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Chris Gardiner

@chrisgardiner.bsky.social

Narrative Director at Failbetter Games. He/him. Our titles include: Fallen London, Sunless Sea/Skies, and Mask of the Rose. Opinions are mine, so there.

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Failbetter Games | Wishlist Mandrake on Steam!@failbettergames.com · yesterday

We're showcasing Mandrake in the Choices Matter festival, thanks to the kindness of @telltalegames.bsky.social! Expect to see 25 minutes of narrative gameplay, including a first look at character creation. 🌱 See you there!

Telltale@telltalegames.bsky.social · yesterday

Celebrate narrative games w/ our first-ever CHOICES MATTER FEST on Steam! AUGUST 10 - 17th: It’s stacked with... 🪧40+ Demos 🪧Behind-the-scenes content 🪧Interviews 🪧A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type quiz 🪧Exclusive announcements 🪧TWO WORLD PREMIERES (not ours) 🪧…and discounts on 90 featured games!

Dorian Lynskey@dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 3d ago

According to Luke Tryl on Radio 4 disillusioned Reform voters think Farage is “just the same as the rest” on the corruption front. But he isn’t is he? He’s exponentially worse. And his grifter tendency has been obvious for a very long time.

Chris Gardiner@chrisgardiner.bsky.social · 3d ago

The best mad thing in Secret Wars is when Spider-man gets a new costume from a vending machine, and the costume ends up becoming Venom, his worst nemesis. “Came from a vending machine” is my favourite villain origin. (Everyone else uses the vending machine too. Their costumes are just normal.)

Tom Ewing@tomewing.bsky.social · 3d ago

#EventsDearBoy 6. MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS (1984, Marvel) The notorious focus group of small boys that decreed the most exciting words were "secret" and "wars" is the most consequential bit of comics market research ever done (runners-up "phalanx" and "covenant" got their due eventually)

Chris Gardiner@chrisgardiner.bsky.social · 2w ago

I found the Hellfire Gala event absolutely electric. So confident, so bombastic, so different from everything that had come before. Transposing superhero excess into fashion and a social event was so much delirious fun. I still can’t believe we got the Krakoa era.

Tom Ewing@tomewing.bsky.social · 2w ago

#EventsDearBoy 14. THE HELLFIRE GALA (2021, Marvel) The highest placed Krakoa era event not because it's necessarily the best but because it's the *most* Krakoa-ish: what could sum up this biggest of in-continuity swings better than a fashion-forward event based on a party not a battle?

Chris Gardiner@chrisgardiner.bsky.social · 2w ago

Fantastic videogane history thread on Sir, You Are Being Hunted, and the conditions and trends (beyond skill and ingenuity) that aligned to accelerate its success.

Jim Rossignol@rossignol.bsky.social · 2w ago

One thing I never did was a post-mortem of Sir. Perhaps this is as good a time and place as any to talk about some of that. It started in 2010 when Channel 4 had some money to spend on making educational games. For some reason they asked me. ->thread

Cat Manning@catacalypto.bsky.social · 2w ago

yes! as someone who’s been working in procedural text before LLMs were a thing, I really wish people had a sense of the varieties of procgen writing that *aren’t* genAI output. there’s a ton of stuff we can do (including pre-LLM, ML style AI) that’s nothing like chatbot output directly in a game.

Matthew Kirschenbaum@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you! Very illuminating. We’re so fixated on genAI right now, it’s useful to be reminded of the varieties of synthetic and procedural text flowing through different kinds of experiences.