Noah Wardrip-Fruin

My work concerning the use of LLMs for authoring interactive narrative has just been published in Transactions on Games! We explore if LLMs could produce writing for IDNs, and if we SHOULD use LLMs in this creative writing from perspectives of actual authors. I'll let you explore our findings :)

Haven't read the paper yet but in my experience LLM is just terrible at picking up what makes writers actually proud of their work like proses, themes and very tailored moments of obfuscation and reveal. Glad there's a study on it now!

Could vs Should: Exploring Prompting Strategies and Writer Perspectives Towards LLM Assistance in Storylet Authoring Large Language Models (LLMs) and procedural narrative practices have grown significantly over the past few years, but there are many questions about their newfound capabilities. In the context of vide...

"[Writers] preferred inspiration outside generated content and did not find the proposed collaborative work with LLMs enjoyable or fulfilling."

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112...

okay, seriously: if we were to corral this, would anyone be interested in contributing? Here is the google form:

forms.gle/m2V4j4cDvwNu...

I'm honored to be included in this exciting collection of new university press books!

#TeamUP in the Arts, Performing Arts, and Media Studies, University Press Week, featuring 3 book jackets: -Animal Crossing, New Horizons: Can a Game Take Care of Us? -Time Well Spent: An American Architect in Europe, 1893 -We Are Civic Media

#TeamUP and #ReadUP in the arts, performing arts & media studies with works by @uchicagopress.bsky.social, @n-w-f.bsky.social, @cmupress.bsky.social, @nupress.bsky.social & more in the #UPWeek Gallery https://bit.ly/3WTl7XD

Principal Narrative Designer | Creative Assembly As a Principal Narrative Designer, you will be tasked with creating and implementing engaging dialogue and compelling characters. You will craft the game's narrative journey while collaborating with t...

OPPORTUNITY! Creative Assembly - UK - Principal Narrative Designer

Not affiliated. Shares welcome!

www.creative-assembly.com/careers/view...

Reposting! Do you know someone working at the intersection of Interactive Art, Performance, and Games? We’re hiring!

Apocalypse World: Burned Over The 3rd edition of the groundbreaking original.

Here We GO! Come along, my dearies!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

A crocheted ghost with a UCSC Center for Monster Studies button on a table with marigolds and candles.

Bribing people to donate to @ucscmonsters.bsky.social
. We’re raising money for the 2026 Festival of Monsters and the $ is matched. So, if you would like me to make you an emotional support ghost, donate $30+ and send proof/address to ucscmonsters at gmail and I’ll make you one! bit.ly/monstergive

Bring the 2026 Festival of Monsters to life! It's Giving Day at UC Santa Cruz and monster matches magically turn $1 into $2. bit.ly/monstergive Your support means the monsters live to lecture another day, #give2ucsc @dsas #monsters

That makes sense. And maybe that's a way of articulating what's changed — people are publishing non-ethnographic books on single games?

👻 Happy Halloween!
What better time to discover the inaugural volume in Lever Press's film|minutes book series?:
'Bride of Frankenstein' by @shanedenson.bsky.social dissects the 1935 classic through sound, technology, and time itself minute-by-minute.🎃 🍿
bit.ly/3JzEdPr
@leverpress.bsky.social

🚨CALL FOR PAPERS 🚨

The Psychgeist of Pop Culture: Chrono Trigger

playstorypress.org/2025/10/30/c...

Yeah. When I saw that it was going to use the camera, I thought maybe it would be some janky expression recognition that would try to choose a reaction to match. Or put that expression on a Mii. Having it just be your face doesn’t feel very Nintendo to me

Assistant Professor Digital Arts, Game Arts 2026 (71102) The Department of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in Game Arts at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning in Fall 2026. The successful ca...

Come work with me!



We've opened the search for a full time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in Game Arts at Pratt Institute.



A good match would be an artist, game developer, or educator with an active creative practice in indie games, game studies and theory, playful coding, or art games.

In happier news: for Critical Inquiry, I reviewed @hagenblix.bsky.social and Ingeborg Glimmer’s WHY WE FEAR AI, which has just lately been catching some deserved hotness. 🔥 Read my take here: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/matthew_kirs...

The Video Game History Expansion Pack – Pitch your story Today I’m putting my money where my mouth is and launching a new project — a book focused on game history outside of the usual North American perspectives.

So, today I'm announcing a new book project... and doing a call for papers: crpgbook.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/t...

It's an anthology of video game history outside the usual US perspective - an accessible & exciting panorama of different realities - and I'll pay 300 USD per article.

Please share :)

We’re playing the Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival tomorrow! 🎃
And we've got a SPECIAL GUEST...

Join us LIVE this Thursday on Twitch as we play with the game’s CREATOR, @adamgryu.bsky.social at 8:30pm EST for a fun Halloween hangout full of ghosts, pumpkins & secrets!

✨Follow on Twitch buff.ly/JFTqgrY

I think Nintendo is betting that we look back on the community around ACNH will fondness. That in a time of division, we'll (unexpectedly) want more of the community feeling we got when we were in Covid isolation. And that will sell Switch 2s, cameras, and Nintendo online subscriptions

And with the 3.0 update (plus a subscription), players will have three “slumber” islands where they can play and decorate with their friends, instead of just having the one island normally available on each Switch console

It's the social aspect that Nintendo is leaning into for these updates. ACNH’s new Switch 2 edition will (w/ a subscription) increase the number of players who can be on an island from 8 to 12. It will (w/ a compatible camera) place live video images of players above the heads of their characters

Animal Crossing: New Horizons sails ashore with a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and free content update Jan. 15 - News - Nintendo Official Site Ahoy! New things are en route to your island getaway, whether you’re planning to arrive on these shores for the first time, or already a seasoned Island Resident. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons – N...

Today Nintendo announced a Switch 2 and 3.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Why would they make a major new update for a game more than five years old? Why would they bet on nostalgia for something from the Covid-19 pandemic?

www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/...

a close up of a cartoon character 's face with the words get on animal crossing below it Alt: The villager from animal Crossing glitches out into a slightly spooky, but definitely excited blur. The text reads “get on animal crossing”.

*Three* sandbox islands per player?!! We’re so back

Just yesterday I was talking about starting a new Animal Crossing island and wondering what that said about the state of my mental health, and now Nintendo are full on enabling me

Lead Narrative Designer Company Description: To create revolutionary, story-driven RPGs which go straight to the hearts of gamers — this is our mission. Want to dive deeper into our company’s culture? Explore our social medi...

I have to know some people for whom this role would be fitting -- come work with me (and other great people) as a Lead Narrative Designer on Project Sirius
jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CDPROJEKTRED...

There is something truly remarkable about Generative AI.

Several years in this revolution, half of the US GDP dumped to make these tools free, and i can't think of a single generated artifact, text, image, sound, video that had a significant cultural impact.

So excited to be contributing an essay to this book.

I’ll be covering one of my all time favourite games, Year Walk

I’ll be discussing memory, perspectives on inevitability, folklore, and (of course) history

Yes! That's one of my favorites. I was so glad to see Boss Fight bring it back into print

That's great! It really feels like a sea change at the scholarly presses

I should perhaps also have included @increment.bsky.social's Game Wizards (on D&D) from MIT