This is really just an extension of this post: http://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/abusing-you-was-by-the-book-documenting-two-years-of-abuse-from-game-journalism-after-sharing-my-metoo-the-whole-painful-story-all-in-one-place If you are not aware of the situation, read that instead. I’m posting this because I need to scream. It’s better than silence. “Abusing you was by the book” (documenting two years of abuse from Game Journalism, after sharing my #metoo… the whole painful story all in one place) Today I had another grieving outburst about game journalist and the game crit space. It’s been years of dealing with the fallout that they had on my life. The way your perception changes when you keep getting dogpiled on by people...
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Play my new interactive liminal-space horror essay about technocapitalism and individuality!
individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware r?a?n?t? manifesto * https://alienmelon.itch.io/shovelware “This is an interactive-essay-meets-walking-sim about technocapitalism and the things we lost along the way. Follow coins under the electric mist of a clouded starry sky. Discover hyper-links. Listen to the words both inside and outside your head. Seal your fate before the productivity machine.” I just published this interactive essay. This was meant to be preformed in a live setting but it’s not a good fit, so it transformed into an interactive essay format. Please enjoy the narration and ambient vibe. :) My previous “From...
Continue reading...Airport layover musings: AI, tech, internet culture & giving space for constructive criticism
I’m writing this during another long airport layover after attending IEEE Conference on Games 2024 to give a keynote… I found a place here, out of the way of the crowds, where I can intently tap the touchscreen keyboard without feeling noticed. The American couple next to me forgot their medicine. I feel bad for the occasional person sprinting past, obviously about to miss their flight, but they might make it? Airports are a weird headspace to be in. So… It’s been on my mind… How social media does not facilitate constructive criticism, it facilitates reaction. Attention is a currency...
Continue reading...Thinking About The Berlin Computerspiele Museum (Computer Games Museum)
As I write this on my iPhone (oh god it’s so hard to blog like this, nobody’s fingers are this tiny o_O;), I have an 8 hour layover. I got plenty of time to think… Moments like this make me appreciate that I have a blog. There’s only so much browsing airport duty free in Zurich one can take. When I visited A MAZE a small personal side-quest I wanted to do for myself was to get my tongue pierced. I talked myself out of it again (well, ok, credit where credit’s due: I had help getting talked out of...
Continue reading...The story of my first A MAZE (and why I wish we had an event dedicated to solo-devs)
It was an incredible surprise when I got the news that BlueSuburbia was nominated for A MAZE. When I started the project it was a secret dream to have it in A MAZE so I could finally go as a nominee. Attending in person, after so many years of being nominated, then juding, giving a virtual talk… just actually trying to go, lol… was an incredible experience. BlueSuburbia was shown on this big projector on the wall. It was tremendous to see it. After so much hard work and self-doubt, people were actually playing it in this context. Even the...
Continue reading...Goodbye, America
I’m writing this from an Airbnb on my new laptop in the new country that I moved to. I’m a European gamedev now. I finally put America behind me! I have a lot of thoughts and feelings that I wanted to encapsulate at some point, about having lived there for seventeen or so years. How I feel about it. Will I miss it? Can I miss it? I’m not sure if I will, or if I have the energy, to talk about all that… at least to the extent that I would like. Bouncing around Airbnb’s, while renovations are being...
Continue reading...BlueSuburbia out now on Steam Early Access!
I’m so very proud to finally announce that BlueSuburbia just got released as Early Access on Steam. This is about a year of hard work, learning 3D game development, learning Unreal… and it feels good to finally have this first part out in the world. Get it for free on… Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2431510/BlueSuburbia/ Itch.io: https://alienmelon.itch.io/bluesuburbia This installment of BlueSuburbia brings the first open world. A surrealist dream-like realm where you explore poetry and find items to help you further on your quest to be free. It’s heavily laden with metaphor about mental health, survival, and struggling with the alienating weight of...
Continue reading...Documenting what it’s like to be treated humanely by a journalist
Not too long ago I was contacted by a journalist that said he is a reporter for the Guardian and is publishing a piece about toxic and abusive work environments around film, TV, and game composers. He said that they were planning on mentioning my rape allegations against [Famous Composer], and that he had a couple of quick questions for me… asking if I had time for a quick call. The email itself was fairly standard, but as you can imagine I freaked out. The last time I trusted a journalist with this I was drug out in the most...
Continue reading...The GDevelop Game Jam #3 is here (with prizes!) and I’m honored to be a judge…
Recently I wrote about the wonderful open-source no-code world of GDevelop and featured some of the games made in it. It’s a beautiful accessible tool that’s very welcoming to newcomers. GDevelop is running it’s third gamejam, and I’m going to be participating in it too! * The GDevelop Game Jam #3 Is Here! * GDevelop Game Jam itch page I have to say again how encouraged I am that such wonderful tools and communities exist. Recent criticisms levied toward how Adobe is collecting customer’s pictures into machine training sets (see this Mastodon post ), or other discussions about how Microsoft...
Continue reading...Tetrageddon.com is officially a Webby Nominee (and Honoree)!
I woke up to some incredible news today! The Webbys nominated Tetrageddon.com! (Under the “Weird” category, which is the cool category.) Tetrageddon.com is 15 years old. It was created June of 2007, and I have been building it, tearing it down, rebuilding it, creating this strange weird online world… for over a decade. ~~~ Webby Nominations Tetrageddon is a Webby Nominee in Websites and Mobile Sites – Weird: Official listing link Webby Honors Tetrageddon is a Webby Honoree in Websites and Mobile Sites – NetArt: Official listing link ~~~ You can vote for Tetrageddon here! Tetrageddon.com also received an honor...
