Our (@mahliann.bsky.social, @marcuscarter.com, and I) book GAME STUDIES: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD is officially OUT everywhere in the world except the US for some reason. So here is an actual thread about why we wrote it and what we were trying to achieve with it.

This is Brendan Keogh's Putting Challenge on DLSS 5

I've thought for a while USYD should have a game design club, so we seed funded it for a year. We expected 10-15 students hanging out, making games in a room, with a paid mentor. Over 570 students signed up (!) and 120+ turned up to our first session last Friday. Wild enthusiasm.

It's Saturday afternoon and I have a few hours to myself so you know what that means

The nice thing about writing books is that eventually you get a copy and this is a lovely surprise when it happens.

New book now coming out very soon. Next month!

This thread is absolutely worth a read; of course ‘gaming’ and ‘gambling’ are getting conflated!

🍲 It is still soup season! @gua-le-ni.com's philosophical game still continues to promote the discussion of what exactly is soup. And that even an ordinary concept like ‘soup’ is vague, shifting, and impossible to define exhaustively. @derlampenputzer.bsky.social @zeit.de

marcus carter - treacherous play direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Huge congrats to all the very deserving early career academics who got DECRAs. And condolences to the much larger group of deserving people who didn't get DECRAs. Just remember that the vast majority of successful academics you know also didn't get DECRAs!

What’s enough of a milestone for me: We have finally agreed out how to represent a Wordle grid in black and white, which means this book is now completely done!

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...

Check out the latest from the SSRN #blog which features a selection of #research on age verification & #online safety. Read more: spkl.io/63322AKCwm#blog#research#online#Academicsky #AcademicChatter

This is basically @adriennemassanari.bsky.social's new book in meme form.

My DRS paper on graphic design and AI has just passed 15,000 downloads | dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conferen...

Teaching game design is way harder than anything else I've ever taught, because we make collaborative social rituals out of all of human experience... and then also sometimes have to balance spreadsheets about polearm damage.

Last year, we ran a study where we gave children a $20 pre-paid debit card to spend in any game. This method elicited incredible data showing how carefully children weigh their purchasing decisions, but also revealed the many minefields and deceptive practices they have to navigate.

New article in @theconversation.com today by myself and @marcuscarter.com on how kids talk about when spending money in Roblox is harmful to them. TLDR; virtual currencies and random reward features should be better regulated! theconversation.com/literally-ju...

Agree, it's why I always recommend reading @brkeogh.bsky.social's book The Videogame Industry does not exist. Games are a media, an art field. While it's understandable to want to help people pay bills, we undermine them by focusing so much on their monetization - especially when it's unrealistic.

God this is really annoying - but Adam Tooze posted the best thing he’s written in months *today*. It’s a wide ranging interview from a Chinese publication, but here’s the best (and most terrifying) description of the current AI bubble I’ve yet read adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

I agree with @localthunk.bsky.social. Rating Balatro as an 18+ game is as unserious as it is hypocritical, and how we use ratings and regulations to safeguard children often makes no sense. My latest at @crossplayblog.bsky.social: patrickklepek.substack.com/p/is-balatro...

Reviewed a crazy book about the Commodore 64 for Polygon.com! www.polygon.com/books/496693...

“the catchphrase might be that the Bullshit Jobs are now being done by the Bullshit Machine.” Great read!

Wondering why Australia shouldn’t (consider) ban social media (games) for minors? China sets us an example. Thanks for the great team work @benegliston.bsky.social , @marcuscarter.com 🍻 theconversation.com/china-restri...

"The global venture capital sector has invested over USD 225 billion in AI startups over the past five years, compared to USD 143 billion over the same period in startups operating across all aspects of the clean energy sector" From the IEA's 2024 World Energy Outlook (p186). Now that's a problem.

I don’t listen to much music, but when I do …

“As we have seen in the past bad policy designs leads to bad outcomes,” Rowland said last week. “It is important we take the time to get these reforms right.”

Maybe we can call gambling ads ‘social media’ and we’ll ban it then?

Gambling ads between Frozen and Bluey songs. This shouldn’t be happening. Govt needs to have the guts to ban gambling advertising. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

All you need to know about how much the government actually understands youth online safety: Apparently YouTube is "primarily for the purposes of education and health support" www.pm.gov.au/media/social...

I reckon Ms Rachel would crush a season on Survivor

Delighted to share that our ARC Discovery Project on 'Proactive harm prevention for emerging virtual and augmented reality technologies' has been funded. Stoked to get to do more VR & AR work with Jo Gray and @benegliston.bsky.social, and keep growing @cavrn.org !

A very early version of this was shown at the first Parallels. It was amazing then, even more amazing now.

News Corp basically going all in.

“We want to get kids back on the soccer field” but national subsidy of children’s sport & investment in public & playful spaces when?????

The PM says, "When it comes to the wellbeing of young people ... I want Australia to be one of the leading nations in the world." Spare me. One in six kids live in poverty but instead of raising the rate or building public housing Labor's ramming through a social media ban. We see you.

With @benegliston.bsky.social and @kateeuph.bsky.social , our new article on Meta's $50m XR Programs and Research Fund in IC&S is out today www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JQ3DU...

A poem for my last day working at the writing center for the semester (by Joseph Fasano)

I am dreading having to drop things to hurriedly prep a new EOI if my outcome is unsuccessful this year, but I simply refuse to waste my own time in this way by prepping another EOI — don’t forget we’ve all written two rounds of applications for our projects to get to this point.

An intolerable risk to children's online safety. That's what we've said in our submission on the social media minimum age amendment, where we were given only 24 hours to make our submission! www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Maybe, and just hear me out for a moment... National health / human rights / technology legislation shouldn't be based on a poorly researched pop psych book?

Turns out the only change made to the existing broad definition of ‘social media’ under the Online Safety Act is that the minister will have the power to exempt specific services from being age restricted. Which clarifies um literally nothing about what is/isn’t included in the actual legislation

So, the Government’s social media ban has been referred to the Environment and Communications committee for an inquiry. They have of course been given a reasonable time to lead the inquiry … three days!

The proposed 'social media ban' legislation is being pushed through Australian parliament tomorrow with zero consultation with the young people it impacts most, and zero input from digital, youth and mental health researchers, practitioners and advocates. See this thread for more info:

It is unconscionable that the government is introducing its social media ban legislation to parliament tomorrow without any expert or practitioner consultation or review - or even a clear definition of ‘social media’.

It's really hard to overstate how many world-leading experts on digital media and social media are at Australian universities (I work with many of them!), and the overwhelming majority of them will tell you the social media ban is a bad and counterproductive idea.

We made the case that any bill presented to Parliament in this term should be referred to committee, there are so many unresolved issues, potentially even legal/constitutional that come from wholesale bans of children from being part of our now normalised communication ecosystem.

I was in Canberra yesterday alongside other digital media experts to brief members of the cross bench and government on some of the key policies being debated at present, social media bans, age verification, and misinformation. @qutdmrc.bsky.social