vapid or cloying, builds neat scavenger hunt mechanics around what would normally be clipping & collision errors & uses them to pose some surprisingly chewy questions about grief, memory, museology

neighbour on the street Whatsapp has a bag of homegrown watercress to give away & now I keep cracking myself up remembering how much of the 12th century epic of mad king Sweeney consists of him ardently pining for same

✨ call for proposals ✨ - "Digital Humanities Today: Critical Inquiry with and about the Digital", London 23-26th June 2026 - coinciding with 25th anniversary of @kingsdh.bsky.social. deadline: 30th September 2025. further details here: jonathangray.org/2025/09/11/d...

Londoners, I'll be talking to Aidan Page about his work on virtual renditions of Hong Kong for the UK leg of the Hong Kong Film Festival at @loading.bar in September www.hkff.uk/full-program...

I am excited to announce the Games for Palestine charity bundle page is now live!!! Over 300+ games with proceeds going to UNRWA USA in support of Gaza relief. Thank you to everyone for your support. The bundle launches on Sept 2nd 9am PST. Link: itch.io/b/2979/play-...

My new book has a cover! Much gratitude to Tabitha Nikolai for letting me use a shot from her peerless dysphoric suburban hikikomori simulator Shrine Maidens of the Unseelie Court 🙏

My copy of this arrived! Shout to editors @profmatthew.bsky.social & Steffi Shook, & drop me a line if you'd like to read my chapter on how videogames model & represent sexual reproduction, heredity & evolution...

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We’ll be hosting GachaCon 2026, a hybrid academic conference on gacha games with Genshin Impact as the theme, on 12–13 February 2026 at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. 🇭🇰🇨🇳 Call for Papers: tinyurl.com/gachaconcfp

i) the fit but ii) the festival website suggests Peter is sharing a bill with Dominic Cummings & a Hungarian reggae/dancehall/hip-hop/funk/rock act called Irie Maffia

My amazing department at King's College London is organising a BIG conference on 'THE DIGITAL' In 2026. Do come! Call for papers: www.kcl.ac.uk/events/digit...

UK scholars 👇

This! Everything coming out about Collective Shout makes it clear they're cynically prospecting for the likeliest fissures to jam wedges into

my #DiGRA Writing Gameplay workshop is at 2:30 Malta time! Come thru if u want to read snippets of autofiction, philosophy, fanfic & phenomenology about Fifa, the Sims, Smash, Yakuza 0 & hunt the slipper. Info below - drop me a line & I can share the texts digraconference2025.org/calls-worksh...

WOKE?! Come to our panel on Digital Futures of Diversity on 23 June at King's College London as part of @kings-dfi.bsky.social 'Living Well with Technology' series, with @birgitneunews.bsky.social , @lewisiwu.bsky.social, & @nessakeddo.bsky.social and Elisabeth Kelan. www.kcl.ac.uk/events/digit...

🚨 BREAKING 🚨 We're pleased to reveal the lineup poster for Games Transformed 2025! We’ll be joined by Meg Jayanth, Chris Bratt, Gareth Damian Martin, Clapton CFC, Innuendo Studios & many more! Join us on Saturday 12 July for Games Transformed 2025. TICKETS: www.tickettailor.com/events/games...

the trilogy gets more airtime, but I read these last year & thought Forgetting Elena was particularly great - arch & cryptic, lots of rich textures & cattily fraught interpersonal dynamics & pageantry. RIP!

May's Field Work NTS show is up - squelchily sultry cuts from Studio & the Womacks, some late-model Sleazy Christopherson in synth-choral mode, a sliver of vintage Insides ~~ & more~~ www.nts.live/shows/fieldw...

Worth reading! Especially given all the excruciatingly asinine punditry rn re: Reform's bid to outflank Labour on welfare!

📚 Join us at King’s College London on 21 May for the launch of Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal, a book by @disconetwork.bsky.social exploring the possibilities that technoskepticism can create. 📍 Strand Campus and online, 17:30 🔗 Sign up: www.kcl.ac.uk/events/techn...

The work that @afterclimate.com.au is doing with Greening the Games Industry project is one of the best and most important areas of work I'm seeing in games and I heartily recommend subscribing to the extremely excellent and informative newsletter that Ben sends out. gtg.benabraham.net

There are a couple of weeks left to register & suggest texts for my #DiGRA 2025 workshop on writing gameplay (full details here: buff.ly/Ifv7R97), so here's a thread of snippets I like from texts wholly or in part about where, how, why & with whom people play games...

lots of talk about young ppl, digital media & harm right now, not unjustifiably - but this is (among many other things) a really evocative account of gaming as reprieve from the banal normative violence of home and school c. the turn of the millennium

Master's scholarship at King's College London for Black, Asian and minority home students! My faculty (Arts & Humanities) is offering three postgraduate taught programmes scholarships (fees) - closing day is 14 May. Details here: www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...