The full original title is "That Time We Went to Investigate the Haunted Mansion at the Top of the Hill but Ended Up Becoming Magical Femboys." This makes even more sense if you understand that the characters in the game start off as shoujo-style MAGICAL GIRLS
S
one of my first-year college students just threatened to rename a project they're working on "Detroit: Become Femboy" and this is either an automatic A or an automatic F. Guess have to flip coin
My most recent RPG supplement was a mom game, but it was written from the point of view of fractious daughters, so it's really a daughter game, and there are lots of those lately. Another good (older) example
Real-as-hell mom games be like
bsky.app/profile/jill...
Fragile Bodies (2019) is another banger mom game from Claire Carre, who's gone on to be the narrative director of Intergalatic: the Heretic Prophet, but I don't think it's available to play
vimeo.com/336455444?fl...
Returnal is not only a mom game but I have it on good authority that it's going on to inspire more mom games. Sincerely, mom who works as a mom game enabler
What "crazy drug concoction" was he even imagining it would be? Now I really want to know his vague idea of this. Like a trans woman's is gonna be on a melange of depo-provera, micronized progesterone, aldactone, spiro, injectables, patches, sublingual, with a side of domperidone and metoclopramide?
a poster for the game workers conference, taking place on may 22-23. in the bottom-left corner, a red stream of game tools & iconography emanate from a sun composed of abstract shapes. it's nestled, slightly askew inside another poster for a boshi's place watch party for the conference. boshi's face at the bottom left overlaps the conference poster slightly, with small illustrated decorations in pure blue scattered around the rest of the frame.
we're hosting a watch party for @gameworkerscon.bsky.social may 22-23! it's a free, online conference by & for workers organized by @videogameworkers.bsky.social.
please use the qr code to rsvp! there will be snacks, swag, park hangs during breaks, & we can learn how to build worker power together.
The Nine Lives of Games Journalism
7pm on April 23
NYU Game Center in Brooklyn
RSVP here and check out this killer poster by Artyom Trakhanov
Yes or false imprisonment
If this designer were real we would of course contact her to apply for the full-ride scholarship for female game designers in the graduate program of the NYU Game Center so that she might develop her compelling talents in the cause of evil. I mean, uh, good! Games for change! Good... change...
I hate having to insert a "I investigated, there's no evidence this is anything more than a funny story" note, but people pose a valid question: what on earth would the charges be? In the longer copypasta of this (not as funny) he tries to leave through a fake exit door and starts screaming for help
Yes there is no actual evidence this happened
Why has nobody from the game industry protested the imprisonment of this brave and innovative game designer
The Pope is weak on crime? Yeah, no doubt. You want an.official out of Rome who was tough on crime? Pontius Pilate, that' your guy. Really knew how to deal with crime--thieves, rabble-rousers, had an informant network, everything. Get that guy back on the job
Doki Doki Literature Club is a widely celebrated piece of videogame art, discusses deeply difficult topics in sincere and meaningful ways, and Google Play needs to revert the removal of the game immediately.
If you want the real TL;DR it's that demographers are divided over whether women not having kids earlier means they'll have kids later or not have them ever, because they can't foresee the future. The former has happened in past decades; the latter is "but what if doesn't happen again, we're F*!%'d"
Framing, textbook example
My latest is a reflection on the cycle of dread, disaster, and temporary reprieves we’re all navigating, what that cycle is doing to us, and how we can avoid losing ourselves to it.
This edition also includes a roundup of must-read pieces that have helped me think about this moment.
And even with the hypothetical hyper-inflated console, the difficulty of maintaining the largest-scale productions would (once again) lead to console stores having to open to lower-budget productions. Which, of course, only upper-class console owners would buy. Time for price segmentation, LOL
But if AAA hardware wants to price primarily for an elite, wealthy audience -- well, I guess good luck selling $1000 digital experiences (probably service)? Something else cheaper would therefore end up filling the massive void of $$, either "entry-tier" hardware or accessible platforms
You can see these patterns historically, too -- in past decades, huge swathes of players were NEVER able to afford latest consoles. They acquired taste for games via web games, downloadables, older consoles, and that's where many early "indie" audiences arose. Mobiles is muckier, of course.
Chris also likely right here, btw -- any tangible benefit to smaller-scale games is not automatic but would depend on wider sea-changes in hardware. However, Nvidia's primary interest in no longer game hardware, so (shrug) a shakeup is inevitable, with all the fallout
bsky.app/profile/papa...
Just remember:
1. as long as there are people, they'll always want to play
2. as long as imagination and critical thinking continue to operate, we can devise an infinite number of ways to play
Everything else is just clutter on the road and the question of the current system's sustainability.
Oh no. Please... not an existential threat. Please don't price out the vast majority of players from games that rely on high-fidelity graphics. ( throws hand dramatically over forehead) Whatever shall we do. What would players play if they couldn't have Ultra Graphics Games. What would become of us.
Just typical "move fast break things" business philosophy still, so they have a whole department devoted to saying sorry and making noises about safeguards and changes until the news cycle passes, rinse and repeat for the next one, etc
Listening to Adjoa Andoh read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series: many characters are from a mono-gender (universal she/her) militarized colonialist culture.
She does the snooty aristocratic space-fleet officers with a combo of “modern major general” diction and vocal fry. Making my ears bleed. Perfect.
6-year-old: I really like Unpacking!!
Me: Oh good! It's very charming, right
6-year-old, reaching level 4: I have a feeling... that I do not like... the apartment of this B-OYYY!!
Me: Ah, you picked up on that didja
6-year-old: [darkly glowers while moving underwear around]
ofc part of the point of the paper is that the incentive structure is broken, which is not itself a moral failing on any of the hypothetical students' part, but does gravitationally-distort their decisions about what each of them spend time on