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Mike Cook

@mtrc.bsky.social
4.8K followers 551 following 5.1K posts

AI and creativity researcher (no, not that kind of AI) at King's College London. I make things that make things. I also livecode, design games and wrote linktr.ee/next_level www.possibilityspace.org | they/he/any

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Many thanks to @luked.bsky.social for coming to talk to King’s today about AI, why it used to be cool, and how it came to be how it is today. Luke is currently touring around a few spots in Europe, including @qmul.bsky.social tomorrow! It was really nice to have some balanced industry insight.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
haha yeah great point! good one. yeah no absolutely. hey could you wait right there for a sec while i cancel my internet contract and delete every account i have on every website and then destroy all my computers i own and all ways of receiving electronic communications from the outside world? perf.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Oof size: large. "The latest game from the creator of Dragon Quest was made in ‘about 30 minutes’ with AI" - www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-las...
“Long ago, when I made ‘The Portopia Serial Murder Case’ on a PC, I came up with the story myself, drew the pictures myself, did the programming myself, and created the game all by myself,” Horii said.

“And now, by using AI, even if I can’t draw pictures or program, I can just give instructions to the AI and create a decent game all by myself. It’s truly astonishing. By the way, the production time for the game below was just about 30 minutes. Oh, and don’t press the boost button.”
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Did all the normal stuff you’d do at a science festival, looked at some books, saw a robot, watched people queue for the Tunnel of Vore.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Sort of the inverse of
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Some London livecoders are talking about their neuroscience work right now on the Mind and Body Stage! Such a cool combination of art and science.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
I’m at New Scientist Live today! I’m speaking at 3.45pm on the Family Stage about game, AI and whether we can still beat the computer. Plus I’m signing copies of Next Level at Waterstones at 2.45pm. Say hi if you see me!
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
I don’t want to actually quote anyone because this is definitely an AvP situation as far as I’m concerned but this would nevertheless be extremely funny if true (and he’s deleted the thread so it seems so).
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
hmm
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Or late 2000s, I dunno man. Tiny robot! He's back!
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The camera came to Algorhythms tonight too!
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
My arm is well enough to hold the camera and extras and I’m back on the streets! It feels good. I am very rusty though.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Like this is obviously a terrible idea and won’t meaningfully change the awful situation we’re already in. It’s more like… staring at a load of vomit and realising how ill you must be for this to be coming out of you, you know?
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Just got sent this by a friend, too, in case one of these wasn’t quite enough for you today. If any journalists want to talk to me about the history of AI and game design, I’m very happy to send over a recording of me doing a guttural scream for fifteen seconds, just let me know your email.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
@molleindustria.org very excited you're working on a sequel, i'm not super excited about the concept but i have faith in you
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Look what arrived in the post today. 🪶🪶🪶
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Going through old twitter bookmarks.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
One of my favourite tweets about chess:
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Every time I see the rabbit from Vib Ribbon I feel a little happier. I never even really played the game when it came out. But how can you not love this little guy.
screenshot of Vib Ribbon. A rabbit drawn from thin white lines is saying "la la la la oh, what fun!"
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Every AI/HCI paper I review now just sounds like this.
Research [25] shows that people [26] enjoy the feeling of winning games [3,5,19]. Enjoying things can lead to longer life expectancy [2], higher economic productivity [9,22,33-40,302] and improve mental health [9]. Yet many games still include losing players [67,4]. A recent study showed that less than half of the players in a Chess [1] match win on average [42]. We have developed an LLM-driven co-creative [66], user-led [11], mixed-initiative [80] assistant for Chess [2], through which players can redefine the rules of Chess [3] using generative AI prompting such that they are the winner of Chess [4]. A study (n=3) showed that 100\% of people felt better, healthier and more self-actualised after using our tool, showing that this may be the way forward for games and human culture more broadly in the future.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
via my colleague Georgia, a new publication about the environmental impact of videogames, along different axes: uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di...
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Made another Bleed Map last night while playing Ostranauts, mapping the tutorial ship, part of K-LEG, an area around the asteroid and my first real ship. It’s so fun to think about mapping. And it adds a weird cadence to play that I really like.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Are you coming to New Scientist Live next weekend? I'll be speaking on Sunday about games, AI and what it means to 'beat humans'. Do come and say hi if you'll be there - I'll be signing copies of Next Level on the day too. 🙂 live.newscientist.com/new-scientis...
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How do you take a photo of a city? What makes it so challenging, and why do good photographs speak to us so strongly? And what the hell does that have to do with roguelikes and PCG anyway? Join me on the 18th and we'll find out together (featuring lots of photos I've taken over the last few years)
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The schedule's out - I'm speaking at the Roguelike Celebration again this year! My talk is titled "The City, The Street, The Lens" and it's about street photography, collisions in time and space and how to think about procedural generation differently. More here: www.roguelike.club/event2026.html
A photo of a truck by the side of the road in Tokyo. The driver's leg is sticking out of the window resting on the side of the trailer. The title of the talk is written on the truck. It will happen on October 18th, online. Tickets are roguelike.club
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Having a good time as always reading theory papers written by computer scientists.
XKCD string theory comic.

