15 January 2026 •
The Garden of Forking Paths
14 January 2026 •
Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge.
It Can't Say Everything
24 November 2025 •
The words that it can't say are sometimes as important as the words it can.
Respect the Zebra: Vibe Scripting
19 November 2025 •
If you can't describe what you really want, it's going to give you what you really asked for.
Moravec's Paradox
01 June 2025 •
Hard things are easy. Easy things are hard.
The Generative Dimension of Existence
28 May 2025 •
Every rule system describes a space of existence.
Catboxes and Umineko
02 September 2024 •
I had a lot of time during the pandemic [...] to solve a murder mystery with my housemates.
Texture
01 September 2024 •
The roughness of the generation is as important as the range.
Games with Friction
07 April 2021 •
Some games work better with more friction.
Concrete Interaction Visibility in Game Interaction
23 March 2021 •
Some game graphics are more real than others
Participation in Imagination
20 March 2021 •
Every game offers a fantasy, and there are many different ways for them to fulfill those fantasies for players. A focus on agency and strategy has lead us to overlook the importance of performance. (And also why the players themselves are a part of the mechanics.)
Software Instruments - Research Debt
12 February 2021 •
A community of practice has research debt when its students and researchers know they need to learn some topic X, but the avalable exposition on topic X is very dense...
Software Instruments - Performance
05 February 2021 •
This week is about design space, and its navigation via generative instruments.
Software Instruments - Definition
26 January 2021 •
I am revisiting the definition of software instruments today.
Software Instruments - Introduction
19 January 2021 •
We describe software instruments as a family of interactive computational mediums (i.e. game-like artifacts) spanning both toys and tools...
Apologia for Game Wikis
15 January 2021 •
Ludic mystery games — games that lean into the joy of feeling bewildered — invite us to import the social, discursive learning methodolgies of the real world.
The Sense of Scale in Software
12 January 2021 •
Some software feels bigger than other software: why?
An offer you can refuse
07 January 2021 •
In creative collaboration, mere action is insufficient to communicate intent.
Gameplay as Language
05 January 2021 •
Nier: Automata knows that it is a videogame
Welcome to Mixed Initiatives!
01 January 2021 •
These are the notes of the Seabright Camerata, a loose working group of scholar-practitioners in expressive computation.