Ben Kirman

Hah yep I noticed that too! I couldn't believe how big the shop was, like a cave system of tiny spectacle elves, of whom I had to meet at least 30 in slightly varying roles.

Also looking forward to learning about the social cliques, rifts and slurs that different glasses wearers have for each other. Fuckin' readers and Longo's etc

Age caught up with me and I've joined glasses gang. I wasn't prepared for the weird pageantry vibes of the opticians. Like a medical coronation.

york folks, i'm starting to run weekly workshops about alternative, low-tech digital tools. running the first, trial session monday next week. come by, play and make a zine!!
sign-up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/make-and-b...

The Draw a Fish website except I badly photoshopped the age verification thing from Bluesky into it in a half baked topical gag.

bloody eck

The compulsory scam-awareness training uses as an example phishing email of "You are getting a raise", and assures me that my employers would never ever send me such an email.

Games for research, engagement, and impact We’re launching our games for research, engagement, and impact service. It’s a result of conversations with academics, hearing that academics want to do fun activities to communicate their research, a...

This week at fractals.coop we’re launching our new service: Games for research, engagement, and impact.

Want to turn your research into an engaging and impactful experience?

We bring games design, play and immersion.
You bring the research.
fractals.coop/blog/games-f...

Me, Caleb, and @kierancutting.bsky.social have been working to evolve Meal Deal from research through design artefact to a something we might sell.

Find Caleb and enjoy the latest(ish) version! Sadly kieran and I can’t be there this year.

Og version is here: oliverbates.itch.io/meal-deal

Aeropress specifically!

Hah, have you also got a second monitor in portrait mode? (I don't want to share how long I tested different fonts for my IDE...)

thank me when your toaster starts woofing!

to be clear - fuck "AI" - I've seen the awful code it produces because it was partly trained on my awful code

I feel like you could replace "AI coding tools" with a lot of things and the graph would look the same - "Refactoring Codebase", "Using new Javascript framework", "Switching IDE to Dark Mode", "Making your own Mechanical Keyboard"

an hour later an NPC says "at least the horrors are locked safely behind the industrial pump."

screenshot from kickstarter "UPDATE #9 Unlocked: Industrial Pump"

Great news from a kickstarter project that's collecting fart noises

What Paul said - to throw in some other words I'd say intention, reflection, and unusual sandwiches.

Played Thousand Year Old Vampire and was killed in a sunlight-related incident at age 34 ⚰️

Agree with Joe, great to see so many people responding. alt.chi was the heart of culture at CHI and the conference is diminished now.

A still from the film showing a foot stepping in a comically large footprint in a muddy field

"Jessica... what fucking size shoe do you have?!" - best line from the horror film Clown in a Cornfield (2025)

If you are the kind of player that locks up when given lots of freedom, you might skip it. The chains and combos can be wild, like a bucking bronco of a game system.

Star Trek: Captain's Chair Step into the shoes of an iconic Star Trek captain and explore the galaxy!

Been playing Star Trek: Captain's Chair #boardgame a bunch and really enjoy it. Kind of amazed it exists - rare to see a licenced game so heavy and intricate. Full of deep cut references, but also deeply thematic and joyful in play. Defo not for the faint of heart (rules + play >= 3hrs)

a fun growing collection of creative and weird drum machines for your browser: 10kdrummachines.com (via @b3ta.com )

BRIEFS 2025 - Cheese - Apply NOW! | gold extra WHAT’S BRIEFS?Briefs is a micro-publishing initiative that gives out small grants for small digital games. Think jam sized.Think € 1500 for that effort. You will find a link to submit a project at the...

The countdown for the open call is real. We will close the applications for our 1500 EUR grant on 24th of May!

Wanna make a short artsy game about CHEESE and get sweet cheese for it? You got three days left!
Share, repost, AND APPLY!

#indiedev #gamedev
www.goldextra.com/en/briefs-20...

Nice!

A picture of an academic presentation, featuring images from magazines labelled Boffins, Nerds and Whiz Kids

Fun tour of the emerging irreverent voice in UK games magazines in the 80s from Robin Bootes at #BDiGRA25 . Tag urself im a wally/gremlin

Some links from our lightning talk:
- Tea Towels, Meal Deal and design outputs: crankandfile.co.uk,
- Screw That: oliverbates.itch.io/screw-that,
- Our Zine: oliverbates.itch.io/rtgd,

Making a Meal out of a Mountain - or - Research through Game Design by oliver bates

A Zine for #BDiGRA25 by me and @ben.kirman.org about what making games in our research can look and feel like, and us wondering about ways to talk about our research games without measuring and evaluating.

I have physical copies and games on my person!

oliverbates.itch.io/rtgd

Great to hear from Prasad on his great applied game work at #BDiGRA25 good to see some @iggi-phd.bsky.social folks here!

Great to see "the mayor requests" made the record, often sing that to myself when I spot a suspicious tree

Thousand Year Old Vampire (Book+PDF) TO GET YOUR DOWNLOAD:  You will have a download link on your emailed receipt.  You'll get another download link sent to you when your order ships.  This doesn't always happen so email dearleadergame@g...

I *finally* got myself a physical copy of Thousand Year Old Vampire (thousandyearoldvampire.com/collections/...), along with some other bits. Wirklich cool!