Thomas Volden

Call for papers! The 17th PCG Workshop will be held in Copenhagen in August 2026.
Submission deadline March 30th. Accepted papers will have the opportunity to be included in the FDG proceedings.
See all the practical information and the paper database on www.pcgworkshop.com

I have handed in my PhD dissertation titled "Confusion and Games: An investigation on the Player Learning Experience."
I'll share more when I get feedback.

Usually I'm thankful for the suggestions that my grammar assistant provides, but this one seems... biased.

Happy new year. @leonxiao.com is this a lootbox?

You try to understand the 6-7 brain rot, now roll for SAN.

Got a notification that LEGO had put up a job posting for a software engineer job but by the time I clicked it they were no longer taking applications 😅

Thanks Martin, that means a lot to me. Your guidance was essential to its success.

Sure, changing the number of players is a command (you could have a card that sets the number of players): SetPlayers<number of players>

YouTube video by TVolden Introducing CGOL: Card Game Operational Language

I made a short presentation of CGOL (my master thesis) for the 25th anniversary of @itu.dk Games. Please like and share.

25 Years of Games at ITU This year, games research and education at the IT University of Copenhagen celebrates its 25th anniversary. The anniversary will be celebrated at ITU on 26 and 27 August, with talks and an exhibition ...

What have we learned after 25 years of games research and education at ITU? Associate Professors @hwirman.bsky.social and Pawel Grabarczyk share their thoughts 👇

Also, please come celebrate the anniversary with us on 26-27 August! 🥂🥳

#dkgame #spildebat #games #dkforsk
en.itu.dk/About-ITU/Pr...

On the dynamics of affective states during play and the role of confusion Video game designers often view confusion as undesirable, yet it is inevitable, as new players must adapt to new interfaces and mechanics in an increasingly varied and innovative game market, which is...

Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2507.03391

Can confusion benefit the player experience? 🤔 Our new paper, "On the dynamics of affective states during play and the role of confusion," reveals confusion can signal learning, prevent boredom, and align with the flow experience. Paper link in comments!

Two-panel comic: Panel one, a student hands a professor a theory paper and says "I found this new and interesting theory". Panel two, the professor looks at the paper and says "That's interesting, but we should seek to find it's limits before we use it to explain our results", panning a to the right, the student is kneeling in front of an altar with the theory paper nailed on it together with a banner that reads "Explainer of everything". The student replies "Yes, of course!"

I have been reading up on the theory of predictive processing related to play and game motivation and enjoyment. This is the struggle my mind is going through.

Playing around with robotic sewing machines (embroidery machine) at the local #CodingPirates club. This one took one and a half hour, and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Bad news for self-help book authors I guess.

Alley Cat

I guess her kids goes "ew mom, your cooking wipes!"

Congratulations Dr. Xiao. It's well deserved with all your hard work. Btw, just noticed the Lex Luthor pun, brilliant.

Screenshot from the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection

Screenshot from the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection

Screenshot from the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection

"Incoming transmission!" 📡

Classic Command and Conquer games are now open source—ready for modding, preservation, and innovation!

Read more: ea.com/games/comman...
Dive into the code: github.com/electronicarts

We have a bunch of great talks from previous years' summer schools, and we're starting to put them online on YouTube. For more great talks, come to this year's summer school!

Well I don't know the games, but the player should be able to affect the outcome in order for it to be a skill, so unless the player has other actions than spinning (like hold column), then the argument is passable.

What are transferable gambling skills?

I accidentally broke the toilet seat while dismantling it for cleaning #grownupproblems

A journal one may wish to reconsider before submitting to: Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.

5 months for a desk reject. 🙃

The new improved Outlook is unable to spell check your e-mails if you use mixed languages 😒. With all the advances in technology recently, I expected them to figure that one out by now. #outdated

YouTube video by TVolden How to make traditional Danish decorative cut-out christmas elves (kravlenisser)

My daughter (7 years old) and I made a video on how to make traditional Danish holiday decorations called Kravlenisser: youtu.be/3oEf1MrfpgQ?...

Work in progress. I'm working on an adventure game for creative problem-solving with the intend to collect experience data.