iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 12h

Managed to get a quote from The Book of the New Sun in there:

“Then she is whirled away in a room whose walls and ceiling and floor are all of mirrors. No doubt it is her own memory of her image in those mirrors I see, but after a step or two she vanishes into the dark and I see her no more” (The Book of the New Sun: Shadow and Claw, Gene Wolfe).

Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 13h

What do you think theory is good for in game development, education and criticism? Take part in our research group's survey here: res58.itu.dk/limesurvey/I...

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Oh sorry I wasn't aware I was playing Dark Souls

Pokemon Pokopia habitat called "Malicious knight's shrine" with a oldest album, some ominous looking armour and two braziers

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I wasn't aware plushies were used as part of the interrogation process but I'll keep it in mind

Screenshot from Pokemon Pokopia showing an "Interrogation desk" habitat with a Arcanine plushie, table with a lamp and two chairs

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

There are many forms that an archaeology of the contemporary world can take!

Book: "Cruising Archaeology" by Eurotrash

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The Bathysphere newsletter is back! ⛵ We return with an essay by me on time loops. Inspired by the novel On the Calculation of Volume, I speculate what it would mean for a video game to reckon with the erosion of identity, rather than mastery of the time loop buttondown.com/Bathysphere/...

The Sixth Knot, Albrecht Dürer, Public Domain Image Archive. Labyrinthine knots beyond comprehension

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

And here's the abstract! I'll post the full paper when it's online!

There is growing research into recording subjective play experiences as a form of archival preservation. In tandem, the HCI and games community is increasingly exploring the importance of reflexive, qualitative methodologies for metaresearch. I argue that we should record researchers’ play experiences as a form of embodied metaresearch that will result in more rigorous and open science, while also providing rich resources for future video game archaeologists, historians and archivists.

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If you're wondering why it looks like that, its because I literally filmed my Steam Deck screen using this tiny camera for kids

Photograph of small bright pink plastic camera on top of a book

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Hope y'all are ready for this rad aesthetic

Photo of my own screen showing a slide that says "Archaeological Game Design"

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

When the work party way outperforms your expectations

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Oh, and if you were wondering about the cover design, it's a lino print I made!

Photograph of link print in red ink of a maze with a human figure at the centre

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I first playtested this at the FDG Games and Archaeological Play workshop and got some great feedback. Here's the map I created of the ASCII game Nothing Beside Remains:

Photograph of map I made while playing the keepsake game Bleed Map

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Sad that the phrase "wear a Sylveon ribbon" is probably enough to get me to buy a Switch 2

Screenshot from Pokémon Pokopia with ditto in human form wearing a "Sylveon ribbon" in trans colours with Clefairy and Sylveon also looking cute

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I was very honoured to be asked to contribute to this! And proud I managed to include a José Esteban Muñoz quote from Cruising Utopia in my entry:

I mentioned Elden Ring, but we have a duty to preserve play beyond blockbuster titles. Thinking about the future as a queer person, I'm often drawn to José Esteban Muñoz' Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity: 'Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.' Video games, especially AAA titles, are so often marketed as vast photorealistic worlds for us to inhabit. That dream, though, can only take us so far. We need a stranger, dare I say it, queerer, dream

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Think I discovered the coolest hair salon in Copenhagen

Salon with vintage toys and lots of games on shelves including Wii and DS games

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Tired: Fromsoftware games are about git gud Wired: Fromsoftware games are about giving your homies flowers and a little kiss on the head

Screenshot from new game Duskbloods "The Ephemeral Love Sigil means that, in the middle of a chaotic battle, a player can emerge from the fog, kneel down and present you with a bouquet of flowers."

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision to move to Copenhagen but then I discover jellyfish outside my apartment

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Really cool demonstration of how using LAVA and playing Adventure several times made it clear where the data relating to the Easter egg was being stored, based on a process of elimination

Katie with a slide showing multiple plays of Adventure

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Very excited for @kbiittner.bsky.social 's talk on large-scale archaeological videogame analysis at #fdg26 !

Katie with slide: LAVA: large-scale archaeological videogame analysis

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I had such a fantastic time co-leading the Games and Archaeological Play workshop with @mtrc.bsky.social at #fdg26 today! Here's some maps from the keepsake game activity I ran

My keepsake map of Nothing Beside Renains with letter stickers and tape

Mike Cook's keepsake map of a platformer with colour-coded details

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The lovely zine submissions in our GAP workshop library!

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

One winged daemon (It's a His Dark Material larp)

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Welcome to the Black Parade but you're an antelope

Selfie of me wearing a military jacket and antelope horns

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Continuing my tradition of going to very normal places to do larps

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I can best describe it as a cat themed sushi place (in Prague)

Photograph of restaurant that has a wall decal with an anime girl and c at om a sakura tree branch

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

At the first ever Copenhagen trans pride

A person holding a trans flag and Palestinian flag

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Enjoying the whimsy of this public toilet

Hooks with graffiti next to it saying "a weird elephant" and another person writes "but cute" and there's a fish sticker for some reason

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

My favourite Sam Neill performance is him as the titular wizard in the TV mini-series Merlin that came out in 1998. My late aunt and uncle showed it to me when I was a kid and it probably permanently changed my brain chemistry

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I've been invited to write the "Archaeogaming" entry for The Living Handbook of Historical Game Studies! See the abstract and links to other topics here: hgshandbook.ug.edu.pl/archeogames/

Archaeogaming is the archaeological study of video games, at the intersection of archaeology, game studies, computer science and HCI. This entry will chart the history of archaeogaming as a field that emerged in the 2010s but which has much longer antecedents in the form of cyber archaeology. It will present a taxonomy of archaeogaming, including reception studies, serious games, archaeology of digital artefacts and field studies. Brief case studies demonstrating the breadth of archaeogaming research will be presented. The question of the future of archaeogaming and its contributions to games research will be explored, and a case will be made for the unique contributions of archaeogaming as distinct from historical games studies in terms of archaeology’s specialisation in the study of material culture. The potential applications of archaeogaming to level design and play preservation will be presented.

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

You met me at a very poyo time of my life

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

We have extended the Games and Archaeological Play call for zines until July 17th! Anyone can submit a zine: you do not need to attend or register for the conference to submit. gapworkshop.org/call-for-pap...

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Dr Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

There's a lot of rhetoric about the government siding with families over tech companies but ultimately children will still have access to AI chatbots, even if with some "restrictions."

Quote: "So-called AI 'romantic companion' chatbots...Will have to enforce a minimum age of 18. Similar intimate functionalities will be restricted for under-18s on AI chatbots more widely.

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