Florence Smith Nicholls

One for @jennycromwell.bsky.social!

GDC Thoughts and Prayers - Meredith Gran I’m home! Let’s see if I can zero in on the stuff I really wanna say. I was up for an award I was sure I wouldn’t win. I did not write an acceptance

I'm home and I've written a bit on my blog about post-GDC feelings:

meredithgran.com/gdc-thoughts...

Koplytstulpis is a type of a roadside / column / wayside pillar shrine from Lithuania. Typically made of a wooden log with a small chapel-like space on top, and a roof. I love how archaic (?) and magical they look! Note that Koplytstulpis is a recognizable word: a direct cognate of "Chapel-Stele"

🎮 Do you know any *good* theories for making games? 🎮

Share your thoughts in our survey
res58.itu.dk/limesurvey/I...

Whether you are a game dev, scholar, educator, or blog about games. @dooleymurphy.bsky.social and I would love to hear from you!

🌟 Thanks for participating and reposting! 🌟

Environmental storytelling

Indie deckbuilder All Will Rise's dev joins No Games For Genocide boycott and plans to hand back funding it received from Microsoft "We encourage others in the industry to join us and take a stand."

all will rise is handing back Microsoft money & pledging @nogamesforgenocide.com — it’s a difficult thing to do when funding and attention are scarce commodities for indies like us, but we hope more of our fellow devs and indie studios will join us in taking a stand 🔥
www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

Nostalgia Power - the Origin and Evolution of Fallout's Pip-Boy Radios Audio director Mark Lampert discusses his work on Bethesda's Fallout games, and the genesis of the iconic Pip-Boy radio feature.

Eteo Archetypes interviews Mark Lampert - audio director on several of the Fallout games - to discuss the design process behind the series' famous Pip-Boy radios, and why they bring back such strong memories all these years later.

www.eteogames.com/nostalgia-po...

The Bathysphere A weekly deep dive into video games from Christian Donlan, Florence Smith Nicholls and Keith Stuart. No hot takes, no news, no reviews. Just short essays, recommendations and other nice things.

You can subscribe to the Bathysphere newsletter here to automatically get it in your inbox each week:

buttondown.com/Bathysphere

Did you know that the spinning top is one of the most common forms of traditional play worldwide?

Our research found tops to be nearly universal across human cultures.

Wherever you come from, your ancestors probably spun tops.

New preprint: Top of the World

osf.io/preprints/so...

Thread:

Expedition 48 of the Bathysphere is now out!

This week, I try to use Balatro to do a tarot reading:

buttondown.com/Bathysphere/...

Probably one of the coolest examples of play preservation I've ever seen

Thank you so much to Santa Ragione and especially to Andrea for trusting me with the English script. And thank you to the Italian translation team at We Are Muesli for helping me navigate some of its unique, fascinating challenges. Thank you to the IGF Jury for seeing the beauty in the grotesque

Thanks for injecting me with 500 cursed Black Knight Ultra Greatswords Getting hacked on memory lane for Dark Souls 2's 12th anniversary.

I have a new piece up at @rockpapershotgun.bsky.social — it’s about when I got hacked in Dark Souls 2, used hacker tools to unhack myself, and then talked to my hacker years later

Key takeaway from the DK Bananza panel:

For those interested in the academic research of role-playing games, we have just released our latest issue of the International Journal of Role-Playing (17!).

221 pages of work, all for advancing knowledge about this medium.

journals.uu.se/IJRP/issue/v...

Myself and @mtrc.bsky.social are running a workshop on Games and Archaeological Play (GAP) at FDG 2026!
Short papers of up to 4 pages are due by April 5th. We are interested in any work that broadly relates to video game archaeology. See the full CFP here:
gapworkshop.org/call-for-pap...

I need to be put into the machine that heals pokemon at the pokemon center

Game preservation roundtable. I want to know what the game dev community thinks is important about these issues, so I'll mostly be listening (unless I really really need to say something) #GDC2026

The GAP Workshop accepts zines about all sorts of workshop-related things - condensed summaries of research papers, teasers for things you're working on, mini-manuals for games/demos you made, or anything else! gapworkshop.org/call-for-pap...

Make zines for free: alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zin...

Definitely yes! Thanks for catching that, I'll change it on the website

The workshop itself will be held on August 10th in sunny Copenhagen!

We also have a call for zines! Zines can be on any subject related to archaeology and games, and will both be printed out for the workshop and published on a dedicated itch page. The deadline for zines is June 10th!

The purpose of GAP is to bring together researchers, developers and artists from different fields who are interested in archaeological games, theory and design. This includes work on games preservation and analogue games!

Myself and @mtrc.bsky.social are running a workshop on Games and Archaeological Play (GAP) at FDG 2026!
Short papers of up to 4 pages are due by April 5th. We are interested in any work that broadly relates to video game archaeology. See the full CFP here:
gapworkshop.org/call-for-pap...

First entry of ghosts, four figures Daniel Rabel, 1632 For the "Ballet du chateau de Bicêtre" danced #otd 8 Mar 1632 at the Louvre, the Arsenal and the Hôtel de Ville. (Musée du Louvre)

Being able to freely hang out in the Yerba Buena Gardens was the highlight of my time at GDC. This is really sad

There's a reason why I specialised in Minoan archaeology!