Journal of Geek Studies

Interview with Fluxo Games on "Book Smugglers" | Historical Games Network The HGN team recently spoke with Rytis Jadzevicius of Fluxo Games, based in Vilnius, Lithuania, about the studio’s forthcoming historical game, Book Smugglers.  Set in 19th Century Lithuania, the game...

The HGN team recently chatted with Rytis Jadzevicius of @fluxogames.bsky.social about their upcoming game, Book Smugglers. A decision-driven, point-and-click adventure set in 19thC Lithuania, the game blends resource management with historical storytelling:

www.historicalgames.net/interview-wi...

Predicting competitive Pokémon VGC leads using Latent Semantic Analysis: a data-driven approach to team matchups Bruno Luvizotto Carli Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil. brunolcarli (at) gmail (dot) com Download PDF Competitive Pokémon battles often hinge on the initial selection of Pokémon…

🚨 New article out now! 🚨
By ‪@beelzebruno.bsky.social

Can we predict competitive Pokémon VGC leads using Latent Semantic Analysis? 🧠🔍

#GeekStudies #PokemonVGC #DataScience #CompetitivePokemon

Vol. 12(1): June, 2025 Journal of Geek Studies –Vol. 12(1): to be published on June, 2025 The Blood on Our Controllers: how the game industry relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Interview with H. Caubet Pp. 1-5. …

🚨Our 1st 2025 issue is complete!🚨
Explore the latest in geeky research, with interviews with game devs and articles on Tintin, #StarWars, #IndianaJones et al., Pokémon, and #StudioGhibli.

Check it out 👉 jgeekstudies.org/archives/vol...

#GeekStudies #scicomm #geekculture

Wilted lands and wounded worlds: visualizing environmental costs of war in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Audrey Aguirre Upland High School, Upland, CA, USA. Email: audrey.a.aguirre (at) gmail (dot) com Download PDF Past studies on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ; Topcraft, 1984) have prim…

🚨 New article alert!
Ecocriticism meets anime in this piece by Audrey Aguirre.
The article explores the environmental toll of war through the haunting beauty Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

#GeekStudies #AnimeStudies #StudioGhibli #Miyazaki #風の谷のナウシカ #スタジオジブリ #アニメ研究

"The road to repairing sharks’ reputations [post-Jaws] has been long and full of obstacles, and in many ways, it’s a blueprint for how we might reframe other misunderstood or maligned species."

Want To Use Dragons As Dice? Now You Can, Thanks To Math Dungeons and Dragons and Dragons.

You can turn any shape into a die thanks to a study showing a way to calculate the probabilities for any shape.
#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #rpg #ttrpg

Cartoon of a pile of books with two legs and arms poking out from the bottom. A single book falls from above. The person says "OoOh I think I get it now." Caption text reads: "...that if you just present people with enough of the right information, then they'll automatically reach an informed decision and change their mind."

A hard truth of science communication is that knowledge and attitudes (to say nothing of behavior) are not intrinsically linked.

A panel from my 2017 comic on the intersection of science and religion, free to read: jordancollver.myportfolio.com/comics #sciart

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Is A Surprising STEM Showpiece (But It Should Still Be Free) The Switch 2 Welcome Tour could be a neat, approachable way for students to learn concepts of industrial design--but only if they see it.

"As a free piece of software preloaded onto every system, it would function (...) as a welcome tour for new owners, packed with little interesting nuggets of information and secrets to find. It could even help inspire the next generation of hardware engineers. But only if they see it."
#STEM

One Of The Rarest Video Games Ever Has Been Preserved Online You may not know the name of this incredibly rare game, but now you can play it online.

A nice story of game preservation. 🎮

A griffin, with the face, forelegs and wings of an eagle, and the neck, body, legs and tail of a lion, poses next to an (idealised) emerging skeleton of Protoceratops, a fossil species proposed on spurious grounds to be the inspiration for the griffin myth. Surrounding them is the Gobi desert, the home of Protoceratops fossils.

Just learned that the paper I wrote with @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social to debunk the connection between #dinosaur fossils and #griffin #mytholgy was among the most-read papers from Sage Publishing last year. If you missed it, it's open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Vol. 12(1): June, 2025 Journal of Geek Studies –Vol. 12(1): to be published on June, 2025 The Blood on Our Controllers: how the game industry relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Interview with H. Caubet Pp. 1-5. …

Happy #GeekPrideDay / #TowelDay 🎉

It's a great opportunity to read all the cool #GeekStudies we've published this year. 🤓 Take a look around, you're bound to find an article you'll love: jgeekstudies.org/archives/vol...

And remember: don't panic and always carry a towel!

Mary Anning: fossil collector, paleontologist, and heroic spirit Rodrigo Brincalepe Salvador Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Wellington, New Zealand. Email: salvador.rodrigo.b (at) gmail (dot) com Download PDF Mary Anning (1799–1847) was a British fossi…

Today's The birthday of the coolest palaeontologist ever: Mary Anning. 🥳🎂
And we have just the article for the occasion, describing Anning's life and work, and also her incarnation as a heroic spirit in Fate/Grand Order. 😉

#FGO #FateGO #palaeontology #fossils #メアリーアニング

Such a shame - that would be a great name.
We still have Gallirallus astolfoi, though, named after the best Rider/Saber.

