Thanks for your interest! Yeah the visual accessibility was a problem on this one, which is why despite Pico-8 being so lovely I've switched to html based stuff more recently. Perhaps I should create an accompanying ebook with just linear text? What kind of format would you enjoy for this?

https://zoy.itch.io/delay-paying-attention-to-energy-mechanics

oh interesting, thanks for letting me know! I'll look into that

Thanks for that, very helpful! I am looking at hauntology to help with a piece on The Witcher 3, but not because I find the content of the game hauntological but because my experience of playing it felt haunted by queer futures that have failed to materialise. It felt haunted by what was not there - the same way that ghosts don't exist, but we can feel the presence of something that is missing? I think reading Fisher will help a lot!

Thanks so much! Sorry I only just looked at the comments.

I think as you say, postmodernity and modernity are deployed differently here and in a way that can come across as a bit ahistorical (this is largely due to some kind of tricky editorial choices I made here, as Azuma does put some work into explaining how he uses "postmodernity" to refer to a historical cultural moment, vs. "postmodernism" as an intellectual movement). That said, I'm not sure the nihilism point always works out - a lot of postmodern thought to me seems to be better understood broadly along the lines of "there is no underneath; meaning is enacted, not extracted". I see this in your bitsy essay too - the difference you point out between finding meaning and making meaning, the lack of common fluency with the latter, assumption that the former must always be what is at work when writing about media. This is what Azuma is doing with databases - whereas modernity pointed to an inherent shared reality underpinning everything (even if different theories posited competing views on the nature of this shared universal reality), postmodernity enacts a contingent shared reality through discourse production. A lot of postmodern theory in the 1990s seems to be trying to illustrate this shift in thinking about the structure of material and social reality - rather than hollow shells, you get rhizomes, flatness, etc.

One thing I wanted to ask you about in our earlier discussion today was your mention of a hauntological relationship to media. I've been thinking about Elizabeth Freeman's notion of queer hauntology lately, while consuming some "nostalgic" media and also while playing The Witcher 3, which is supposedly contemporary but honestly feels very culturally regressive. Hauntology is interesting to me because I keep coming back to phrases like "I feel like an alien" or "I feel like a ghost". But I'm still learning what the term could mean more broadly, or how it relates in practice to other people's experiences of reading media.

Thank you for saying so!

Thanks so much!

https://zoy.itch.io/iportraits

I'm so glad to hear that, thank you!

It's International Transgender Day of Visibility today, and you're probably socially isolated right now. Why not chat with 12 videogame characters based on real interviews with trans people who I met in Japan a couple years ago?

https://itch.io/embed/598903

Very very nice. Lovely little reflective game, with lots of mystery and peace to it. I adore the character design and the use of lighting!

I like this a lot! It's really aesthetically interesting, there's a lot going on here with pacing and framing as well as the obviously remarkable illustration style. I'm super into these fill patterns you're using - what was the engine?

WOW! I adore this, it's so beautiful in visuals, sound, and concept, and I love the little UI flourishes you've put into it, like the changing number of bars/measures at the top of the screen. I felt so moved and comforted playing this.

HARSH!!! Very beautful and melancholic. The dance animation is really touching when things get hard.

Woah cool! The light on the horizon really drew me in, I felt like I was embracing my doom gladly and with great anticipation. It's strange and interesting to be unable to move slowly, and to have to exert physical effort irl. A remarkably participatory experience.

Watch hold on by huggingcactus from lofislo on www.twitch.tv

Watch The Third Dimension by Evan Greenwood and Ben Rausch from lofislo on www.twitch.tv

Nice! This is an excellent collection of well-made, challenging works. The Third Dimension is a funny, poignant riff on Look Around You, taking the concept of the original show into a much more direct, political direction. Hidden Files does a great job of making the user enjoy being complicit in terrible government acts. Welcome to Stanistan is visually fascinating - how does every photo come out so beautiful? Intriguing work deserving of wider attention.

I love this aesthetic in general, and had a great time here. As the game goes on, the love object seems to become increasingly dissected and exploded out into the landscape, which is very cool. I felt less and less sympathetic towards the narrator, which may well be intentional. Generally a great little journey through a well-articulated headspace.

This is quite lovely and peaceful, but also intriguingly uncanny. A natural world made morphable and malleable by human hands is presented neutrally as an object of play, but the distortion of the mountains and the cold digitality of the piano samples gives an uncomfortable feeling. Not to mention the identical models of people marching forward across the surface of the water - a strange thing to witness! 

A beautiful, peaceful, reflective piece of work! Thank you for making this!

This is lovely! I love the simple, twitchy animation that loops for most of the playthrough.

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Shame about the compatibility issues, but hope to be able to play this or something else you make in the future. Since it doesn't look like anyone was able to get this working, I decided not to include it in the bundle, I hope you understand.

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

Thanks so much for submitting! Here is the link to the bundle: https://itch.io/b/144/action-for-trans-health-bund...

Before launching, we're asking all creators to visit the bundle page and click the link in the lilac banner in order to review and approve it. Once everybody has done so we're good to go!

I love this, it is such a good educational resource and the jokes are really funny. So great.

So moving! Thank you for this.

Gorgeous! Totally mesmerising and very sweet.