Dr. PB Berge 💖
🔥 ludoarsonist
🕹️ media scholar
🎮 game breaker
𝐇𝐎𝐖'𝐒 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐊 is here!!! 🎲 gravesnail.itch.io/next-week
Assistant Professor of Experimental Game Design @UAlberta. 🔍 trans play 🏳️⚧️ TTRPGs 🎲 extremism 💀 & the ✨unplayable✨
🌐 https://persephone.blue
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖Indeed. The purchaseable *product* we call the TTRPG begins in the 1970s with Western Gunfight, Chainmail, and D&D. Yet role-playing "parlor games," simulations, and similar are centuries old and draw from a well that resembles all the positive stuff about D&D. Parlor games were feminized...
- HOW’S NEXT WEEK is a solo journaling anti-game you play when your #TTRPG sessions get cancelled. 🕹️ gravesnail.itch.io/next-week
- HNW is part of the 🏳️⚧️🕹️ Trans Games Zine 🏳️⚧️🕹️ project—a community-based platform built by the lovelies at @softchaos.games. The TGZ features interactive essays, games, and not-games from many of my favorite people. Do check out all the amazing projects in the collection thus far! transgameszine.org
- Search your group chat for clues. Decode your friends' excuses. Deduce the nature of the transdimensional bodysnatchers keeping you from rolling your dice. 🎲 Save game night. 🪐 Save humankind. 🫡 Join the ANXS.
- HOW’S NEXT WEEK is a solo journaling anti-game you play when your #TTRPG sessions get cancelled. 🕹️ gravesnail.itch.io/next-week
- Hi friends! This weekend, I'm planning to share deets about a #ttrpg project I've been working on for over a year now <3 In advance, I truly apologize for what's about to happen, muahahaha ✨ ❌🎲👁️
- 📄 Pub alert! ✨ My piece with @madzbrutal.bsky.social is out in the Bulletin of Applied Trans Studies @transstudies.bsky.social 🦇 We analyze how gender critical forum users on Ovarit and Mumsnet were radicalized through anti-trans media literacy and storytelling practices. doi.org/10.57814/wjd...
- We document how GC forum members simultaneously deployed the rhetoric of the far right and co-opted the language of queer communities (i.e. "coming out" as gender critical) to frame their anti-trans behaviors as part of a vulnerable personal identity. Big CW for anti-trans language!!
- Our piece is partof a fantastic special issue on the dynamics of anti-trans content and disinformation, edited by Quinnehtukqut McLamore and @katfuller.bsky.social. The whole issue is open access and very much worth your time! 🏳️⚧️💖 bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/article/4/1-...
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖This week, Percy and Nick discuss the politics of games and the different ways that TTRPGs have engaged with leftist and antifascist movements with a special guest: scholar of analog games @persephone.blue! listen now on your podcatcher of choice 😎 linktr.ee/dndramanerds
- Y'all, I'm so trash at rhythm games but I'm over the moon this is out in the world. Congrats @gensuta.itch.io!! 🔥🛼🎉
- Skate & Date - lesbian roller derby, rhythm game is out now! Come get your yuri on wheels!! f.mtr.cool/scjlbborbl f.mtr.cool/ugehecznam (I've linked steam codes to itch.io so you can easily get it for both and have Valve take less money from me <3)
- 🦋 Hey! Listen! @madzbrutal.bsky.social and my article on Ocarina of Time, trans movement, tool-assisted speedruns, and code injections is out today at @jcmsjournal.bsky.social! Link finally gets the Triforce and we can finally resolve the age-old question of "is speedrunning queer???" 📄🔗⬇️
- 🎉 I am so hype that this is actually, finally, really out in the world 🎉 quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/i...
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖Showing Skate & Date and on an anti-panel about trans games with other folks at 4:30pm EST @qgcon.bsky.social So excited to be here!!!
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖Our 2025 series is out now! The CHEESE is here with three games by talented developers. The cheesy, the cheesying, the cheese-able all playable for free here: itch.io/b/3301/brief... You wanted shorter artsier games? You'd better pick the bundle up!
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖AMAZING presentation by @persephone.blue and @percivalhornak.bsky.social, I was spellbound right to the end! Go read their full paper, it is so good: analoggamestudies.org/2025/07/lich...
