Jesper Juul

Important competition celebrating our unsung vermin friends.

Visual Game and Media Design | Royal Danish Academy

Join our Visual Game & Media Design two-year master’s program at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. Deadline March 1st!

Visual Game & Media Design is a cross-disciplinary program open to all creative BA students.

Read more about the program here: royaldanishacademy.com/en/programme...

Visual Game and Media Design - Meet the Head of programme | Det Kongelige Akademi

For our Visual Game & Media Design MA program in Copenhagen, we have an online info meeting this Friday Feb 6th'26 at 1PM. Please join if your interested!

kglakademi.dk/da/event/vis...

Conceptual Napping. I mistyped, but this has vast advantage over trite conceptual mapping. To work out the problem, let's start with a Conceptual Nap. Let's go, team!

Proud to welcome Victor Navarro-Remasal's "Zen and Slow Games" in the Playful Thinking Series!

Right! There seems to be a specific carve-out for code, for which most people are OK with AI being used.

You CAN do something, namely move to a work environment not controlled and monitored by (US) big tech.

www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2...

Quite precise: We are more positive about AI generation in areas outside our own expertise; we worry more about our own jobs.

And here is one about walking simulators: jesperjuul.net/text/aesthet...

Here is a paper about open and expressive games: jesperjuul.net/text/without...

The best way to see it is that analog games mostly followed a "classic game model", but that video games often move beyond that model, as can be witnessed in both open-ended simulation games (Sims, SimCity, simulators) and in walking simulators.
jesperjuul.net/text/gamepla...

YouTube video by lftkryo 8-bit Boléro (The World's Most Ambitious Chiptune?)

Not a holiday piece, but could be, Linus Åkesson's version of Ravel's Boléro for mostly Commodore 64-derived instruments, with a floppy drive, NES, and Amiga thrown in. As always, an explosive combination of technical and musical skill, and understatedness. #c64
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMGb...

Get the book here: jesperjuul.net/c64/

YouTube video by m4r71nk The Ghost of Xmas by Triangle

My Commodore 64 book, Too Much Fun, is 1 year old!
A gift for someone you know, interested in game or computer history? Link in the comments.

What is even older? I wrote this Commodore 64 holiday demo, "The Ghost of Xmas" in (checks watch) 1989! Happy holidays!

I think Infomaniak's kSuite, CryptPad, or Drime are nearly on par. www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2...

Interviewed about my Commodore 64 book by the Carlsberg Foundation, who supported my stay at MIT and the book's publication. Thanks!

FDG'26 call for papers!

We will be hosting the ACM conference Foundations of Digital Games 2026 conference here at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen August 10-13 2026.

The call for papers is out now: fdg2026.org/call-for-pap...

We hope to see you (and your paper) at FDG’26!

Deloitte will refund Australian government for AI hallucination-filled report Consulting firm quietly admitted to GPT-4o use after fake citations were found in August.

AI Rule #1: Cynical writers use AI.

Also: Who will pay for consulting, when AI can generate something just as default and vacuous for free? Or will consulting firms claim to offer something more personal, human, and special?

arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/d...

Stafan Höltgen has kindly reviewed Too Much Fun (in German).

"What is astonishing is both the breadth and depth with which the author presents the platform."

www.hsozkult.de/searching/id...

You mean it's just a general lack of (data) literacy? I see the point. People also used to take Google to be an oracle.

Lots of retro goodness in the mail today 😀 @jesperjuul.bsky.social @amigaaddict.bsky.social

2) As I recall Piaget, he has a similar distinction (named in reverse!) between "regularities" (what governs the activity, such as throwing marbles) and "rules" (the goal).

Probably yes (the rules are what govern the game). But it is perfectly possible to make distinction. I think there are two variations.
1) The Bernard Suits argument that there is a pre-existing "goal", and "the rules/game" - constitute a limitation of what players can do.
...

And why even ask us the question?

AI naïvity: When we presented a detailed study about the Danish game industry last month, a young audience member asked us why we hadn't just asked ChatGPT? He apparently thought that AIs knew "everything", and didn't see any reason why you would gather new data. That is a problem.

Spoiler: This refers to AIs (as in LLMs) running on your own server, specifically Meta's Llama AI.

Bullet point of the day: "Self-hosted llamas".

Thanks for letting me know! It is available from the publisher, but Amazon in Europe has it out of stock sometimes. I think Thalia.de has it
www.thalia.de/shop/home/ar...

The software is there, but the storefront can be improved. Don't take my word for it. Try putting a non-technical user in front of the site. Don't tell them anything and see if they a) realize that Nextcloud can be used for an office suite b) can sign up and get to said office suite on their own.

I disagree. NextCloud a software platform for installing on a server, it's not something a regular end-user can use to replace an office suite.