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Elisa Mekler

Elisa Mekler

@elisamekler.bsky.social

900 followers 690 following 100 posts

sullen assoc prof @itu.dk
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Games, Theory;
ERC StG Theorycraft (2022 - 2027);
I like weird games and JRPGs (header image: Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor)

Psychology 36%

Computer science 21%

more

Posts Replies Media Videos

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Elisa Mekler @elisamekler.bsky.social · Oct 10

Don't usually care for my papers' download numbers and don't fully trust the ACM metrics. But hey, I'm v proud of this one and it would've annoyed April to see me brag about it.

1000 downloads on ACM DL. let's gooo!

(pls also actually read the paper. it's pretty good)
doi.org/10.1145/3673...

The paper "Self-Determination Theory and HCI Games Research: Unfulfilled Promises and Unquestioned Paradigms" was downloaded 1000 times.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

NEON AURELIUS @neonaurelius.bsky.social · 5h

Thanks for hosting @richardstampdev.bsky.social! We are a 2-person team in Denmark here for #TurnBasedThursday with our:

🦆 BIRD
🦜 BIRD
⚔️ REVOLUTION!

It's called SPARROW WARFARE & it can be wishlisted on Steam... right now!
store.steampowered.com/app/3473440/...

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

itch.io @itch.io · 20h

🦃🎮 Creator Day returns this Friday with the start of our Black Friday 2025 Sitewide Sale. For 24 hours we'll waive our free on all transactions. Over 15,000 projects to be on sale from this Friday through December 3rd. More details here itch.io/blog/1124058/creator...

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Gekigemu @gekigemu.bsky.social · 1d

Glory Hunters: a Zelda-like action-adventure RPG using Game Boy style graphics with a unique and original twist. You progress through the game by obtaining achievements store.steampowered.com/app/2297590/...

Elisa Mekler @elisamekler.bsky.social · 2d

@danieljakob.net You might appreciate this too

Transparency @transparency.bsky.social · 2d

Some people (cowards) would say that this is a flaw, but they're all wrong.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Transparency @transparency.bsky.social · 2d

Some people (cowards) would say that this is a flaw, but they're all wrong.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

The A.V. Club Games @theavclubgames.bsky.social · 3d

The HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest might modernize these ancient RPGs, but could anything recreate the experience of playing them on the NES? www.avclub.com/dragon-quest...

A quest for relevance: Dragon Quest’s remakes search for the impact it had in the ‘80s

The HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest might modernize these ancient RPGs, but could anything recreate the experience of playing Dragon Warrior on the NES?

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Dan Bennett @comic-sans-soleil.bsky.social · 3d

3) this may be particularly relevant when we're thinking about digital self control and the attention economy and the intention economy
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Musk is unambiguously describing an escalation of the problems we identify in these last two papers.

Autonomous Regulation of Social Media Use: Implications for Self-control, Well-Being, and UX | Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Dan Bennett @comic-sans-soleil.bsky.social · 3d

2) we have operational theories that address scales of user motivation but we (and sometimes the psychologists) neglect the implications of those different scales
dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Dan Bennett @comic-sans-soleil.bsky.social · 3d

1. even well-meaning tech folk fail to differentiate aspects of agency and autonomy. Particularly we ignore different scales: what aligns with my immediate interests, what aligns with longer term interests, what enables me to engage and adapt flexibly over time

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

How does HCI Understand Human Agency and Autonomy? | Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Kristi Yamaguccimane @wapplehouse.bsky.social · 3d

Everything about this might be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Gnome Anne @annethegnome.bsky.social · 3d

I updated my guide to digital preservation of Actual Play to make it easier to navigate & added a little diagram to explain the relationship between backups, digital preservation & digital archives

allmyfriendsarestories.neocities.org/digitalpres

Also, now it has a glitter cursor.

Digital Preservation of Actual Play

All My Friends Are Stories is a project designed to help people tell collaborative stories through Table Top Roleplaying Games (TTRPG). There are so many ways to play TTRPGs: you can play them for the...

allmyfriendsarestories.neocities.org

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Rebecca McCarthy - Game Writer & Narrative Designer @rebeccamwrites.bsky.social · 5d

The proportion of female to male dialogue in Final Fantasy. #advx25

Chart showing m to f dialogue proportion

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

.aj @clone.bsky.social · 6d

It's my birthday
Play my game

officialelectric.itch.io/ruin

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Douglas @dmgregory.ca · 6d

I've had a vague dream since I got my Glowforge of trying to hack it to build a keepsake game, where it laser-zaps you a physical memento shaped by your play experience.

@florencesn.bsky.social's talk may be the nudge I needed to give that a serious try. 🤓
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kqv...

Florence Smith Nicholls - Roll for Reminiscence: Procedural Keepsake Games

YouTube video by Roguelike Celebration

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Miguel Sicart @miguelsicart.bsky.social · 7d

Friends! On November 26th at 16:00, in Auditorium 3 at the ITU, we are hosting a talk by Dom Ford. The talk is titled Mytholudics. You can read about it here: digitalplay.itu.dk/event/dom-fo...

Mytholudics - A talk by Dom Ford | Center for Digital Play

Mytholudics - A talk by Dom Ford

digitalplay.itu.dk

Elisa Mekler @elisamekler.bsky.social · 9d

Tomorrow at @itu.dk (Auditorium 3)! Don't miss it!

Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 9d

Come to ITU tomorrow at 4pm to see me give a talk on "How to be a Video Game Archaeologist"!

digitalplay.itu.dk/event/floren...

