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playthroughline.com
• "Experimental DM" of https://neurocracy.site • I've peaked and I'm kidding myself • https://playthroughline.com • he/they
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my new book SIMPLICITY is about a timid trans academic in the near future treks into the wilds of upstate new york to study a cult and winds up with way more than he bargained for. it’s is out 7/29. preorder it from your local! simplicitybook.xyz

With the current Next Fest on everyone's minds I think it's worth noting the impossible strain public demos are putting on smaller developers at the moment. You'll do them for your crowdfunding, funding, for your pitching, for publishers, for shows and festivals and finally for your store page...

having finally had some time to really *get into* Qud, i'm now fully convinced that it establishes a new high-water mark for interactive procedural text as a literary form the systems admit so many subtle shades of meaning that i can only describe the core player activity as "combat hermeneutics"

Hey the thing we're working on comes out in June. Check it out if you get the chance. Sound of the summer.

to any games/tech press folks who might be following me: we have a really strong assortment of games and designers at the Experimental Game Showcase at GDC next month. it'd be a great year to get some more coverage of what we're doing! schedule.gdconf.com/session/expe...

Skin Deep Demo is up on Steam buff.ly/41cc0D5 game releases April 30th

my theory is that each human has a kind of baseline paranoia best suited for a monkey evading predators in the savannah and, if deprived of natural enemies, will invent their own

Asked my accountant if he thought paying taxes was obeying in advance and he said he's really busy

stick with the prod. prod with the prod

Here it is! A new blog post on generative AI, game preservation and the karaoke performance about my PhD research I did last Friday in Sydney. Oh, and the 2006 MMO Wurm Online: florencesmithnicholls.com/2025/02/23/y...

maybe I don’t need to tell anyone in the games world but tolerance of ‘uncertainty’/‘ambiguity’ in a story, or ‘not understanding’ a story is at an all time low with audiences. besides erosion of critical reading by fascism it is because fascism has obliterated people’s comfort levels and attention

Nebula nominations close in ONE week. I'm here to reminder you that Caves of Qud is eligible for Best Game Writing. If you're an SFWA member, get a game code + more info here www.sfwa.org/forum/forum/... Message me with any questions!

The central core of conservatism is to create impossible contradictions and enforce them selectively to create an othered under-class of the outgroup. You will never find consistency in it because it's purposes to be inconsistent.

Hiya, sorry for another urgent share. Thought I was done. Am not. On the plus side, met with the social worker today. Applications for financial support are beginning. Gonna take months, but it's a step forward.

As the public gets sicker, states begin to claw back benefits. From Germany to the UK to France, we see record illness and long-term sick leave numbers, accompanied by backlash & blame from the very governments harming and disabling them: www.thegauntlet.news/p/as-sick-le...

I can only understand this by thinking that Reform voters are mostly people who are inside the right-wing US propaganda-hose. They're very online, gorging on absolute shit, and mistaking the overwhelming amount of noise coming out of the US for something immediately relevant to the UK.

There's a transmasculine version of this. If someone assigned female can become a man, it means there's nothing so special or powerful about men. Each of us has the biological truth of equality between the sexes within us, as demonstrated by the ability of some to pass from one to the other.

As of today I'm no longer working at FBG. I'd love to just take some time to myself before even thinking about another job, but given the state of the industry that's probably unwise. So I'm actively looking for work; for the last four years I've been a lead-level narrative designer/game designer.

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-...

we are hiring again here at @halfmermaid.co !! apply at halfmermaid.co/jobs for one of these exciting new roles on Project D :) ➡️ Senior Character Artist ➡️ Cinematic Manager ➡️ Senior Environment Artist (European timezones preferred) ➡️ Level Designer (European timezones preferred) please share!

"Why hasn't Tech produced anything meaningfully helpful to our lives in like 20 years?" Because as the economy got less and less safe, tech became a speculative startup market where you don't need a product, just a monetization angle to raise investor capital to live off of for a while.

New Amberspire design diary is a big and important one, talking about a big system in the game: the population of the city is mostly out of your control. Find out why: lunardivision.net/population-a...

"it's always darker before the dawn" is accelerationist tripe

maybe it’s worth asking if it’s capital that only funds stories that fit a particular framing, rather than storytellers desperately wanting to tell stories where the ‘bad guys’ are glamorized www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/v...

Hey heard of this thing called food

Excited to announce that our new game, The Electrifying Incident, launches in April! In this monster mini-expedition, you'll explore the facility, avoid live electricity & repair a malfunctioning reactor. Check out the demo & wishlist on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3352300

hello cis friends this is what people mean by trans genocide if a type of person does not officially exist, then any harm against them cannot be measured or reported this headline change isn't even being caused by an executive order it's simply the NYT editors deciding we don't deserve to exist

Been thinking about this since I wrote the piece. I am really interested in what are commonly referred to as "immersive experiences," but not immersion, and I'd love the chance to tease that apart at some point

My brain immediately thought of this.

I relate this to @florencesn.bsky.social's hot take on immersion and game writing. I don't want to be immersed, I want to be impressed! Maybe it's because I'm a creative myself, but I love experiencing a cool idea that someone else came up with and then made happen

siggghhhh Play my indie game Interstate 35, an experimental visual novel about an accidental nuclear detonation in North Texas and the impact it has on the fabric of reality. It's short and cheap and all that stuff. store.steampowered.com/app/3283890/...

Such an elegant way to heavily imply a mountain of nudes

getting fired from my closed captioning job for writing "[speaking English]" for all English dialogue

whenever i see another former kotaku, polygon, aftermath journalist block me www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/abu... what they collectively did was intentional. they never had any intention to be accountable or extend humanity and its clear they will always choose to alienate those they hurt.

Just the poofingest guy

A beautiful game and a wonderful team—go support them 👇

Every week I write a post on my blog about smaller #indiegames, mostly on Steam and Itch, and folks, I did it again virtualmoose.org/2025/02/14/i...

Just the poofingest guy

I think it’s also really important to understand that the specific steps the fascists are taking against us show how little power they actually have over us. Targeting children? Removing words from websites? Making pieces of paper more annoying? It’s weak shit. It’s dogs barking at mirrors.

it's cool guys rfk has a plan