Oh no! But now that you do, why not come to the dark side? 😉

Pokérus: unraveling the biology of the Pokémon virus Abraham U. Morales-Primo Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional, Autónoma de México, Hospital General de México, Mexico City, Mexico. Email: aump.puma (at) gmail (dot) com Download PDF Since th…

New article alert! 🚨
🧬 Ever wondered about the science behind the Pokémon virus?
Come check out some fascinating ties of the Pokérus virus with real-world biology: jgeekstudies.org/2025/05/01/p...

#geekstudies #scicomm #Pokemon #Virology

The bite force is strong with this one!

Reposting our recent study by @taphonomist.bsky.social and myself investigating the biomechanics and bite of the Rancor. jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i... in @jgeekstudies.bsky.social‬

Happy May the 4th!!!!

#StarWarsDay #StarWars #MayThe4thBeWithYou

Facing extinction in Endling Interview with Javier Ramello Download PDF Endling – Extinction is Forever is an upcoming multi-platform game developed by Herobeat Studios and published by HandyGames. As its name implies[1], the …

Here's an oldie but goodie for #EarthDay - an interview with Javier Ramello from @herobeatstudios.bsky.social about their fantastic game #Endling - Extinction is Forever. 🦊

#NatureConservation #scicomm @handy-games.com

On #EarthDay, don't miss our interview with Paul Goodenough, co-founder of Rewriting Earth, about their comics and other initiatives to increase environmental awareness. 🌍

#NatureConservation #scicomm

Ubisoft’s Colorblind Simulation Tool, Chroma, Now Available For Public Use The open-source tool allows developers to simulate a colorblind person’s experience while gaming.

So, Ubisoft made a powerful tool for colorbind persons. And it could be a game changer for #birds and animals lover. 300 millions are colorblind in the world, and it could be huge for them🪶

news.ubisoft.com/fr-fr/articl...

Here Come the AAAA Games… But What’s a AAA Game and Why Do We Call Them That? Where did the AAA designation come from? And what even qualifies as a AAA game? I investigated both of those questions in a piece for Warp Zoned back in 2013, and a lightly edited and updated versi…

I’ve been digging into the history of AAA games again, and would you believe the term actually goes all the way back to 1991? It’s true!

Marketers were using AAA to distinguish between “high quality” NES games versus the “inferior” 8-bit titles out there.

www.videogamecanon.com/adventurelog...

Those Dire Wolves Aren’t an Amazing Scientific Breakthrough. They’re a Disturbing Symbol of Where We’re Heading. We shouldn’t be celebrating “de-extinction.” We should be focused on the species that are currently in danger.

Colossal’s bungled wolf announcement isn’t a conservation win. It’s a sad reminder of how the offensively rich want to foist their vision of the future on everyone. My latest for @slate.com

For the language and history gamer nerds among us. 😉👇 #TombRaider #Archaeogaming

Archaeolinguistics and language deciphering in action-adventure video games: Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider and Uncharted Pier Simone Pischedda Department of Linguistics, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. E-mail: p.s.pischedda (at) leeds (dot) ac (dot) uk Download PDF Popular…

New article! 🚨
By @drpierpischedda.bsky.social

See how games deal with language deciphering through the lens of archaeolinguistics — from Indy to Lara Croft to Nathan Drake. 🎮

Read more: jgeekstudies.org/2025/04/05/a...

#GeekStudies #GameStudies #Archaeology #Uncharted #TombRaider #IndianaJones

‘Icarus of the deep’: how a dying anglerfish became a social media sensation An unprecedented sighting of a “black seadevil” fish in surface waters triggered a global outpouring of empathy for the deep sea.

"The reaction shows our views of the deep sea – long ignored or seen as a realm of monsters – may at last be changing" said OI member 𝗗𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗮 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘂 from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre.

theconversation.com/icarus-of-th...

We're only on BlueSky now. We abandoned the broligarch social media. 😅
Looking forward to those papers!

thank you! ❤️

Is a bone a viable weapon when combating a Rancor? Estimating the bite force of an intergalactic mega-predator Stephan Lautenschlager1,2 & Thomas Clements3 1School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. 2The Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham, UK. 3…

Just discovered Journal of Geek Studies (not peer reviewed), and it is pure joy.

jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i...

Yes please. Submissions are always open 😁

This project was so much fun! If you want to watch a video abstract - check it out here!

youtu.be/C3JsBb2ZyRU

Is a bone a viable weapon when combating a Rancor? Estimating the bite force of an intergalactic mega-predator Stephan Lautenschlager1,2 & Thomas Clements3 1School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. 2The Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham, UK. 3…

Can a bone stop a Rancor’s massive jaws?🦴🦖
This new study, by @palaeostephan.bsky.social and @taphonomist.bsky.social, estimates the #StarWars predator’s bite force at a bone-crushing 44,000 N!🔥⚔️

Read the full article at jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i...

#geekstudies #scicomm #paleontology