Marcus Carter

It's the first panel of the "guy looking at two buttons and sweating with indecision" meme, but this panel with the buttons has been replaced to show the same hand but on a selection of 30 buttons instead of just 2. They are all labelled, but some are partially obscured. They're mostly jokes about indie video games; continue for the very long full description. Labels include "Suffer more in the Blue Prince endgame", "Finish Dispatch", "One of all those free Epic Store games I've barely played", "pick up No Man's Sky again", "Bug husband to play Reanimate", "Ask friends to play Borderlands 4", "Buy Ambrosia Sky: Chapter 1", "Early next Fest demos?" "Chores in Minecraft", "Finish Universe for Sale", "More and, Roger even though it makes me cry", "Destiny 2 for the millionth time", "More Big Hops", "Helldivers 2 even though it's broken", "Divinity: Original Sin 2", "Another screenshot run of Norco", "Replay Exocolonist", "Achievement hunting in A Short Hike", and more. The finger hovers between two central options, labelled "Stare into the middle distance, consumed by decision paralysis" and "feel guilty for not being productive".

The second panel of the "guy looking at two buttons and sweating with indecision" meme is unmodified, showing the guy sweating.

It's Saturday afternoon and I have a few hours to myself so you know what that means

The nice thing about writing books is that eventually you get a copy and this is a lovely surprise when it happens.

New book now coming out very soon. Next month!

This thread is absolutely worth a read; of course ‘gaming’ and ‘gambling’ are getting conflated!

This is incredible, thoughtful, critical and diligent work. Well done!

🍲 It is still soup season!

@gua-le-ni.com's philosophical game still continues to promote the discussion of what exactly is soup. And that even an ordinary concept like ‘soup’ is vague, shifting, and impossible to define exhaustively.

@derlampenputzer.bsky.social @zeit.de

marcus carter - treacherous play direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Huge congrats to all the very deserving early career academics who got DECRAs. And condolences to the much larger group of deserving people who didn't get DECRAs. Just remember that the vast majority of successful academics you know also didn't get DECRAs!

People are going to be so pissed when they find out four chapters of this book are on videogame / video game (with that extraordinary 6 page footnote on the Latin roots of video in ‘videre’ and the implications of the Greek suffix eidos meaning “form, shape” thus implying seeing the game shape …

What’s enough of a milestone for me: We have finally agreed out how to represent a Wordle grid in black and white, which means this book is now completely done!

The webpage for our upcoming book has the cover on it now which is enough of a milestone for me to write another post about the book we have coming out soon. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

The Latest Research on Age Verification & Online Safety This list includes a selection of the latest research on age verification & online safety posted to SSRN in 2025. Tinder Backgrounds by Irina D. Manta (Hofstra University) The “Segregate-…

Check out the latest from the SSRN #blog which features a selection of #research on age verification & #online safety.

Read more: spkl.io/63322AKCwm

#Academicsky #AcademicChatter

This is basically @adriennemassanari.bsky.social's new book in meme form.

Screenshot of conference paper titled “Graphic design and artificial intelligence: Interdisciplinary challenges for designers in the search for research collaboration”

My DRS paper on graphic design and AI has just passed 15,000 downloads | dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conferen...

Teaching game design is way harder than anything else I've ever taught, because we make collaborative social rituals out of all of human experience... and then also sometimes have to balance spreadsheets about polearm damage.

We're currently running a study interviewing game developers and games industry workers, particularly those involved in monetisation design. If you'd like to speak with us so that our research is better informed by industry perspectives please reach out!

These key principles guide developers “to act in line with the European consumer protection legislation when offering in-game virtual currencies”. The headline is that purchases must disclose the 'real' value of purchases, but the principles go further than that commission.europa.eu/document/dow...

Our research provides further evidence to support action taken by the European Consumer Protection Cooperation Network who (just last Friday!) have released new Key Principles on the design of virtual currencies ...

➡️ Parents feel that the way monetisation is designed in games becomes a barrier to teaching children healthy spending behaviours.

➡️ Many children feel misled by the games they play, experiencing financial disappointment and family conflicts due to misleading spending features.
➡️ Children need better protections over access to the virtual items and accounts they spend time and money on, and should have easier access to refunds

➡️ Random reward mechanics like loot boxes are deceptive and harmful, and still feature in many of the most popular Roblox games despite being banned for users under 15 in Australia in 2024.

Our key findings:

➡️ Children are struggling with complex virtual currency systems, describing in-game currency conversions as “scary” and difficult to understand, often leading to unintentional overspending.

‘Literally just child gambling’: what kids say about Roblox, lootboxes and money in online games Kids who play Roblox games describe ‘scary’ virtual currencies and ‘cash grab’ random rewards.

and we've written about the key findings for The Conversation here theconversation.com/literally-ju...

This work has now been accepted for publication at CHI – pre-print here papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Last year, we ran a study where we gave children a $20 pre-paid debit card to spend in any game. This method elicited incredible data showing how carefully children weigh their purchasing decisions, but also revealed the many minefields and deceptive practices they have to navigate.

‘Literally just child gambling’: what kids say about Roblox, lootboxes and money in online games Kids who play Roblox games describe ‘scary’ virtual currencies and ‘cash grab’ random rewards.

New article in @theconversation.com today by myself and @marcuscarter.com on how kids talk about when spending money in Roblox is harmful to them. TLDR; virtual currencies and random reward features should be better regulated!

theconversation.com/literally-ju...

Agree, it's why I always recommend reading @brkeogh.bsky.social's book The Videogame Industry does not exist.

Games are a media, an art field. While it's understandable to want to help people pay bills, we undermine them by focusing so much on their monetization - especially when it's unrealistic.

Ding Xiongfei: You believe AI is being overhyped, correct? Adam Tooze: Honestly, I’m not sure. I think it's still in such an early stage, and we’re very much in the zone of the “Solow paradox,” where everyone is talking about it—it’s supposedly everywhere—but it hasn’t really started doing or changing much yet. I've been asked this question so many times in various talks that I ended up creating a “polycrisis” diagram for AI. There are so many possibilities that might spin out. What worries me the most is the massive bet being placed on AI in the American stock market right now, which is essentially predicated on the assumption of a huge leap in productivity. The flipside of that is a huge upheaval in white-collar, routine labor markets, which could be devastating for employment and social stability. What we’re seeing is a vast, leveraged financial gamble on social disruption. If things go “well,” we could see a real social revolution. If they don’t, investors will be disappointed, and there could be a collapse in stock market values.

God this is really annoying - but Adam Tooze posted the best thing he’s written in months *today*. It’s a wide ranging interview from a Chinese publication, but here’s the best (and most terrifying) description of the current AI bubble I’ve yet read

adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Balatro’s 18+ Rating Underscores Gaming’s Hypocritical “Protecting” Children Rhetoric Loot boxes pass through regulatory and rating scrutiny without batting an eye, but a card game? My word!

I agree with @localthunk.bsky.social. Rating Balatro as an 18+ game is as unserious as it is hypocritical, and how we use ratings and regulations to safeguard children often makes no sense. My latest at @crossplayblog.bsky.social: patrickklepek.substack.com/p/is-balatro...

@darthtayrah.bsky.social