"I just had an awesome idea. Suppose all matter and energy is made up of tiny, vibrating strings."
"What would that imply?"
"I dunno."
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Ok so **spoilers for Reacher S4** but a pivotal scene involves the classic “tech hacker character asked to enhance something” and he does it using… a prompt. Unhinged shit.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I started this for #fallingblockjam 2025, in the early days of my arm injury. Like my #corgijam game, this is playable with just your left hand, which is an intentional outcome of the design process. I really like the idea but I've lost the jam momentum, but now it can live as a scrap!
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
New Scrap: Spinlock Another unfinished jam idea I'm putting online as part of my post-manifesto stuff. This one isn't really playable, but the gifs convey the idea (you can play it if you have love2d). It's 4-directional Tetris - catch, align, and sink them to score. illomens.itch.io/spinlock
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
it is a bit like this also
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Ahhh yes, I can imagine. I want to say that this is a generational thing in academia but... at least in my case, I think the generation before me seemed... pretty happy and chill. Lots of jobs, increasing funding, you name it. So just this I guess
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Oh, right. Yeah.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New Post: Why I Love AI Next month it'll be twenty years since I went to university, learned to program, and studied AI. I wrote about why I loved it, why I still love it, and why, unfortunately, it no longer exists. www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/i...
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
CHI setting up the perfect bait by asking me if I am an expert in "systems that produce text, image, video, audio or 3D content".
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It's rare to be able to love doing something you're not good at. don't ever let go of that.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A new (minor) update to Magpie, bringing us to 0.2.2. A small but significant tweak for new users, two new ways to write temporary code, and a cool palette-splitting effect. #picotron illomens.itch.io/magpie/devlo...
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I played this last month at FDG, and mapped my experience of playing @noelcody.bsky.social’s Moss Moss. It’s a really fun way to record your play session.
A hand drawn map of a game with some annotations about my day on itA zoomed out photo of multiple sheets of paper with a map drawn on them
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
There we go. Let’s give that a week and see how it feels. Ahh.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Something that’s cool about 2026 is that every complete dipshit with an Internet connection can now have takes that my first-years grow out of by their third week of lectures.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
fml
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
sorry its other names are what
Connect 4's wikipedia page. Other names: 4 in a Row. The Captain's Duel. The Captain's Mistress.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Thinking about this one again today.
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Oh that's not enough livecoding? No problem. I'm also performing a set at decelerate, an algorave happening this Wednesday to celebrate the birthday of TidalCycles (among other things). Come join us at The Carpet Shop, Peckham: gel.now/events/849
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
A little reminder for Londoners - this is next weekend! Also you HAVE to see Lia Mice's fabric synthesisers, too. I'm spending some time this weekend adding a few new tricks and helpful features to Magpie (including a new font).
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
my code contains the kind of tell that's whatever the opposite of claude.md is. like ohhhh this person is like, *stupid* stupid.
code comment that reads "you know i've had this here for months and i don't actualyl remember why"
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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Okay, now let us never speak of this ever again.
submission page for a conference, showing the status 'complete'
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