WILL BUTLER

Ironic, as this was the magazine that referred to Pokémon as a "pestilential Ponzi scheme" in 1999, characterising its creator Satoshi Tajiri as a literal monster "His eyes are bloodshot; dark circles ripple beneath them... His monsters are a child's predelictions." He never gave another interview.

Huge thanks to @jarona7.bsky.social and Kat Dickinson for organising!

YouTube video by Digital Scholarship at Oxford Video Game Preservation Practices and Approaches

I was very honoured to be asked to speak at University of Oxford's Digital Scholarship Centre about my work on preserving live-service games last year.

I was in great company with excellent talks by excellent folk @bishbashbackup.bsky.social and @emarlow.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPEb...

Final push on this blog of mine. I've now played some more Highguard and my feelings on it have not changed. The dread persists, nevertheless.

JOHN HIGHGUARD HAS COME UNSTUCK IN TIME. John Highguard has come unstuck in time. John has gone to sleep a consummate gamer and awakened arthritic. He vaulted into a mech in 2017 and landed on a...

New blog from me on why I don't get on with modern shooters.

Featuring Highguard, @vthewanderer.bsky.social"s wonderful new book on Zen Games, and Star Wars Dark Forces II.

killjoy.bearblog.dev/john-highgua...

Thanks so much, Victor! Absolutely, we'll chat about it at the next conference we see each other at, I'm sure :D

JOHN HIGHGUARD HAS COME UNSTUCK IN TIME. John Highguard has come unstuck in time. John has gone to sleep a consummate gamer and awakened arthritic. He vaulted into a mech in 2017 and landed on a...

New blog from me on why I don't get on with modern shooters.

Featuring Highguard, @vthewanderer.bsky.social"s wonderful new book on Zen Games, and Star Wars Dark Forces II.

killjoy.bearblog.dev/john-highgua...

replaying some mainline Pokemon games for a project and I will never have more contempt for anything than the trainer that with six magikarps. DON'T WASTE MY TIME YOU DISGUST ME.

A Gamer’s Guide to Surviving Long-Haul Flights | Postmode Discover the best tech, comfort gear, and games to survive long-haul flights to Japan, Australia and beyond.

After six trips back and forth to Aus 🇦🇺 in the past four years, I’ve learned how to make the most of long-haul Economy travel. Here’s a @postmode.bsky.social longread on how to stay comfy, sane, and even tackle your backlog when you’re trapped in a metal box in the sky.
postmode.org/a-gamers-gui...

INCREDIBLE!

Had a bit of a crisis last night playing Highguard. Realised I hadn't played an online twitchy shooter since 2016 and even after a few hours I just could not keep up with the speed of the gameplay. The games, I think they've left me behind.

Daryl Baxter's The Making of Tomb Raider has some great interviews in it.

For a deeper cut: the cover feature of the June 1997 issue of The Face (British fashion/culture mag) really illustrates Lara's place in wider UK culture at the time (lads mags etc). If you need the scan link, just hmu!

As soon as I saw those words my brain activated like a sleeper cell. UN, DEUX, TROIS

Welcome to Mothership. ✨ mothership.blog

Having a blog I've written feature in a Critical Distance round-up is up there as one of my proudest career achievements

And that both need help: we do NEED more levers and ways of incentivising investment in videogame companies, same as we NEED funding that allows "games-as-culture" to be created without the expectation of return on investment.

9/9

The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism In the past two months, I’ve found myself thinking back to an essay Ursula K. Le Guin posted on her blog in November 2016. It was one of her last long essays, and she wrote it at a time when she—li…

When I wrote this a year ago I had no idea how bad things would get. Today, eight years after she left us, I'm trying to follow Ursula's advice: write and worry. Write and act. Worry and keep writing.

lithub.com/the-way-of-w...

cool guys giving u a ciggie

keep fighting

One last push for my blog about why guns, cops, and the torrid history of 'Bounty Hunters' are the reason the Metroid series doesn't have a clear direction anymore.

Congrats, Victor - looking forward to reading it :D

SEIZURES NOT MADE BY VIRTUE OF DUE PROCESS This is not a blog about modern policing (mostly). You see, my annual rewatch of coincided with my playthrough of the disappointing but agreeable ....

New (messy) blog from me on something that got lodged while I was playing Metroid Prime 4. Is Samus a cop?

Or rather, is her cop-ness the reason Nintendo keep the Metroid series at a safe distance?

killjoy.bearblog.dev/metroid-samu...

SEIZURES NOT MADE BY VIRTUE OF DUE PROCESS This is not a blog about modern policing (mostly). You see, my annual rewatch of coincided with my playthrough of the disappointing but agreeable ....

New (messy) blog from me on something that got lodged while I was playing Metroid Prime 4. Is Samus a cop?

Or rather, is her cop-ness the reason Nintendo keep the Metroid series at a safe distance?

killjoy.bearblog.dev/metroid-samu...

protestors have painted what appears to be a tunnel on the side of the mountain, causing ICE agents to run into the mountain at full speed.

disgusting.

Had to actually do some writing today.

I've been commissioned to write a piece about games based on real places that changed peoples' perception of that place or had some kind of local impact - are you a dev who made a game like this? Or are you a player who has a story about a game that inspired you to visit somewhere? Let me know!

Hell yeah

"Despite only videogames being allowed, 6 people wrote in Magic: The Gathering, so we interpreted that as MTG Online."

Magic players are all about rules until they aren't.

*beepbeepboop* Phoebe. It’s me, Boy-Geniusman

A final bump for my best of 2025! Really enjoying having a place to quickly put work out to share with my friends 😊