liam liwanag burke
@thoughtfulemoji.bsky.social
180 followers 330 following 150 posts
Author of Dog Eat Dog. Filipino-American. Doctoral student at UH Mānoa. Your favorite game designer’s favorite game designer. He/him
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Reposted by liam liwanag burke
More fun on reddit.

My fellow game designers do not like this answer.

I wonder why.
I can’t stop interpreting this as House MD and I think it has a surprising amount of explanatory power
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
so the idea is the inversion of the magic circle. to talk about this i have to define what the magic circle is so please be kind to me and my cursory definition. when you play a game, you enter a space where certain rules apply and others are suspended. it is not a wall, it is a soft demarcation.
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
I think this is a pretty lukewarm take but it’s instructive:

ME2 has the better narrative design; ME1 has the better writing.
ME2 is such a quantum leap forward in terms of graphics and gameplay that it really disguises how much worse it is at worldbuilding and narrative coherence
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
We are looking for panels for Metatopia Online 2025 which will be taking place on December 6 and possibly December 7, 2025. If you can't attend Metatopia in person this year for any reason, please join us at this online event and spread the word! forms.gle/aTqCs7bBJpfC...
METATOPIA ONLINE 2025 Panel Proposal Form
METATOPIA is Double Exposure, Inc.'s Game Design Festival, an event for people who are passionate about the design, publishing, selling, or playing games of all types. This year, the Double Exposure...
forms.gle
explain your username:

🤔
explain your username:

all capoeiristas formally receive an insulting nickname based on their idiosyncrasies. my wrestling background led to several awkward in-game grappling situations, so mine is "lula" ("squid"). b/c that username's often taken online i further specified it to my favorite squid.
explain your username:

short version: it’s my author pen name

long version: I was going by the initials “CM” on a message board for writers, because it stood for “Chicken Mafia.” People knew me as CM and then suddenly I needed a real name for human interaction purposes.
a guy who just got a user story in his queue about some kind of “discourse improvement project” and is just trying to do a good job on it
taking you at your word that you want my strategy, in the situation you describe I would probably say I don’t understand AT ALL, that I have no reading of what they said and need to start the conversation over (“pretend to be dumb” is a social strategy I use a lot in different situations)
Yes, my experience is that “I must have misunderstood you” is like near universally taken as persiflage
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
Do you find yourself at the intersection of performance, games, and design? Do you want to work with world class artists in research, pedagogy, and games? Then maybe apply to work with me at UCSC! We're hiring a Assistant Professor of Interactive Art, Performance & Games

recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF01998
Assistant Professor of Interactive Art, Performance & Games (Initial Review Date 11/14/25)
University of California, Santa Cruz is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ucsc.edu
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
I promise your torture will end once you realize that the long-play "numbers go up" game which reliably tickles your dopamine receptors and the long-play "unfair probability" game that lifts and crashes your anguished frustration are in fact different faces of the same game
yes! miss marple meets mrs dalloway
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
Dog Eat Dog is my pick for the best designed TRPG, full stop.
RPG nerds, this is worth keeping an eye on. The physical reprint of Dog Eat Dog in particular. Not been in print for ages, and it's a well designed and confronting framework for role-playing the shitty ass power balance of colonialism.

www.backerkit.com/c/projects/c...
Art & System: Games for Expanded Play
A new indie game series from Central Michigan University Press launching with a lineup of three games: Princess with a Cursed Sword, Dog Eat Dog, and the Mountain Witch
www.backerkit.com
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
RPG nerds, this is worth keeping an eye on. The physical reprint of Dog Eat Dog in particular. Not been in print for ages, and it's a well designed and confronting framework for role-playing the shitty ass power balance of colonialism.

www.backerkit.com/c/projects/c...
Art & System: Games for Expanded Play
A new indie game series from Central Michigan University Press launching with a lineup of three games: Princess with a Cursed Sword, Dog Eat Dog, and the Mountain Witch
www.backerkit.com
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
This went beneath my radar, but my goodness, it's a crowdfunder for a reprint of some of the most respected and seminal indie games. Please repost, please back it.
We have some AMAZING news! In less than 48 hours, YOU helped us meet our crowdfunding goal! Check in at our BackerKit page for a forthcoming announcement about stretch goals! https://bit.ly/4mIpcbG

Most of all, THANK YOU so much for your support!
"In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the 'saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment'. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage."
-max weber, 1904
and before someone invariably comes over all indignant, i am absolutely not saying that i think it's bad when people do make money off posting stuff on the internet - but i think that Everything I Do Online Is Money On the Table Brain has been highly corrosive
Reposted by liam liwanag burke
i do not think that nonhuman things have feelings to be hurt but i do think the intent to hurt feelings is bad for a person notwithstanding whether the object of their sadism is real
You seem to be under the impression the fancy search engine has feelings that can be hurt, which it doesn’t because it’s just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s.
one must imagine sisyphus being like "so then I'm almost at the top of the hill and the rock is like, really big at this point, and then *takes a big drink* and then you know what happens next? oh my god you won't believe this"
I like the part where type 3 fun is where something is not fun
I just learned about this and yes
I am blown away by the support for our crowdfunding campaign. Thank you so much!

I don't know what the stretch goals will be either so I am reloading the page just as much as any of you. excited to see what's coming.

I hope you all love these games.
We have some AMAZING news! In less than 48 hours, YOU helped us meet our crowdfunding goal! Check in at our BackerKit page for a forthcoming announcement about stretch goals! https://bit.ly/4mIpcbG

Most of all, THANK YOU so much for your support!
I was briefly a volunteer discord moderator for an official game discord. I crashed out (not dramatically, but I quit the game for a long time). my retrospective conclusion was that my biggest mistake by an enormous amount was not making a separate pseudonymous moderator account
If it is not going to be that (which is fair enough), it needs new structures. Like systemically, but, also it literally needs new buildings on land it can control. Right now you have to kind of flip a coin on whether ICE will show up at some point to drag away all the diplomats.
I mean I think your second sentence is my takeaway. The UN is dependent for its functioning on the intentional will of a lot of leaders, mostly American ones. This reflects its purpose at inception, to organize and administer the post-WWII world order.
a lot of people get paid a lot less to eat bees