@gealga
Lecturer in Digital Media, King's College London. Co-director MA Digital Futures. Author of Videogames, Identity & Digital Subjectivity (Routledge 2017) and Artgames after Gamergate (Palgrave 2025): https://link.springer.com/book/9783032044341
A screenshot from the Sega Saturn game Shining Force III, in which an NPC guarding a library is saying "You'd never turn into one of those parasitic scholars, sitting around philosophizing all day"
also it's true, I
πΉπ the Saturn
πΉthink it holds its own vs the PSX despite a shallower bench
πΉreckon you can have more fun just reading the titles of Bulk Slash, Radiant Silvergun, Elevator ActionΒ² Returns, Panzer Dragoon Saga & Virtual-On, let alone playing them, than you can w/ 99% of N64 games
was especially nice to talk about games I _like_... The book is about how hard it is to love videogames unequivocally when they can be so reactionary, puerile, cynical & tediously masc, but also how hard it is to hate them unequivocally when they can be so absorbing, exhilarating, eerie, silly & odd
Had a lot of fun talking to Andrew about the book!
And if our previous event has inspired you - we have a Call for Papers now open for lightning talks at our upcoming online symposium on games preservation! #gamespreservation #gamesstudies digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/event/videog...
Fun and Games - call for papers for a special issue of @newformations.bsky.social on games, gamification, game culture etc: jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/f...
Made it _slightly_ trickier to argue that Sonic the Hedgehog mpreg fantasies are symptoms of gaming culture's melancholic attachment to a past repeatedly being rammed back down its gullet by a an industry still desperately fracking away at IPs minted in the 80s & 90s but π€·
colleague brought their tweenage kid to my book talk (half-term); they conducted themselves impeccably across 90 mins of blather about asset libraries & enclosure & then spent the drinks reception playing book-themed hangman & offered everyone sour cherry tictacs. The kids are alright.
Wild to burn billions inadvertently proving what post-structuralists concluded decades ago wrt subjecthood being a mirage produced by the scintillation of signifiers & wilder still for there to then be a never-ending supply of midwits queuing up to ask Is Computer People Now?
(the ones slagging off the novel I mean; go nuts w/ the movie)
A quotation from Literature & Evil, in which George Bataille (1957) asserts: 'The lesson of Wuthering Heights, of Greek tragedy and, ultimately, of all religions, is that there is an instinctive tendency towards divine intoxication which the rational world of calculation cannot bear.'
some of y'all need to remember that
This is next week! Looking forward to talking to Paolo
enjoyed talking to Rudolf about autobiographical games, 90s nostalgia & whether videogames (& game studies) need to "grow up"
As you may know, we are running a conference on games, play, and climate futures in May at the ITU Copenhagen: playingfutures.today
Some news: the deadline for abstracts has been extended to February 20th. Now you have no excuses left not to submit!
Londoners, I'm holding a small launch event for Artgames after Gamergate at @kingscmci.bsky.social on February 18th. I'll be chatting to my brilliant colleague @paoloruffino.bsky.social about the book & there'll be drinks & seasoned carbs. Come thru! www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launc...
Screenshot from Umurangi Generation showing a mohawked man in a VR headset & a leather jacket with neon accents dancing in front of graffiti referencing Polynesian fauna & folklore
Screenshot from Umurangi Generation showing a boggle-eyed salaryman ogling a holographic lady in microshorts
Among other things it's been a nice alibi for revisiting Umurangi Generation - of all the games to look back to Jet Set Radio in recent years this is the only one I'm aware of that also mines MΔori folklore to consider the place of games & VR in an era of mass extinction & creeping authoritarianism
Looking forward to visiting Bruxelles in Feb to talk about my work & play some games about voyeurism, watching & witnessing!
Hi folks! Iβm currently co-editing a special issue for GAME about queer and trans games studies. Find the full cfp here www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey..., deadline for abstract submission is 12 January 2026!
π We have launched a suite of new doctoral studentships through our new Doctoral School π
Over 30 places are now open for applications for the new Doctoral School for Arts & Humanities.
More details and how to apply π
www.kcl.ac.uk/news/arts-hu...
@komldsp.bsky.social @adaptai.bsky.social
Yessssss... sure it's proto-Smash but more delightfully it's the apogee of a certain style of Dorling Kindersley cross-sectional 2D action game a la Elevator Action Returns or Ninja Cop (but even better because you can play as giallo-coded spooky twins or an ape, & inundate a natural history museum)
Not, seemingly, the image used on most versions of the single or LP, but maybe this one flipped? (Charmingly the CDs can be knocked off the shelves & skitter about, & I can't imagine they put a different texture on the verso, so you probs have a 50/50 shot of unflipping it by flinging an NPC at it)
now that it's mid-December, this is a Mariah cameo in SpikeOut (Nagoshi, 1998) right?
he knows
v. proud of our curatorially gifted AI-skeptical third-years π₯²
Next week is the @kingscmci.bsky.social Winter festival - a week of free cultural events programmed by our amazing BA students. My insider tip is this exhibition about the environmental impacts of AI, with a talk from QMUL's CΓ©dric John... www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/data-overf...
this year's winter solstice/xmas Field Work NTS show is up - moody/diaphanous/numinous sounds from Arkkon, Mark Hollis, Markus Guentner, Mary Lattimore etc. www.nts.live/shows/fieldw...
CFP for the next issue of G|A|M|E β Games as Art, Media, Entertainment, on βQueer and Trans Game Studies in Global and Local Contextsβ is out!
This issue aims to map current developments in queer and trans game studies.
For full details: www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey...
I'm a bit strapped for cash atm - but might just be able to sort you out with a copy of a book that retails for approximately that amount...
I really think, however narcissistically, that the book I put out last month makes some points that are very germane to this whole contretemps! (& also I'm very glad it's happening _now_ because having to recount the Horses dΜΆiΜΆsΜΆcΜΆ(H)ouΜΆrse(s) in the conclusion would've been v. wearisome & trying)
Fuck Epic & fuck Valve, obvs - tho at least the latter still deign to let you wrangle Itch games onto a Steam Deck for now... as a Mac user writing a book abt artgames Apple nixing 32-bit support was one thing, but making it impossible to trick yr own laptop into running 'unauthorised' apps another