Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tanya X. Short

@tanyaxshort.bsky.social

7K followers 650 following 1K posts

Captain of Kitfox Games (Streets of Fortuna, Boyfriend Dungeon, Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud). Co-director of Pixelles & Polaris. She/her. Be full of love. Put in the effort.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · Jun 6

I'mma #pitchyagame watch out @pitchyagame.bsky.social ~

Streets of Fortuna is a free-roaming sandbox life simulation. Survive however you can in a late antiquity city -- be a thief, blacksmith, priest, smuggler, whatever! From the publisher of Dwarf Fortress: store.steampowered.com/app/2946850/...

Streets of Fortuna on Steam

Use your wits to survive the generated chaos that is living in the Streets of Fortuna. A free-roaming sandbox game about growing from street rat to a tradesman, a priest, a smuggler, an alchemist, a s...

store.steampowered.com

5 30 130

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 1d

hello Fia! we're going to reveal some gameplay "soon" for Streets of Fortuna, with verbs on top of more verbs, being a simulated-generated sandbox lifesim ("megasim"?)... mind if I reach out to chat about it? store.steampowered.com/app/2946850/...

Streets of Fortuna on Steam

store.steampowered.com

2 1

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Aura/Moom @moomanibe.bsky.social · 2d

I feel like the thing I always find myself thinking when ppl are talking about "oh the gaming audience is awful" is that, like... i'm not sure i believe that so much as I believe that any unmoderated space will inevitably surface the most toxic people (who drive away more-reasonable ones)

17 82 490

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 1d

I guess the more perfect metaphor of medical guidelines would be "only allow 10 grams of fruit-flavored substance per day" but oh well you get the idea

1 12

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 1d

doctors: "only allow kids FIVE starburst per day"
me: "um I think one is more than enough, but also a whole apple and orange"
other parents: "wow that's a lot. anyway my kid LOVES the yellow ones so we give him six but if we give him 10 he acts violent :("
doctors: "this is all the same yes"

2 17

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 1d

media literacy is a weirdly helpful skill in our current society's parenting toolkit, bc we've allowed so much manic/addictive content to target kids and most experts only talk about 'screen time'. it's like saying 'fruit bad' bc some kids ate a bunch of Starburst.

2 9 61

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 2d

we've mostly shifted over to navigation, simulation

1 2

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 2d

There's a few! store.steampowered.com/search/?deve...

Steam Search

store.steampowered.com

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Jörg Friedrich 🕹️ @freejsf.paintbucket.de · 2d

ratline is looking great - I also have a recommendation uhum
bsky.app/profile/dark...

The Darkest Files 🕵️‍♀️ @darkestfiles.paintbucket.de · 11d

Hey there,
The Darkest Files is an escapist, power fantasy in which you can bring fascists to court and send them to jail.
It tells a tale from the rule of law age, which your grandparents might still remember.
It is also 20% off right now on Steam — so get yourself a copy now!

The Darkest Files 🕵️‍♀️ @darkestfiles.paintbucket.de · Mar 25

The Darkest Files is OUT NOW on Steam! 🔎
After 4 years of development, our historical investigation game about Fritz Bauer's quest for justice in 1950s Germany is finally available.
Uncover the truth. Confront the past. Serve justice.
Buy and play today:

store.steampowered.com/app/2058730/...

1 1

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 2d

it's not post-Confederate exactly but if you wanna hunt Nazis, for example, may I recommend The Ratline? store.steampowered.com/app/3756940/...

The Ratline on Steam

A murdered priest. A secret list. Hunt Nazi fugitives across the globe in this gritty 1971 detective thriller. Analyze evidence, follow leads, and make sharp deductions before the trail goes cold. Fro...

store.steampowered.com

3 9 24

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 3d

you're very kind

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 3d

I apologize to The World for being cringe and/or misunderstanding Byung Chul-Han. I really should stop randomly rambling when nervous about things I don't really know much about, I'm sorry, it's a terrible habit I've quit many times, like others with smoking.

1 7

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 3d

I think this is bang on, and gets at a sense of what I see in play with stuff from Dwarf Fortress and Qud to Rimworld to Crusader Kings and the Sims: a desire to understand the world, whether a familiar or an alien one, through play

lincoln carpenter @lincolnhello.bsky.social · 3d

"'The more we try to understand what's going on in the world around us—the more we don't just withdraw into a hermitude of my family and I as a nuclear unit, the more we try to understand our society—I think the more these kinds of games speak to us,' Short said."