Continue reading...Recommended Reading Roundup #2
This is my second roundup of recommended reading, in which I share articles (or threads, or youtube videos…) that bring awareness to issues that I feel are desperately underrepresented. Like I said in my first roundup… “I’m also going to try to focus on sharing things relating to marginalized groups in Europe, as they relate to my own family’s history or (complicated) identity (Eastern Europe and the Balkans).” Doing this will continue to be especially important to me as I work on BlueSuburbia. You can read about my plans for the project in my announcement post here. If you find...
Continue reading...Recommended Reading Roundup #1
I’m going to try something new for this blog and that will be roundups of recommended reading. Here is the first! There’s a lot that I usually don’t get to share on my social media because that space is heavily game’s focused… so I thought of saving informative things I read, or quality resource, and then regularly sharing them on my blog. I’m also going to try to focus on sharing things relating to marginalized groups in Europe, as they relate to my own family’s history or (complicated) identity (Eastern Europe and the Balkans). I don’t get to talk about...
Continue reading...On GameJolt’s new policy: why stigmatizing “sex” in games is harmful to the medium and never works…
Yesterday GameJolt emailed a lot of people saying that their game was removed because the site’s new policy bans any game that “depicts, solicits, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies sexual acts, sexual solicitation, and sexual violence“. I got an email too for F2OGGY (Only one survives!). This seemed like an obvious error to me because this game has 0 depiction of anything sexual. The game Curtain also received this notice… Source: https://twitter.com/ldreamfeel/status/1478065400286007304 Curtain is a brilliant and critically acclaimed work of art that interrogates abuse. It’s far from a porn game. “CURTAIN is an interactive first-person narrative about Kaci & Ally,...
Continue reading...Part 2: In support of Wren (the abuse she continues to endure, Fight Knight, and publicly ridiculing her trauma)
This is a continuation of my original post “In support of Wren (the abuse she endured while working on Fight Knight)“. More things have happened since I originally voiced support for Wren and I think it’s really important to discuss how this is all unfolding, in order to hold those responsible for this abuse accountable. I will do my best to be as concise as possible. I am still shook up. TW: severe content warning for all this. Hello, I'm the "writer" of the Dangen Warning and the former writer of Fight Knight. I feel it's important for me to...
Continue reading...Speaking candidly about things lately (there is no justice and other short horror stories)…
TW: For all the things. I’m writing this because it’s my birthday tomorrow and I REALLY need someone to talk to. My blog exists for that. Many moths ago… because of the ongoing Global Pandemic this feels like an eternity ago, but that’s another tangent… Someone reached out to me for help about coming forward with their story (abuse, the type of story we all know is too normal in the game space by now). This happens a lot and I try my absolute best to be as helpful as possible. I think it’s important to do that because I...
Continue reading...In support of Wren (the abuse she endured while working on Fight Knight)
I am writing this post in support of Wren. Hello, I'm the "writer" of the Dangen Warning and the former writer of Fight Knight. I feel it's important for me to come forward about why I left the Fight Knight project. https://t.co/ccrZgh1IeA — Wren (@rivalerose) October 1, 2021 Wren is a wonderful human who endured physical abuse, psychological abuse, gaslighting, manipulation, and pretty much that entire spectrum that we’re way too used to hearing about when survivors share their stories. She endured this while working on the game Fight Knight, putting out what I’m sure was amazing work that we...
Continue reading...Celebrating all the wonderful zines from the Electric Zine Jam 2.0
During the month of September I ran another Electric Zine Jam (the two point oh edition!) in which people made a bunch of beautiful zines. This jam was to celebrate the new Electric Zine Maker update which introduced a number of templates, and the brand new UI update. I’m also over the moon that PAGE online wrote about it! “Zines und OpenSource passen wunderbar zueinander, findet Nathalie Lawhead und entwickelt seit 2018 den Electric Zine Maker. Nun ist ein großes Update für das Printshop-Tool erschienen.” – by Lena Simonis on PAGE, Zine Design: Micro-Heft gestalten mit dem Electric Zine Maker...
Continue reading...Generative art & tools (on the intersection of toys, tools, and games…)
I hoarded a lot of links to tools again, and am putting aside some time to share them here. Here’s another tool post! I just opened a blog category called “tools” in which you can read all my writing about open source, freeware, or small tools from small devs. At this point I feel like I’ve already said everything I can possibly say about the wonderful world of tools, coming out of this space… It’s an inspiring area that never fails to surprise! One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is the intersection between tools and games. When you...
Continue reading...Tiny tools and the ephemeral nature of digital art…
It has been a hot minute since I wrote about tools. I’ve got a ton of emails to answer, too much to do, and a lot of work on the Electric Zine Maker that needs doing but… I’ll just make a moment to finally talk about tools and digital art again! These links aren’t going to share themselves. Before I begin, here is some recommended reading: Parasocial Nintendo Complex: 10 Years of Game Dev by Melos Han-Tani My Procreate Curl Brushes Are HERE!! I made over 50+ different coil, curl, kinky, and wavy texture brushes! I also made more outline...
Continue reading...The Machine That Eats People
I just finished having a really long conversation with another friend that works in games and it inspired me to write this post. It’s given me a lot to think about. I’m still processing my experiences… As I write this, the game space is under another metoo “moment”. More of these horrible, but all too normal stories, this time coming out of Blizzard. I won’t be linking to any of these because I don’t have the stomach for it. We’ve had these “moments” come and go now for the last few years. Each time reminding this space of the abuse...
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