- So hyped to be talking about liches, trans play, lyric games, and parasitic eels with the fantabulous @percivalhornak.bsky.social in ~10 minutes at Generation Analog! @analoggamestudies.bsky.social 🌔🎲💀✨
- So hyped to be talking about liches, trans play, lyric games, and parasitic eels with the fantabulous @percivalhornak.bsky.social in ~10 minutes at Generation Analog! @analoggamestudies.bsky.social 🌔🎲💀✨
- ‼️I have a new article out this week! 🎉 From anti-game jams to fantasy console communities, I explored how ✨ speculative game design ✨ practices are a vital response to growing precarity in tech industries. Also, it's open access! Also, it won best paper at #FDG25! 🏆
- This is part of a bigger book project I'm developing on 🔥 the unplayable 🔥. I'm excited to share with y'all some particularly provocative, brain-melty, and "sacrilicious" anti-games. 📄 dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
- And if you would rather listen to me gush about $500 word documents, the presentation recording is up on YT! 🫡 youtu.be/vfh5oeSI0rE
- An update! 🌌💜✨🔥
- I'm crushed to not be at SCMS in meatspace this year, but grateful to @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social for coordinating a panel on games & political economy to kick off the conference! Should be a great conversation, and I hope the early birds enjoy my little video on fantasy consoles & anti-games 🎮🔥✨
- Happening this morning at #SCMS2025 #GameStudies Political Economy of Games Now
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖
In our continuing Zine Month coverage, @rowanzeoli.bsky.social curated a list of crowdfunding projects by trans game designers - Started some new ink!!! Featuring my beloved Mxtress 💜✨Chaos✨💜, whose boons I'm taking into this high-heat run of 2025. (💉 Pokery & portrait of the primordial progenitor by the unrivaled Julia McKay!)
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖CFP: #QueerAnalogGameStudies Special Issue! Analog games are here…but are they queer? What’s queer about analog games? What does it mean to queer tabletop, board games, or LARP? How might analog games be queered? **Essays due April 7, 2025** analoggamestudies.org/cfp/cfp-quee...
- So grateful to the one and only @michaeliantorno.com who wow'd @kenzitronic.bsky.social and my students with tales of hacked consoles, sun-powered handhelds, and emerging interventions in game labor! Up now as part of our Playful Horizons Speaker Series!! ✨🔥🕹️
- Now online: my interview for the Playful Horizons featured speaker series at the University of Alberta! 💾Game hacking + preservation! ✊Industry labour! 🎮Creative modding in the university! Thanks to @persephone.blue and @kenzitronic.bsky.social for having me in to talk about my research.✨
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖🌈Thrilling news! QGCon 2025 will take place on September 26-28 in Montreal! If you are a gamemaker, researcher, or activist at the intersection of queerness and games, we want you there!✨ 🦄We value accessibility! QGCon 2025 is a COVID-cautious event. www.qgcon.org/blog/announc...
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖Hey, I started a Trans Studies starter pack, but it needs more names. I can add them, I think. Here it is, so far: go.bsky.app/UAtsVTHat://did:plc:xdr5afgwondir6s5xjp45nkc/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3law3ogxwss2s
- Yayyy the first talk in the ~Playful Horizons 🕹️🎲🌌~ speaker series is out in the world! (Hosted by @kenzitronic.bsky.social + me!) Starring the unrivaled & inimitable @thechristinet.bsky.social!! ✨📽️✨ Listen to Christine expound on livestreaming, game culture, AI, glitch, and pet interruptions! 🐕
- Now Live™️ (and asynchronous)! My interview with UAlbertaArts’s Playful Horizons featured speaker series about the past, future & artificial present of ✨🔮 livestreaming✨ 🔮 youtu.be/gB7lhBAzE6M?...
- Welcome new followers! 👋 To occupy you while you're here, have some glamor shots of a bioactive, Legend of Zelda themed vivarium I built for my geckos out of an IKEA cabinet over the summer!! 🦎✨🪴
- This was my post-dissertation, post-academic-job-market, post-international-move hyper stress & depression project. 💀 But now it's a beautiful wilderness for my sassy lizards, who get to thanklessly murder many plants and Bokoblins. 😅 youtu.be/68_PiAlh_6s?...
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖Do you want shorter artsy games by well paid developers? Briefs, a microfund I curate, has just dropped four games united by one theme DEATH! You can play them all. All donations go directly to developers. You can tell everyone too. YOU MUST. #gamedev #indiegame #art itch.io/b/2656/brief...
- Truly the #TransStudies2024 dream team: immensely grateful to my rockstar friends @hibby.bsky.social, @wells.bsky.social, @wendiyu.bsky.social, and @madzbrutal.bsky.social for bringing this fiery panel on "B{Ending} Trans Media Studies" to (un)life. 🔥❤️🔥💖
- Reposted by Dr. PB Berge 💖TTRPGs for Palestine via itch charity bundle has officially LAUNCHED! There are 640+ TTRPGs for you to discover for a $10+ donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians! Donate here: itch.io/b/2295/ttrpg...
- Congratulations to my student Dr. @iceberge.bsky.social on a successful @ucftandt.bsky.social defense of "Unplayable Games: A Ludoarsonist's Manifesto on Trans Play and Possibility in Digital and Analog Gaming" today! 🎉🎉🎉