Slide How To be a Video Game Archaeologist

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 9d

Come to ITU tomorrow at 4pm to see me give a talk on "How to be a Video Game Archaeologist"!

digitalplay.itu.dk/event/floren...

Slide How To be a Video Game Archaeologist

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Dominic Tarason @dominictarason.com · 9d

And due out any moment now, my most-wanted of the day: Kingdoms Of The Dump.

A JRPG set in a world of garbage, written by a pair of real-life janitors. Featuring boss art from Francis Coulombe, creator of Look Outside.

Been following development of this one for yeaaaaaaaars. Great to see it done.

Kingdoms of the Dump on Steam

A SNES styled JRPG set in a fantasy world of garbage, created by two janitors. Join Trash Can Knight, Dustin Binsley, as he fights his way through the Five and a Half Kingdoms of the Dump!

store.steampowered.com

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Miguel Sicart @miguelsicart.bsky.social · 17d

Florence is both a game scholar and a game developer, and their work on archaeology and game worlds is a must for anybody interested in world building, or the culture of videogames and how to study it.

(If you’re a game developer or game scholar interested in game worlds, this talk is for you)

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Miguel Sicart @miguelsicart.bsky.social · 17d

Why should you attend this talk? Florence is one of the most interesting game scholars working on how videogames can be studied as culture, and how to expand the vocabulary we have for analyzing and making games.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler, Stefano Gualeni

Miguel Sicart @miguelsicart.bsky.social · 17d

Friends! On November 19th at 16:00, in Auditorium 3 at the ITU, we are hosting a talk by Florence Smith Nicholls. The talk is titled How to be a video game archaeologist. You can read about it here: digitalplay.itu.dk/event/floren...

How To Be A Video Game Archaeologist - A talk by Florence Smith Nicholls | Center for Digital Play

How To Be A Video Game Archaeologist - A talk by Florence Smith Nicholls

digitalplay.itu.dk

Elisa Mekler @elisamekler.bsky.social · 20d

Randomly remembered GamingSymmetry and the featured article series "The JRPG: An Intricate Genre".

Sad to see the site down. But at least the articles are still accessible (sin screenshots)
web.archive.org/web/20210412...

Conclusion | Gaming Symmetry

web.archive.org

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Rascal News @rascal.news · 21d

"It's not a tomb. It's a town. And it will always be."

Czech larp group, Rolling, are based out of a former Nazi concentration camp hospital. Their performances embrace the complications and pain of that history.

A Czech larp group wrestles with Nazi history by roleplaying in its bones

Exploring Disco Elysium and the power of art in a former concentration camp.

www.rascal.news

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

VGDensetsu @vgdensetsu.bsky.social · 24d

An overview of the status of women in the video game industry in Japan and in Japanese society more generally
(+ a focus on the career of Miki Morimoto, the second known woman to have directed a game at Sega)
vgdensetsu.net/riekokodama6
dispo en VF
vgdensetsu.net/riekokodamavf6

Black and white photograph of several people seen from behind in Shimbashi, one of Tokyo's business districts, in 1955. All are walking with their eyes fixed ahead, except for a woman on the right who is looking back.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Felix A. Epp @felix.science · Oct 20

Back from my hiatus on here to announce our first study on Digital Ideologies. With @jhaapj.bsky.social and @matnel.bsky.social we explored connections between the affordances of social media and political ideologies.
There are differences… 🧵

📄 Get the #CSCW paper at dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Affordances and Design Principles of The Political Left and Right | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Like any form of technology, social media services embed values. To examine how societal values may be present in these systems, we focus on exploring political ideology as a value system. We organise...

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Design Room @designroom.bsky.social · Oct 14

For the Shadow of the Colossus story, we interviewed 14 people including project leads Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido, hired Gravity Rush concept artist Takeshi Oga to illustrate the cover, and put together a 10,000-word story with help from @milkman.bsky.social @shmuplations.bsky.social and others.

Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of Team Ico’s masterpiece by looking back with 11 people who worked on it (and three who didn’t).

www.designroom.site

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · Oct 13

👀 We heard Nintendo is bringing the Virtual Boy back to gamers. While we can't get you the new add-on, the story behind this unique platform is completely free!

@jzagal.bsky.social & @benjedwards.com's "Seeing Red" is available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026204506...

Hands holding a copy of "Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy" by Jose P. Zagal and Benj Edwards. The cover depicts a Mario game in play in black and red pixels.

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Dustyダスティ(Blue Bidya Game) @bluebidyagame.bsky.social · Oct 13

PS1 Stories - Abalaburn is up!

Oh man oh wow neato

I'm doing a premier watch now. Why not?

👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDVe...
👆

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

SKATE STORY @skatestory.com · Oct 9

SKATE STORY
Release Date Trailer - "Emptylands"

Skate Story | OUT DECEMBER 8 🛹

YouTube video by DevolverDigital

Reposted by Elisa D. Mekler

Kevin Marín Rubio @kevmarin.bsky.social · Oct 8

I'm giving a talk at @itu.dk on November 6th!

🎮 Play Utopia - Video Games for Critical Imagination in a Barcelona Youth Club 🔮

Thanks to @miguelsicart.bsky.social for organizing during my doctoral stay at the Center of Digital Play!

digitalplay.itu.dk/event/kevin-...

Play Utopia - Video Games for Critical Imagination in a Barcelona Youth Club | Center for Digital Play

Play Utopia - Video Games for Critical Imagination in a Barcelona Youth Club

digitalplay.itu.dk