Founder of Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud publisher Kitfox Games says its procgen sims for sickos are 'giving storytelling tools back to the people when games and passive media took them away'

Streets of Fortuna, Kitfox's own in-development "megasim," is chasing that same systems-driven storytelling.

pcgamer.com

7 82 370

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

yesss thank you! Vinny lives in my head rent-free, unless you count the rent of needing to occasionally re-stage this performance

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

yes! I'm doing it on behalf of @polarisgamedesign.com so keep an eye out! cheers!

1 1

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

someone brilliant once made a tiktok that was of United Federation of Planets interviewing Earth & a bit stuck with me.

Interviewer: so it shows you have enough food for everyone
Earth: yea
I: and yet some people are starving and why? oh? you're gonna go with.. "logistics"? (side-eye at clipboard)

1 2 33

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

Fair! It DOES end up being a bit more mainstream due to aggregation (a few Gamers will be surprised by some titles probably, but not the top 10). Tho we also intend to publish (consent-given) lists in a trickle over the years between surveys, if that matters! Via @polarisgamedesign.com :)

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

yeah nah bro let's just make it unlivable here instead, let's put all of our top minds behind how to waste MORE ENERGY for LESS FOOD AND WATER and it'll be super cyberpunk when we all take opioids and go online to shitpost lol

1 7

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

through asking designers for their top influential games, I have discovered /another/ reason design leadership is very herding-cats.

most lists had some game I'd never HEARD OF. either some essential piece of their design practice is esoteric OR they have deep defiance disorder, or both. hmm.

6 2 29

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 5d

one of the best ways to get riled up about environmentalism is to read about terraforming. the logistics, the challenges, the constraints. shit is HARD. nope me outta that. and here we already got a humdinger of a starting situation and we're just... giving up??? for billionaires?? the f...?

4 12 130

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Emilia (halloween name) @lazerwalker.com · 6d

So if you visualize LLMs as not "artificial consciousness" but "an artificial connection to the collective unconscious":

1. They become philosophically way more interesting
2. It's way more forgivable they suck at math
3. It becomes extremely clear they are infinitely less useful to capitalism

Emilia (halloween name) @lazerwalker.com · 7d

A thing I am starting to embody in my extremely weird healing journey, and that a lot of AI people don’t seem to get, is that consciousness is *by far* the least interesting or impressive part of human intelligence

6 14 99

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 8d

exactly the problem! his argument is 'well, if 99% of what you're ingesting is irrelevant, it's probably safe to reduce consumption by 50% at least'

on the other hand, he listens to the Judge John Hodgman podcast when he has trouble sleeping, so

2 3

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 8d

Designers talk a lot abt the stories they want to tell through games. But what about the PLAYER's story? How can we empower players to tell THEIR unique play story to each other?

Let's amp up the "tellability"! Here's 7 design tools for player stories: polarisgamedesign.com/2022/a-toolk... (thread)

1 2 4

Reposted by Tanya X. Short

Edwige Lelievre @edwigelel.bsky.social · 12d

How I try to become a better game designer:
1/ I try to get a lot of feedback from players and improve based on it
2/ I play and analyse games in my genre
3/ I try to listen more to external ideas :) I discuss game design with my team and other indie devs, especially
4/ I read research papers!

Polaris Game Design @polarisgamedesign.com · 12d

Welcome, new followers! We're a group of game designers trying to push our craft forward through deep thought, collaboration, and open minds. We think, we chat, we write, we experiment.

How do YOU explore and improve as a game designer, besides making games? (Reposts welcome)

2 5 22

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 9d

my partner suggested recently that perhaps I (like most people right now) am ingesting too much irrelevant information, despite my attempts to be disciplined about intake.

worse, I think he may have a point. moderation is very difficult in the firehose.

4 48

Tanya X. Short @tanyaxshort.bsky.social · 10d

(for context, if you ever wondered by the guild house decorations in Age of Conan or that playhouse in The Secret World was so janky, it's because I scripted em in our visual language and had virtually no programming assistance and they had no business being there, you're welcome)

2 21