danielvella.bsky.social
Director & Senior Lecturer at Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta // Narrative designer with Mighty Boards (Posthuman Saga, Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan) // Organizing DiGRA 2025 in Malta // Debut novel out 2026!
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boxd.it/9k5y1J
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I just played one run-through of it so far and it's intriguingly different to what I expected! (thought it would be a Gone Home/Edith Finch style embedded narrative, for some reason). At face value it seems like a tile-laying puzzle, so I'm curious to see these hidden depths start appearing.
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www.alfemminile.com/attualita/co... (in Italian)
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More than two days later and the Maltese government is refusing to let flotilla boats reach the stranded ship, refusing to let the ship into Maltese waters, and keeping it under siege with military vessels while claiming they are refusing aid. Some true colours being shown by our officials.
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Interesting to note that, almost a full day later, our government has said...absolutely nothing. No reactions, no statements, no clarifications...nothing.
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This gets even better: either Israel flew a military aircraft into Maltese airspace without authorisation, or our government actually gave permission. Not sure which is worse. timesofmalta.com/article/isra...
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Was lucky enough to catch one day of Off Camera Festival in Krakow: Sister Midnight is a standout and I can't see it not being one of my films of 2025.
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Björk's Vulnicura (2015, 22 years after Debut); Scott Walker's Tilt (1995, 28 years after his first solo album); David Bowie's Blackstar (2016, 49 years (!) after his debut); Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel... (2012, 16 years) and Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020, 24 years)...there's a lot!
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Björk - Vulnicura, 22 years after solo debut
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It's great how "there are people who don't have a use for the shitty product we're shilling" keeps being presented as an urgent social problem to solve. Yes, truly excellent.
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Panels are always better with unplanned matching outfits!
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Military dictatorships, outlaw couples, genetically engineered flower kaijus, and postcolonial perspectives: one of those all-over-the-place weeks, I guess.
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Infinite empty content machines are exactly what we need, as a society that isn't already breaking down under an endless and unmanageable oversupply of content that makes every search a signal-to-noise disaster.
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All hail the Anderson-Jovovich ascendancy.
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Their treatment of the Gaza genocide was really one of the most shocking examples of the Western media's broad pro-Israel bias, really blatant unashamed monstrous stuff.
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Even before October, I've had strong reservations about US academic institutions, seeing the responses to activism in relation to the Gaza genocide. If it ever was the case, we're certainly long past the point where one can consider the US to be a place where academic freedom is possible.
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And if you want to have one of these framed on your own wall, applications for the M.Sc. in Digital Games a.k.a. Magistrae in Scientia in Ludis Digitalibus starting next October are currently open: digitalgames-oum.github.io/welcome-idg/
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All over the place, as usual #LetterboxdFriday #lastfourwatched
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"Maltese but private about it"
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...cultural adaptation, game engine cultures, fictional games, and exploring identity through play. Kinda want to attend them all! #DiGRA2025
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DiGRA 2025 workshops on trans game studies, animal play, gendered narratives in Japanese games, experimental game labs, avatars, writing about games, black and Latinx game studies, microhorror, game work migration, law and policy, designing against neoliberal play, responsible design for fandom...
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All going directly onto my reading list, thank you!
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This week's film with the Games & Narrative class was Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist (2024), and again it was thrilling to see students react to and engage with something formally and structurally experimental, meditatively paced, and thematically elusive.
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What's the running theme here? I don't know! But was it a good week? Yes! #letterboxdfriday #LastFourWatched
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Thank you, I had never heard of this game and now I have a desperate need to track it down.
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It's the last day to back the Kin of the Wild expansion on Kickstarter - and to get the original Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan if you haven't yet! www.kickstarter.com/projects/mig...
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A testament to Murnau's film, yes, but it's also often easy to underestimate students' patience, curiosity and receptive openness to art, even art which challenges their expectations.