Profile avatar
hannahnicklin.bsky.social
Writing, game & narrative design. Used to be a performance maker. Race bikes on occasion. Currently story person at Night School. Previously Creative Director at gutefabrik.com. Author of writingfor.games. PhD in play as anti capitalist practice.
1,000 posts 6,409 followers 912 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter

Slow and steady. But we're looking to let our scholars know this week since everything's just getting more expensive. We need about $3700 to help them get to GDC. www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/...

How bout this: a moratorium on Americans complaining you can’t get good Mexican food in the UK, in exchange for us never commenting on your portion sizes.

@daveanthony.bsky.social just listened to the Q&A and the essential uk genuinely left comedian led podcast to listen to about UK & Europe (and a bit of North America) is Trashfuture pca.st/podcast/7e0e...

I’ve been asked if I might like to do a second edition of Writing for Games. The practice section (exercises etc.) is pretty immune to time, as is the theory. Would more case studies interest folks? Or is there a section you’d love to see (on writing, the book doesn’t deal in narrative design)?

New Post - Muse: Before You Tweet Hello! Microsoft's new Muse system isn't trying to generate game ideas. If you want a concise summary of what the paper tries to do, and a few notes and criticisms about the project, I wrote something about it. www.possibilityspace.org/blog-before-...

I think the times I feel most 'old man shouts at sky' at the moment is when I get confused by the tiny pre-trailer trailers they put in trailers now.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

Two of my good pals made this very silly very fun thing

CUE MORE CHAOS! After 7 years and the shutting down of a publisher, we bring you a new update for Pool Panic and it’s 80% off on steam and switch! youtu.be/MA2duChFVfE?...

An increasing number of people using genAI and adopting a sort of "just asking questions" kind of role, like "Hey, I'm just experimenting, I'm not endorsing it!" Buddy you are endorsing it. It's ok to endorse it. You can do that. Pretending you're not is insulting to both critics *and* supporters.

Very funny to see someone say "i know there’s discomfort around all the existential and moral bits, and i’m not rendering any kind of judgement on that." about using AI. Like mate, you are rendering a judgement on it by posting about how great and joyful you are finding using it.

Tomorrow I will ask all my colleagues to explain the American sport to me. It sounds significant. As sport goes.

I’m an en dash sicko tho – mmm

Always pleasantly surprised when a text I wrote still stands up. A 2019 piece about how game makers can learn from other cultural/art forms.

Hannah coded characters? Stubborn, sporty, frustrated when changed can’t be affected immediately, likes to observe more than being someone with stakes, work is probably too much of life but also, got good jokes.

I bloody love bike racing but I’m really gonna think twice about £31 a month for a bunch of other sports I don’t care about just to watch it in the now only way available in the UK. Might just listening to the podcasts like French radio listeners in the 1900s.

The entire American AI industry is predicated on a narrative of relentless expansion—it needs more data, more compute, more investment, more state support, more power. It needs all that, to build AGI. A single Chinese startup has undermined all of that. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-great-...

Despite everything, I’m going to be at GDC talking about building responsive narrative systems in systems-heavy games. And I’d love to chat with people making these kinds of games who are interested in what dynamic narrative could do for them — let’s make some time to talk!

I just started Skeleton Crew and I’m NGL I hate that’s it’s just American suburbia but hover and menial robot class.

What I enjoy most about this is that Die Gute Fabrik was my first step away from experimental theatre into games, and it was Doug's step out in the other direction. We met in precisely the right time and place for our interests and practices to intersect. 💜

This may sound like old news on my part but it takes a long time to leave a company! Now it’s official: both Doug and I move on to pastures new. But fret not DGF fans, Nils has plans! gutefabrik.com/departing-di...

Polaris 2024 papers are out! This whole crop looks fascinating, but right now I’m really enjoying “Notes From the Boundaries of Interactive Storytelling”. Not done yet but it’s already resonating with my own work and offering further inspiration. (& yes, we also use “storylets” as a term internally)

A bunch of my pals are doing an escape room and then karaoke right now and isn’t the diversity of humanity so wonderful that your absolute worst day of activities can be someone else’s fave.