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joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

740 followers 300 following 500 posts

game designer | professor | boshi's place

my games live their humble little lives out here: https://jamschutz.itch.io/

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joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

interesting takeaway about the distinctions between class and education in the US

People making less than $50,000 a year are way more likely to identify as democratic socialists than people who make more than that are. There is no such preference among progressives.

Similarly, educated people are signficantly more likely to identify as democratic socialists than uneducated people are; and again, there is no lean here among progressives.

Those last two bullet points are truly remarkable, and not just because the leans are so pronounced. In recent years, it has become an article of faith among “populist” punditry that income and education can be used interchangeably in analyses of political preference. From this perspective, the working class is a group of Americans that is presumably poor and uneducated; the PMCs and bourgeoisie, meanwhile, are the rich and educated.

But these numbers completely break that framework. What they tell us is that the democratic socialists tend to skew poor and educated while progressives tend to skew well-off and uneducated.

September 27, 2025 at 6:22 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

i really liked this essay on the "Kaiserpanorama" i read yesterday

August 20, 2025 at 2:40 AM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

reading Likeness and Presence by Hans Belting (great), and love this anti-iconoclast propaganda from 847 depicting two pro-image guys standing on top of defeated iconoclasts. the text reads "God shall cast you down for ever. You speak not truth but untruth."

illuminated manuscript of the book of psalms. on the left hand side are two separate pictures of iconoclasts being stood atop by an anti-iconoclast. the bottom iconoclast is depicted as a monster. the text is greek i think?

August 14, 2025 at 2:02 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

@terrycavanaghgames.com hello! sorry for the random ping but it appears that the mac version of the VVVVVV Make and Play edition is 404ing -- any chance that's a mistake? (windows & linux links still work!)

thelettervsixtim.es/makeandplay/

March 31, 2025 at 12:17 AM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

this summer i'll be running a class on games & adaptation @boshis.place! we'll be watching movies, playing their adaptation games, and exploring the theoretical underpinnings & modalities of adaptation through readings from Baudrillard, Jameson, Hutcheon, and more.

joeyschutz.com/games-and-ad...

poster for a GAMES & ADAPTATIONS CLASS. picture is of jean baudrillard photoshopped to hold a copy of spider-man 2 for the ps2.

the text reads: "Games & Adaptations Class. Hybrid (in-person & online). June 8 - July 27 2025. Study the aesthetics of intertextuality through the lens of licensed games. What would Baudrillard think of Spider-Man 2?" At the bottom is a QR code that links to the url at the bottom of this post

March 15, 2025 at 1:24 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

wrapped up in this is my frustration with a kind of poptimism i see around games a lot, when i would rather we be clear eyed about what we've let into our homes.

i like games! i teach games, i make them, i co-run a space for them. but to ignore their problems strikes me as dangerous

excerpt from the blog, which reads: In Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop, she talks with joy and optimism about how games have become a dominant part of our culture. She cites a poll by the Entertainment Software Association which reveals that 61% of us are playing games for at least an hour every week. 68% percent play to “pass the time or relax,” and 30% play for “immersion / escape.” But it’s hard for me to share in Fullerton’s excitement. It's hard for me not to feel disheartened by modern video games. We aren’t playing curiously, seeking out meaningful works – we are seeking out time killers, anesthesia, endless content. We are playing the same handful of games over and over, we are screaming at the computer, we are getting harassed by teenagers and nazis. We are having every step of our lives “gamified.” We are seeing sports betting legalized; child labor farms monetized and marketed as get-rich-quick schemes in Roblox; and military propaganda pipelines in video games for children (not to mention the games made for actual soldiers, for actual warfare). So, it’s true: 61% of us are playing games for at least an hour every week. And how should we measure the cost?

Instead, I think about the game of Nertz, beneath the compulsion loops. I can’t help myself. I wonder how much richer the video game landscape might be if we could shed these tools of addiction altogether. If we could play the games locked up inside them – if we could stop when we’re ready, and rise back into the world feeling whole.

February 24, 2025 at 1:04 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

i wrote about video games and addiction
blog.joeyschutz.com/to-kill-a-dr...

screenshot from the blog, which reads: All of this is deeply entangled with Schüll’s illuminations on gambling addiction: the player’s “aim is not to win, but to continue.” In the video game world, there is an obsession with playtime. No one will buy your game if it isn’t 30 hours, 50 hours, 100 hours. I used to think this was driven by a crude form of evaluation – more time per dollar equals a better bargain. But this has never made much sense, as no such pressures exist in film, literature, music, etc. It wasn’t until reading Schüll that it clicked for me – it has nothing to do with temporal-money exchange rates, but addiction. We are playing to keep playing – it almost doesn’t matter what you put there, just so long as we can continue.

February 24, 2025 at 1:04 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

reading Addiction by Design by Natasha Schull and it is seriously horrifying. we talk a lot of the need for CS majors to take ethics classes, but i have a growing conviction that we need this for video game designers as well -- this should be required reading for every designer everywhere

February 14, 2025 at 4:00 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

he also has what appears to be a knock off version of the Pickwick Papers (choosing not to look further into the veracity of this edition)

January 19, 2025 at 9:55 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

at the morgan library and inspecting jp's collection

January 19, 2025 at 9:54 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

went and wrote about gameplay loops :)

blog.joeyschutz.com/the-case-aga...

screenshot of a paragraph from the blog, which reads: The whole premise of the core loop game is to figure out a thing you can do for hours and hours. Refine that mechanic until it’s something broad enough and bendable enough, without specificity, to be deployed in a thousand different contexts. And then you go and make a lot of stuff with it. It’s a harsh delineation between the form (the mechanics) and the content (what you do). And usually it leaves me feeling unmoved. Usually it leaves me feeling like neither has much of a purpose. The content is there to justify the mechanics, and the mechanics are there to give you something to do with the content...and we never make anything with a real purpose. What is any of this for?

December 28, 2024 at 1:32 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

blogging about gameplay loops....

picture of a google docs word count, showing 6 pages, 3365 words, 18910 characters, and 15565 characters excluding spaces

December 28, 2024 at 5:10 AM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

proof of the mysterious blank pages...

December 15, 2024 at 4:19 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

it is also printed on extremely thick paper and so even though it is only 300 pages it is humongous lol. here is a picture showing Natural History of Selborne on the left (300 pages) which is somehow thicker than Books of Jacob (961 pages)??

December 15, 2024 at 4:19 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

getting some last minute election ads in the mail

picture of a mountain lion leaping at a child with the caption "Don't let this he the last thing your child sees. VOTE NO ON PROP 127"

November 5, 2024 at 11:24 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

doing some research

picture of a dog's nose with the label "A typical dog's nose"

November 3, 2024 at 1:43 AM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

also Dumas is already cooking

October 23, 2024 at 1:53 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

reading twenty years after (three musketeers sequel) and i knew i was in good hands when i checked the translator's author photo

October 23, 2024 at 1:51 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North

October 17, 2024 at 9:33 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

just fyi i think the mobile view is too narrow! (looks good on desktop though) excited to read the blog :)

September 6, 2024 at 7:53 PM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

getting serious this year with the family fantasy football league and made a custom icon for my team "Bloomsday Doomsday"

picture of james joyce engulfed in flames

September 4, 2024 at 12:47 AM

joey schutz

@joeyschutz.bsky.social

some middlemarch excerpts. i don't think i've ever read anything even close to its characterization and psychology. best victorian novel??? move over jane eyre????