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As fifty percent of my readership complained about the breathless bulleted format I’ve been using, which is a very fair point to make, I’m experimenting with different formatting this “week”, although I’ve much less material. Considering how I create these blogs I should be able to generate an index easily, so it’s trivial for people to see if there’s something of interest each time. ( A newsletter that does this really well is the tl;dr sec newsletter, the format actively encourages picking and choosing the sections relevant to you, I aspire to do the same. ) ...

A summary of what I’ve done over the last month or so. I attended: I went to a Sarah Le-Fevre event where Nick Kellet demonstrated some aspects of his new product, Deckible. It’s an interesting idea, putting card decks on your mobile device, especially the aspect of making card-decks as accessible to everyone in the same way that Spotify does for music. Using an app doesn’t replicate all of the functionality of a card, but there were good demonstrations of the audio and video capabilities. It was interesting to see what the technology is capable of, but I’m not sure these are card-decks now, but also I’m not sure they’re not. Also I was reminded of this tweet thread, and many recent conversations about interfaces and form factors. As per the military trainees in the picture below, while surrounded by laptops, sometimes you need a pen and a shared map to make sense of the environment: picture courtesy of Jim Dawson on Twitter I was in another meeting of the PlaySecure organisers. We decided on ticket prices and discounts and some other administrivia. Follow this for the conference details and we’re using Papercall for content submissions. Ostensibly the conference is about game-based methods to improve decision making in cyber security, but anything related to game-based methods for training or planning will be welcome… especially anything half-complete that would benefit from audience feedback, or something unusual that won’t fit in elsewhere. ...

The last three… threeish… weeks… I played games I finished Untitled Goose Game - well, the main storyline anyway. It’s a fun game, about being a goose… if you’re a gamer looking for something different, or a non-gamer who thinks video games are all Call of Duty or Super Mario, do look it up. Sometimes it was a little perplexing, so I had to “research” solutions online, but mainly this was really enjoyable and relatively gentle puzzle game based around an engaging concept. There’s a whole set of one player games waiting for me once I’ve stopped my Xbox360 being so noisy, so this was a welcome diversion while that task sits on a “to do” list. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I do enjoy online multiplayer games but due to financial limitations I can only play the fun but weird but twitchy Fortnite; or Rocket League - where I’m facing Real Madrid one match, and the Rose and Crown 2nd XI the next. I would imagine a multiplayer “Untitled Geese Game” would be fun, but I’m trying to think how competing gaggles of geese would work. memeable I did work The usual collection of promising and interesting conversations, but with a poor hit rate. I choose not to wonder “is it me, or is it everybody else” most of the time. ...

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks or more. There’s a war on, and I’ve a few relatively well informed opinions… but so does everybody else it seems. I say relatively because the online dIsCoUrSe is horrible, misinformed, and over-simplistic. If you want to watch one thing to understand why this is happening at all then I recommend this video from the Real Life Lore YouTube channel. A very 2022 war More personally, my favourite sports team, in the space of 24 hours, has either traded or cut two of their best players - leaving no players from their Super Bowl victory of just over eight years ago. Similar to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I’m cautious of spending time on more commentary when there’s so much of it online already; I’ve all sorts of half-formed thoughts on apparent issues with the team - how it treats its players and how it plans ahead, when there’s so much expertise and money on hand… another time perhaps. Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images Even more personally, I GM’d a role-playing game for the first time in decades. While I facilitate or co-facilitate exercises or megagames, running a small game is much more difficult. Thankfully the one page RPG The Witch Is Dead gave me all I needed, and the game went reasonably well - the pacing was variable and the experience was a little obtuse for the players playing animals in a human world, but it reached a spectacular conclusion and the players mostly had fun most of the time I think. Definitely something to keep to hand should the need ever arise again. Barely one page of rules and a lot of imagination As always, looking back I realise how much media I consume, and I find it useful to look back and consider what I did or didn’t like, and what made me think. In no particular order… future work thought exercise Severance is intriguing, maybe makes no more sense five episodes in that it did at the start - and will either be a wonderful spark or will give me a new found understanding on why so many were disappointed in Lost; I’m particularly enjoying the world it’s in, which appears to be our own, but without familiar anchor points. More adult themes, but cartoon peril, The Owl House is delightful, recommended if you’ve children, or just want to watch something with a magical theme and endearing characters. To enjoy it you’ll need to have some empathy for people not like you - I’m guessing this blog isn’t often read by teenage girls; the same applies to the film Turning Red - which is similarly well made, and well paced, and certainly accessible if you’ve got a little empathy to flex and interested in seeing someone else’s experience of the world. Meanwhile nostalgia quilt Picard is very… very something… I won’t be surprised if we forget to watch it every week - not for you unless you’re a trekkie, the trailer tells you far too much, but is fair warning. If you’re interested in video game design then hbomberguy’s three and a half hour treatise on the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is extremely well argued and edited, easy to watch in a single sitting - and with insights if you’re in an obviously related profession like game design, but for me the analysis stretches to any creative endeavor, or even to related disciplines like general project management. “science fiction action horror film” Underwater was good but not great - but far better than its online ratings would suggest; unfortunately I suspect it’s a one-off, when actually it would be interesting to see where creators would go with this if it was positioned as a franchise. I finally watched MoneyBall, being a big fan of sports analytics and the kind of insights that approach can generate and the myths it dispels - I’m only really familiar with this from the NFL side, but I did particularly like the clash of computer based analysis against the comments of the agents on prospective players. And lastly, the recent series not the older film, High Fidelity is very well executed which makes it even more puzzling that so few episodes were made, if you like smart dialogue and cool characters, and a surprisingly effective breaking of the fourth wall, make the most of it. Inexplicably just the one series Everything else I’ve been doing is designing incident response exercises for work, or just trying to make my life more organised. Still.